Chickens roosting on an open fire . . .

"...and so its been said, many times, many ways, merry Fitzmas to you."
Several posts today about chickens homing to roost, comeuppances arriving, "so's" being told, wake ups being called, yada yada and all that jazz. . .
From Pre$$titutes comes this piece about "The Great Vindication Of The Anti-War Movement ":

In case the world hasn't noticed, the events of the past few months have vindicated the millions of people in the U.S. and around the world who protested the Iraq invasion on the basis that it was being justified by lies and that it would lead to a long, bloody struggle . . . the fact that the outcome of this grand misadventure was predicted by anti-war demonstrators goes unmentioned. It didn't take foreign policy experience or national security expertise or top-secret Intel briefings for the anti-war movement to know, unequivocally, that the Iraq invasion was a hyped-up, over-sold war. It was crystal clear from day one what Bush, Cheney, Condi, Rummy, Colin, et al were up to . . . It's awful for the anti-war movement to be so right about something so catastrophic as a war based on lies and deceptions, but it behooves America to give credit to those who predicted every step of this sorry journey. Maybe next time they'll listen more closely. And then again...

And Driftglass writes about the tragic fate of the Moderate Republican in "You bought it. "

Now live in it . . .in five short years, the Moderates have lived to become everything they detest. Every word of clucking reproach they yelped in snickering glee during the Clinton Age has gotten caught up in the Bush Treason Cyclotron, sped up to light-speed, and is now coming screaming back at them like a sack of radioactive axe-heads. Their worst nightmare is in the process of coming true, big as a mountain in stilettos, carrying a sledgehammer in one hand and a 40-foot-long straight razor in the other, and there is not shit all they can do about it. Because everything they believed or touted or crowed about or tried to rub in our faces is in the process of coming down around their ears. Every. Single. Thing. Every justification that they were fed about their Great Ay-rab Safari is now spilling out into the sunlight and can clearly be seen -- even from High Earth Orbit -- to have been a willful lie. . . . now it’s not one thing that’s melting down; it’s everything. The serial cons that have kept the grubby Mods goggle-eyed and heroin-loyal are all falling apart simultaneously and there’s nothing but decibels left in the Shiny Object Bag to keep them from noticing the awful truth. That their Leaders are traitors. Their heroes are liars. Their dogma is a joke. Their President is a feeble-minded creep who has fucked up everything he has ever touched . . . How terrifying that must be. I mean, I’m wrong about a lot of stuff...but everything? Every God Damned Thing? And worse – so very much worse – not only were they utterly wrong about everyfuckingthing, but the Evil Liberals were right all along. The big picture. The fussy details. The arithmetic. The real, racist heart of the GOP. The various myriad, casual betrayals by the Bush White House. All of it. . . . I can’t even imagine how it must feel to know at some level that your whole world is a farce, and your whole belief system is a Ponsi Scheme run on you by thugs who never gave a shit about you, or your family or your dearest peon dreams.

And on Huffington, Katrina Vanden Heuvel ends her piece on the "Five stages of political grief":

. . . In the meantime, we get to enjoy the hypocrisy of listening to Republicans run through the Clinton playbook. They are currently referring to the investigation as the "criminalization of politics," dismissing perjury as a "technicality," and smearing the Special Prosecutor. It is a veritable nostalgia-fest.

Personally, I'm waiting for the new phase to be identified, in the tradition of "I am not a crook", "What did he know and when did he stop knowing it?" and "Its not the sex, its the lying." I wonder what the Plame sentence will be?