A series of scandals has rocked the Bush administration. This is the third time in 6 years that it is having serious political problems. President Bush appears to be in the habit of sidetracking the rule of law, while consistently promoting democracy and rule of law abroad. That means he does not practice what he preaches.

The recent conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice-president in America's history, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, about his role in the White House smear campaign to discredit a critic of the war in iraq, former ambassador to iraq, Joseph Wilson, is a case in point. Libby lied about leaking the name of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame, a CiA covert officer, to the press.

This was done because ambassador Wilson had revealed in an article in the New York Times in July 2003 that Saddam Hussein did not import yellowcake from Niger, which President Bush had claimed in his State of the union Address in 2003. The conviction of Scooter Libby, in fact, has once again proven to the American people that the administration has been conducting war in iraq by misleading them.

Despite Republican senators howling at the Democrat controlled congress, it still invited the former CiA covert officer, Valerie Plame, to testify about the damage done to her and the CiA mission. Valerie Plame exposed the Bush administration's naked duplicity in attacking iraq.

There has been tug of war between President Bush and the Congress over the issue of the firing of 8 federal

attorneys by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last year. While the president's willingness to allow his aides only informal, closed door interviews without transcripts with the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee showed that he was apparently in the mood to cooperate with congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously authorized subpoenas for White House political adviser Karl Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers, and their deputies.

in the last five years, the Republican controlled congress did

not raise an eyebrow against the president's decisions. Now the president is facing the music. The eight attorneys were in good standing, most of them working on sensitive corruption investigations involving Republicans. Two of the attorneys testified at a congressional hearing that they were fired after resisting political pressure to indict Democrats.

The administration has apparently admitted that the firing originated from the White House, and that President Bush himself passed along to Gonzales concerns about some

attorneys. By doing this, the Bush administration has turned the entire Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party.

Even some Republican lawmakers are critical. Senator Tom Coburn (R), for example, said that the firing of the eight prosecutors in this clumsy and obviously political manner was an act of idiocy.

in a dramatic move, the Senate, by 94 to 2, removed the authority given to the president to name federal attorneys. This vote undid the language in the Patriotic Act, which is popularly

known to be unpatriotic in nature and which had allowed the White House to bypass the Senate.

These two acts by the Democrat controlled congress was a slap on the face of the president. During the last five years President Bush had used congress as a rubber stamp.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has requested President Bush to allow his aides to testify under oath. There will be a constitutional crisis if the president does not let them face the hearing. The Supreme Court would decide in that case.

Where does the Bush administration stand today? Even the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBi) has been accused of breaching the trust by illegally collecting information on American citizens.

The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, said that this was a serious breach of trust, while Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner is of the view that this would be a lesson to the FBi that they could not get away with this and expect to maintain public support.

By now the president may be feeling the pinch, when the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a revised spending bill with some strings attached, including withdrawal of troops from iraq by october or sooner if the iraqi govern-

ment did not meet certain benchmarks. This was done on April 25, in spite of President Bush's threatening to veto the bill. The voting pattern indicates that it fell short of the two-third majority needed to override the veto of the president.

As his popularity dwindles to below 30 percent because of the unpopular war in iraq, and a series of scandals within his administration, the president seems to keep on fighting for executive privilege with Congress.

The six years of arrogance by President Bush in ignoring the Congress has taken a toll on the country, and the government is paying the price politically.

Mohammad Amjad Hossain, a former diplomat, writes from Virginia.