April 4, 2018
By: Linda Case Gibbons, Esq.
Decisions. Decisions. Life is full of them. Make a bad one, and your life is ruined forever.
Ask Benedict Arnold.
"Golly. I wish I hadn't done that!" That's what it was reported Arnold said after he got caught selling out his country.
It wasn't that Gen. Arnold wasn't a respected commander in the Continental Army. He was. Until he wasn't.
He participated, alongside Ethan Allen, in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, helped defeat the British in the Battles of Lake Champlain and Saratoga, and was given command of the fort at West Point.
But pessimistic about the country's future, and believing that he was being treated unfairly, that he'd been passed over for promotions, he made the decision to surrender the fort at West Point to the British.
That was his fatal decision.
The details of his fall from grace were far more romantic than those of present day scandals, with secret negotiations with the British, and instructions written in code and invisible ink.
Today we have e-mails and Tweets. But we can still pick out the guys who are selling out our country.
Ask the FBI's James Comey and Andrew McCabe, or the Veterans Administration's David Shulkin. They all probably wished they'd used invisible ink.
After his treasonous act, Arnold fled to Britain, but never apologized for what he'd done. Comey, McCabe and Shulkin didn't either.
"Why should we?" they sputtered. "We're not wrong! We're insulted!"
Indignant that he was fired, former FBI Director Comey slapped together a book, like Hillary, and will embark, like Hillary, on a "book tour," explaining What Happened, defending his leaking sensitive government information, like Hillary, to The New York Times, and explaining why he let Hillary off the hook after she mishandled sensitive government information on her private server.
And, like Hillary, Comey blames Trump for all the bad things that have happened to him.
Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe struck back after he was given the gate, citing his accomplishments during his 21-year career as a defense to his dismissal.
Was he referring to his heading up the FBI's counterterrorism efforts during the Boston Marathon bombing? Or "working with" FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to get Hillary elected, and when she lost, to get rid of Donald Trump?
And yes. Now that you asked. McCabe blamed Trump.
While both men should have acted as "Switzerland" in carrying out the mandate of the FBI, instead they worked to further the shameful politicization of the agency.
Last week Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin was fired, and was equally as indignant.
For some reason, while veterans were suffering from injuries sustained from serving their country, Shulkin thought it was acceptable for him to take a 10-day European "VA business trip," accompanied on this junket by his wife, chief of staff, the acting undersecretary of health, an aide, and a six-person security detail, at a cost of $140,000.
Three-and-a-half days were spent in meetings on veterans' health issues; sightseeing occupied the rest, with tours of Westminster Abbey, Denmark's Rosenborg Castle, a cruise along the Thames, shopping in Sweden, and a match at Wimbledon.
Shulkin's dismissal came after Inspector General Michael J. Missal released a 97-page report. The report indicated Shulkin and his staff had misled agency ethics officials, improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets, and had directed an aide to act as a "personal travel concierge" to him and his wife.
The report concluded that the trip was more vacation than business.
To justify the department paying for Shulkin's wife's $4,300 airfare, Shulkin's chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, altered language in a document to make it appear Shulkin was receiving an award from the Danish government.
Simpson has since retired.
Like Benedict Arnold before them, Shulkin, Comey and McCabe never thought what they did was wrong. To him, and them, the end justified the means.
And after Shulkin was fired, he did the only thing he could do. He blamed Donald Trump. Although he did relent and admit at a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, "I do recognize the optics of this are not good."
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) agreed. "It's not the optics that are not good," Coffman said. "It's the facts that are not good.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Life is full of them. Make a bad one, and your life is ruined forever.
But, really. How can you complain? It was your decision.
Hold the line, America.
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