Beware: It's All in the Hands
Personally, it's even more fun to imagine Karl Rove considering an application for a witness protection program (okay, in this case perhaps "felon" may work better than "witness") than it was to watch Little Scottie dancing on the hot griddle with reporters a week ago.
Anyone interested in Reality Life should be attentive to Matt Cooper's exclusive for Time Magazine regarding his grand jury testimony on the Plame affair:
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As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which. Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the "agency"--by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred that he obviously meant the CIA and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency. Rove added that she worked on "WMD" (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife.
Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status. I told the grand jury something else about my conversation with Rove. Although it's not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, "I've already said too much." This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don't know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.
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But while joy far beyond anyone in Mudville imagined would likely ensue were justice to catch up with dirty trickster Karl, it seems perilous to focus too narrowly on him. With blind loyalty the premier virtue in this executive house of venality, I can easily imagine a scenario wherein Karl takes a pseudo-fall, relinquishing official title and tendering a resignation, effectively clearing the slate of all the evil that has been closely linked to him. He is abhorrent of course, and the embodiment of much that is despicable, but we must not allow him to take on the role of sole pustule of the anti-human disease that is epidemic throughout bushdom. Let's face it; KR could disappear tomorrow and bushworld would still be a truly awful place.
So, in the spirit of not letting Karl off the hook but most urgently not letting his hand-waving lead our eyes away from the real toxic source-matter, it was a great relief today to read upfront summaries in several familiar but lately derelict mainstream news sources.
For example, Frank Rich, one of the few remaining anchors of the minority progressive voice at the New York Times, had a great OpEd piece with the catchy title Follow the Uranium:
WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.
Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.
[clip]
And even the Washington Post, rarely these days finding the courage to question power on even the mildest of issues, apparently finally found the discomforting hairball-like feeling from excessive reality-suppression too much to hold down:
Karl Rove had a secret.
In public, he was masterminding President Bush's reelection and brushing off suggestions he had played any part in an unfolding drama: the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame. In private, the senior White House adviser was meeting, on five occasions, with federal prosecutors to tell what he knew about the matter.
The story he would tell prosecutors did not seem to square with the White House's denial that it had played any role in one of the most famous leaks since Watergate. Rove told prosecutors he had discussed Plame in passing with at least two reporters, including the columnist who eventually revealed her name and role in a secret mission that would raise questions about Bush's case for war against Iraq. At the same time, other White House officials were whispering about Plame, too.
It is now clear: There has been an element of pretense to the White House strategy of dealing with the Plame case since the earliest days of the saga. Revelations emerging slowly at first, and in a rapid cascade over the past several days, have made plain that many important pieces of the puzzle were not so mysterious to Rove and others inside the Bush administration. White House officials were aware of Plame and her husband's potentially damaging charge that Bush was "twisting" intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions well before the episode evolved into Washington's latest scandal.
[clip]
Anyone interested in Reality Life should be attentive to Matt Cooper's exclusive for Time Magazine regarding his grand jury testimony on the Plame affair:
[clip]
As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which. Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the "agency"--by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred that he obviously meant the CIA and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency. Rove added that she worked on "WMD" (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife.
Rove never once indicated to me that she had any kind of covert status. I told the grand jury something else about my conversation with Rove. Although it's not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, "I've already said too much." This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don't know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.
[clip]
But while joy far beyond anyone in Mudville imagined would likely ensue were justice to catch up with dirty trickster Karl, it seems perilous to focus too narrowly on him. With blind loyalty the premier virtue in this executive house of venality, I can easily imagine a scenario wherein Karl takes a pseudo-fall, relinquishing official title and tendering a resignation, effectively clearing the slate of all the evil that has been closely linked to him. He is abhorrent of course, and the embodiment of much that is despicable, but we must not allow him to take on the role of sole pustule of the anti-human disease that is epidemic throughout bushdom. Let's face it; KR could disappear tomorrow and bushworld would still be a truly awful place.
So, in the spirit of not letting Karl off the hook but most urgently not letting his hand-waving lead our eyes away from the real toxic source-matter, it was a great relief today to read upfront summaries in several familiar but lately derelict mainstream news sources.
For example, Frank Rich, one of the few remaining anchors of the minority progressive voice at the New York Times, had a great OpEd piece with the catchy title Follow the Uranium:
WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.
Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.
[clip]
And even the Washington Post, rarely these days finding the courage to question power on even the mildest of issues, apparently finally found the discomforting hairball-like feeling from excessive reality-suppression too much to hold down:
Karl Rove had a secret.
In public, he was masterminding President Bush's reelection and brushing off suggestions he had played any part in an unfolding drama: the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame. In private, the senior White House adviser was meeting, on five occasions, with federal prosecutors to tell what he knew about the matter.
The story he would tell prosecutors did not seem to square with the White House's denial that it had played any role in one of the most famous leaks since Watergate. Rove told prosecutors he had discussed Plame in passing with at least two reporters, including the columnist who eventually revealed her name and role in a secret mission that would raise questions about Bush's case for war against Iraq. At the same time, other White House officials were whispering about Plame, too.
It is now clear: There has been an element of pretense to the White House strategy of dealing with the Plame case since the earliest days of the saga. Revelations emerging slowly at first, and in a rapid cascade over the past several days, have made plain that many important pieces of the puzzle were not so mysterious to Rove and others inside the Bush administration. White House officials were aware of Plame and her husband's potentially damaging charge that Bush was "twisting" intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions well before the episode evolved into Washington's latest scandal.
[clip]
posted by Sir Gumbo at 3:42 PM
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