In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
So many scandals, so little time.
The Bush Lobotomy scandal finally has legs though it was a crime that everyone knew about back in July (investigative reporting seems to be a dead art). I call it The Bush Lobotomy scandal because it might lead to the removal of Bush’s brain, otherwise known as Karl Rove.
President George Bush's closest political adviser, Karl Rove, was yesterday at the centre of a criminal investigation into allegations that he leaked the name of a CIA agent in an attempt to suppress criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, in what is fast becoming the administration's worst scandal since coming to office.
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Reporters at Time magazine and NBC News and a handful of others were also tipped off about Ms Plame, and Democrats claim the source in each case was Mr Rove. According to some accounts, Mr Rove did not mention Ms Plame by name but referred to "Wilson's wife" being a CIA employee.
Its fascinating to watch the various odd defenses the Bush loving right wing is coming up with such as “oh she was just an analyst,” such as this ridiculous essay from the right wing rag Newsmax :
Novak giveth and Novak taketh away.
That’s the long and short of the so-called “scandal” trumpeted by the Left and promoted by the lamestream media.
After all, it was the Novak column of July 14th that instigated this affair.
If that report was valid enough to instigate this flap, then why isn’t his clarification, that no one from the White House called him and that Wilson’s wife is neither an agent nor a covert operative, good enough to end it?
So since Novak says the leak was given to him during a general discussion of other items it somehow proves it wasn’t a leak? Eh? We can discount that instantly: a leak is a leak, and even so Novak isn’t an unimpeachable source. And second we are now taking Novak’s statement of Ms. Plame’s position at the CIA as fact? This is the same guy who already said the CIA told him that he shouldn’t break her cover.
In fact here is what a former CIA operative says about her:
LARRY JOHNSON: Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it.
So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat.
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LARRY JOHNSON: I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.
Drudgereport is also running this, but gleefully tries to discredit it by pointing out Larry’s “3 decades” statement along with the fact that Ms. Plame was only forty. Please, these attempts at smearing have gotten so pathetic it is really sad, as once you guys were the best at distraction and smear, but that is just too weak. I’m in my mid-thirties, and have been working for, gasp, three decades! (you know, the eighties, nineties, and the naughts).
Slate further defines levels of secrecy at the CIA and defines how Ms. Plame fits it:
Nonofficial cover. NOCs (the word rhymes with "rocks") are the most covert CIA operatives. They typically work abroad without diplomatic protection (often they pretend to work for some commercial enterprise). If these spies are caught, there's no guarantee that the United States would admit their true identities. When using official cover could put a spy's life and work at risk, NOC is the only alternative.
Why is it such a big deal that someone outed Valerie Plame? For starters, it's a felony. And Plame was also reportedly a NOC with years of experience investigating weapons of mass destruction. If this is true, her discovery could compromise intelligence operations she was involved with around the world, which would explain why she maintained her nonofficial cover even when she was back in the United States. "Hard target" countries like China and North Korea often keep records of every known meeting between Americans and their scientists and officials. Almost certainly, those lists would have been frantically reviewed when Plame's identity was revealed, and any sources she recruited could have been exposed.
The crime is obvious, the reason is petty (revenge, spite, intimidation standard Bush White House playground motivations), and the risk to national security an actuality that some neocon’s are even admitting this is bad (back to scary old Newsmax again):
The burgeoning flap over the leaking to the press of the name of a CIA agent - a clear and serious violation of federal law - is a serious, serious legal and political problem for the Bush White House.
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7) Whoever authorized the Plame leak could possibly go to jail for this willful act of lawbreaking. And those who actually called the six reporters could also go to jail - unless they cop a plea and rat out others.
8) Preliminary reports are that there is a great dissension inside the White House staff over this leak. Many are described as 'disgusted' at the outing of Ms. Plame.
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10) Meanwhile over at the Langley HQ of the CIA, there is much disgust over the way they are always made the scapegoats by this White House. After all, CIA Director Tenet had kept the African uranium tale out of the Cincinnati speech last October that helped escalate the case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq. But if heads don't roll over the Plame leak, you can bet that CIA will leak things of their own about the Bush White House.
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13) We need to reverse things: if the Clinton White House had sold out an active-duty CIA agent as 'payback' for some whistle-blowing article, we would be outraged. This crime is no less serious because it was done in a Republican White House.
This is a huge deal, and the press has been ignoring this for two months. There are other scandals out there, and here are just a few.
The Harken Scandal (Here’s a review of the scandal that is full of flavor: The REAL Dirt On Bush/Harken Scandal!!). Basically Bush was involved in insider trading and was a Director of a company that was the prototype for Enron style accounting (and lots not even get into some intriguing “mystery” investments that were involved in the story). This had the opportunity to blow real wide when the Enron scandal hit, but the press was too deep in post 9/11 shock to follow up on a Bush scandal, so it never really took off. The truth is, this scandal never will become big time.
The Florida Election Scandal. Just too many things here to talk about. We’ve got the thousands of legitimate Florida voters (many blacks – most likely Gore voters) taken off the voting lists because of erroneous out of state criminal convictions (the false data was supplied by gasp Texas). We’ve got the mob of republican staffers (the "bourgeois riot") physically threatening vote counters. From Katherine Harris working form the Bush campaign from her State office, to the one of the most ridiculous supreme court rulings ever (not up there with the “slavery is legal because it slave aren’t citizens ruling,” but up there with the “tomatoes are vegetables” ruling) ( "None Dare call it Treason" ). Florida’s election nastiness goes on and on, but won’t ever hit it big while Bush is in office, but when this episode hits the history books it won’t be good for Bush, might not even be called a fiasco, but rather, a coup d’etat.
Iraq War. There are so many things about this war that have been big for a while. Mostly the coverage has been centered around the lack of post-war planning (or that any planning was based on pure fantasy), and that the war itself was predicated on lies. But the financial angle is going to become big soon. Nothing like Bush’s friends making money from this to get people riled up.
Saudi Arabia and 9/11. This definitely has got legs. The administration approving a flight of Saudi citizens (including many bin laden family members) has been around since it happened, but always keeps popping up again, such as yesterday’s Who let Saudis flee after 9/11?. And the Bush administration is doing its best to keep the Saudi connections to 9/11 a secret, and that also isn’t going away either, such as yesterday’s White House Not to Declassify More of 9/11 Report . 9/11 Itself is going to become a big story next year around the 3rd anniversary. As the election nears and with the republican convention being held in New York (Rove’s 3rd biggest blunder after the Wilson Affair and the “Mission Accomplished photo op), people may be over the shock enough and appalled at the opportunism to really start asking some questions. (9/11 timeline)
These are just some scandals I remembered off the top of my head, for a large, but out of date, list, check out: Bushgate: The Bush Scandal Impeachment Warning System
- rob 2:19 PM - [PermaLink] -
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