If you’re down in the bunker with Rove and the rest of the Wehrmacht high command, that’s not what you want to hear. Some of the Axis satellite troops are cutting and running — just like they did at Stalingrad.
Back to Main
July 13, 2005
WB: Slime and Defend
Comments
Billmon said:”One sign of just how scared the Rovians are of Fitzgerald is the fact that they haven’t pointed any of their slime guns in his direction, at least not yet.”
Don’t count on it- see the poorman’s post on Sensenbrenner and his bizarre intervention in some random drug dealing appeals court case. Turns out the prosecutor he’s criticizing is for blowing the sentencing is- well, you know.
Posted by: SP | Jul 13 2005 20:07 utc | 1
I fear the media will give up on a war of attrition, and go back to the shiny object of the moment after 1-2 weeks — “LOOK! Natalee Holloway, alive and well and partying in Amsterdam!”
Meanwhile, the spinning wheel keeps a’spinnin’ around. Rove is being touted for medals, as predicted elsewhere; he’s becoming Ollie North for the Naughties.
“Rove is being touted for medals, as predicted elsewhere; he’s becoming Ollie North for the Naughties.”
That may not be such a bad thing — North was a ramrod straight Marine who already had a chest full of medals. Rove is a weird pasty faced lump who looks like he just crawled out of a pig’s pooper shoot. I like the visuals much better this time around.
Posted by: Billmon | Jul 13 2005 20:13 utc | 3
It’s just a matter of time before Fitz get attacked. But I really like the line about Novaks uncremated remains. He’s been around on tv since the early 1960s. You would think he would just go away.
The Rovians are stuck and the slim machine is in full slim, spinning, convulsing in spasms, throwing the green sludge wherever it may land.
I think they’re disperate.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 13 2005 20:21 utc | 4
“the uncremated remains of Bob Novak”..I nearly shit myself laughing at that phrase.
Here’s where I think the chink is(not an Asian joke): We know for a fact that: Either Scott Mc. lied to the American people about Rove’s “involvement”…or Rove lied to Scott. As you had on your site..Scott talks about meeting with Rove(ironically..in order to check the facts for the press)and he says Rove assured him the he wasn’t involved. We know for a fact now(I know..facts aren’t too important to some) that Rove WAS INVOLVED. This is what needs to be hit upon by those with a little sense.
The people don’t care much about “political stories” that aren’t clear cut. As I watch talking heads speak on this on TV..I can only think people are curious..but there are so many twists and turns..and since the Grand Jury is still doing it’s job, there are so many oppurtunities to play with the “facts”. But what people CAN understand is a clear cut LIE! And THAT is what we have regarding the President’s #1 man.
What do ya think?
Posted by: aaron pacy | Jul 13 2005 20:39 utc | 5
I liked this from fatblog via atrios:
Matt Cooper Must Go
As the Wall Street Journal points out today, the true tragedy in the Plame affair has been the burning of Karl Rove. Indeed, if there is any integrity left in Time Magazine, it must fire Matt Cooper. By outing Karl Rove as the man who outed an undercover CIA agent, Matt Cooper has selfishly, recklessly, and amorally endangered a top administration official, exposing Rove and those he works with to threat from political opponents, news organizations and the Justice Department, to say nothing of the damage done to Rove’s career as one of America’s hard-working partisan hacks. With his identity revealed, how will Rove effectively leak the leaks and spread the rumors necessary to serve his party? Such shameless and reckless abuse of partisan security cannot be tolerated. Matt Cooper must go.
¶ posted by Medium Lobster
Posted by: della Rovere | Jul 13 2005 20:43 utc | 6
It’s hard to slime anyone who has no public record to speak of, and this would hold for the utter silence of Fitzgerald and his fellow investigators: they really haven’t made any comments that would lend themselves to sliming. The sliming must therefore await the indictments yet to come–and I personally believe those indictments will be forthcoming. But will they lend themselves to sliming? Something much remarked on by various lawyers and officials at work in the vicinity of the proceedings is the extraordinary care–call it, if you prefer the exactitude –with which Fitzgerald has been building his case (as would be evident, say, in the wording of his requests for sundry subpoenas). Within the legal community, Fitzgerald’s discipline is sweeping all protest before it.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 21:11 utc | 7
And why has the fertilizer spreader not yet been aimed at Fitzgerald?
Does he already have someone whose hands are so hot that they could set those wet and sopping remains alight without even striking a match?
And if so, do the Roving Halliburtonians know who it is and what they have?
Or, perhaps they don’t, which could explain why they have made the almost unprecedented decision to let the newscycles burn.
Hearings….. let’s have them, even craptactular ones in basements, if only to let Wilson go again for an afternoon or seven.
Good points alabama; you beat me to it while I was babbling straight onto the keyboard.
In the last thread I asked if anybody had any insight into why Fitzgerald was named to this by the Ass’t AG in the first place.
Any thoughts?
this whole criminal crew deserves the end of the small time gauleiters, party functionaries & other assorted filth of fascism who met their ends down some ally of the vanquished reich
their own emptiness indictes them
their debassement of humanity their only strategy
their history their reality our present needs to be liquidated
& i say this from the bottom of my heart
they are wretched beyond imagination & rove the epitome of all that is rotten, festering & decaying in front of our eyes & rotting everything around it
this time, fascism, american fascism needs to be pulled from the roots no matter how painful it must be for the american people
i salute the americans here who show that fascism & unending imperial cruelty are not the only faces of america
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 13 2005 21:20 utc | 10
alabama
i don’t know what that horrific site is called of david horowitz or people connected to him -the red channnels of our time – byt wandering through it the other night – i swa that other than obvious targets – the targets in the majority at least in the academic community – were people who one would have fought were beyond reproach even to people as evil as horowitz – but it seems clear to me they have no limits they will not go to destroy people & no one person is above that destruction
i wish i could believe in this fitgerald, or the judges justice itself but it has shown with few exception how corrupt it actually is
i want to believe in thos kinds of possibilities but belief is not enough, not nearly enough
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 13 2005 21:24 utc | 11
Once again, Ross k, I’d have to go back to my hunches of days gone by. Ashcroft couldn’t refuse, because people within the administration more powerful than he were making a full-court press: Mueller was one of these, along with Tenet (which is not as odd as it may sound) and Powell. I think Mueller must have made the difference (given the then-recent troubles of the FBI, which he was assigned to correct as quickly as possible). I also speculate that Mueller, Powell and Tenet would have resigned in protest if Fitzgerald hadn’t been appointed. And they needn,t have said so in plain English; we all have lots of ways of making our determinations known, after all, and stating them openly isn’t always preferred by seasoned bureaucrats.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 21:32 utc | 12
Fitzgerald is surrounded with bodyguards of all kinds, remembereringgiap, and the most impenetrable of these is the case he’s building towards indictment. If it’s done well, ad hominem arguments will not be able to “parse” the prosecutor’s case. But that’s a big “if,” as all of us would agree!
Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 21:37 utc | 14
Could someone address my post on the previous thread as to what this whole thing was about in the first place. Did Wilson alone, or with support of State and CIA and FBI, as Alabama seems to imply above, start this? Or were there other forces?
And what is the goal? Simply to take Rove out because he is too nasty and stepped on too many feet? To wound and weaken the Presidency? To topple the regime? To maneuver for the next election cycle?
These are all the larger issues I don’t understand. (See my previous post, last thread.) The current melee I seem to be following. I just would like to know what everyone thinks the import of this may be.
I just read Robert Parry’s article Rove’s Leak Points to Bush Conspiracy, in which he states that the important question is really “How did Rove get Plame’s name?”, and that the answer might implicate Bush himself. Is that what others here believe, that this is about Little Boots himself?
Parry goes on to contrast Bush’s handling of this with Reagan during Iran-Contra and Nixon during Watergate, where they fired their aides immeadiately to stem the tide. Why didn’t Bush do this–because Rove is too important to the operation, or because they are too arogant and thought they could get away with it?
Rove’s power was in his relative invisibility. I was shocked when he came out with that stupid statement about Liberals and 911. I thought that odd and now this. When he is exposed to view with his triple chinned, pink purple pile of pasty crap self, his power evaporates. There is a weakness that emanates in his visage and body language. He knows he is puke inducing ugly and I think he’s blown his own cover for good. Exposure to the light has melted him.
I would like to know exactly why as well.
I do think this presidency was destined to be wounded if not demolished.
Posted by: jm | Jul 13 2005 22:43 utc | 17
… because they are too arogant and thought they could get away with it?
Thier every action prior to and since obtaining office says, YES !
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 13 2005 22:47 utc | 18
Ted Rall, TREASONGATE: IT’S NOT JUST KARL ROVE, goes further, though probably tongue in cheek.
It may have already been posted, but this diary discusses some interesting issues related to the Republican statement that Plame’s identity was not secret.
NYT’s columnist Kristoff repeats the statement that Plame may have been outed by Aldrich Ames. (via Kevin Drum)
First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson’s name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from “noc” — which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having “C.I.A.” stamped on her forehead.
So, where did Kristoff get that information? Josh Marshall claims that’s the case too. I’m glad to see Drum updated at some point to ask this same question… who was Kristoff’s source.
However, if this scenario is true, the real damage to national security would be the leak of Brewster and Jennings, which was in the second Novak column, iirc. In other words, even if Plame was at the agency, and even if her name was not mentioned, the source for Brewster and Jennings is the criminal act, no matter what…and involves many more people than Plame.
In that case, where did Novak get that bit of information, as well?
got this from a wapo link: Oct 12, 03
“On July 12, two days before Novak’s column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador’s CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame’s name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson’s report.”
And this from Knight-Ridder at the same time:
Training agents such as Plame, 40, costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called “legends,” including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas.
Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, whose name has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, formerly the agency’s chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis.
(neither of these articles are available to me as links, but Cursor provides them in this archived entry.)
GuckertGannon comes into play in this, as well, as a reporter who set up shop and proceeded to deny that Plame was covert. Gannon was also given info from a supposed intel. memo that was leaked from the Plame/CIA/Niger trip meeting…what someone else called a forgery.
Wonder who gave that info to Gannon…and when he got it. Maybe at one of the White House sleepovers?
Anyway, this is a serious issue…whether or not see was already outed…but, the release of her company’s name, which was a CIA front co. would seem to provide pretty backup evidence that she was covert, since the CIA has admitted that was a front.
Any mention made of this from the right wing seems to come from one source…the echo chamber effect that is very possible in these situations, no matter what the issue.
On the other hand, pardon me for letting my imagination go on, but I wonder, as Gannon suggests, that the CIA is not all for the invasion of Iraq and they were setting up BushCo. Would that then be a situation like Al Capone and tax evasion?
I was reading about Ames (which comes from a very all American cheesy Crime Library source…
From Ames:
“Beginning with Trigon and later with Arkady Shevchenko, the CIA was getting really good, and I mean first-class, political information about the Soviets,” Ames said later. “We knew we were disproportionately stronger than the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. And yet, decade after decade, the political leadership in BOTH PARTIES (my caps) ignored that intelligence. They were committed to running around and screaming, “the Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! It was nonsense.” Ames was especially outraged by CIA Director William Casey’s preoccupation with the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.
(None of this is not why Ames became a traitor…money for a “lifestyle” was the motivation…that, and being passed over for promotion)
Anyway, sort of interesting because it was “Team B,” iirc, who was overestimating, more than anyone else, tho all were, the Soviet threat (and putting tax dollars into weapons instead of America…of course, I suppose all those defense contract jobs paid well…and really well for the pols who got contributions.)
and, finally, Rove’s leak that got him fired by Bush I at Bust Bob
So here’s a talking point for the Republicans: “We’re not as bad as Aldrich Ames!”
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 13 2005 22:57 utc | 20
Malooga, as I understand it, there’s been a shoot-out going on for a very long time between Cheney and Rumsfeld (the Nixon Administration alumni) on the one hand, and Powell and his various allies on the other. As soon as Damaged W. Goods was nominated in 2000, he put those contending figures into the positions they held throughout his first term in office. And while it’s impossible to reconstitute, in the space of a single post, the various ideological, institutional and personal fissures giving form and outline to the rift between those two factions, it suffices to say that their shoot-out heated up with the decision to invade Iraq. I believe that we could, and without doing any major violence to the greater story, interpret the invasion of Iraq as an expression of this intra-administrative shootout–which I see as a bureaucratic war between Nixon’s wrathful alumni and the folks who sought to displace them over the years. You could, without reaching too far, call it an unresolved dispute over the course of events in Washington during the war in Viet Nam.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 13 2005 23:11 utc | 21
Am I the only person around here who finds the defense of CIA dirty work, however delectable the hope is Rove goes to jail, as an ironic pose of the “left”? I mean, the CIA (hardly held accountable for its murderous history by any institutional arrangement) is now viewed, through the prism of leftish schadenfreude, as somehow irreplaceable to our beloved democracy. How dare he “out” (a miserable euphemism imo) one of our secret agents! He should go to jail!
The same irony has occurred in the glee many of us here feel about judy in prison: it’s ok, for now.
Let’s not forget all this irony when in some more terrible future, the executive is able to quiet journalists and suspected leakers with even greater ease. All of this has a feel of justifying in the future far less transparency in the operation of power.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 13 2005 23:24 utc | 22
They’ll muddy the waters enough to survive the immediate attention this matter is getting, count on the witnesses to be intimidated enough to create confusion, negotiate a plea, be indicted, plea no contest, then be pardoned. Resignation and change of office name plates in the meantime. Since he didn’t start out dep chief of staff, not much difference going back to being the behind the scenes advisor. Security clearance? Who needs it, they just make stuff up as they go, no need for any real world information.
Posted by: YY | Jul 13 2005 23:32 utc | 23
alabama- I think Powell was brought on board because he could lend legitimacy to the war the neocons were already committed to. He provided the decent guy (most people don’t know about My Lai) front. Powell did his duty and lied and scared the world at the UN with his ampule of anthrax, and he wasn’t needed after that. Rumsfeld and Cheney were running the military show anyway.
Slothrop- I do not think anything is all good or all bad, including the CIA. In many cases, in fact, it appears the CIA was more reasonable than, say, the JCS or the Executive Branch. I do, however, think the CIA should not be allowed to exist as it does because of its actions in various countries. I think there should be a chain of accountability via the Senate and the Executive.
I do think there are reasons to have “spies.” I don’t think the world would suddenly be peaceful if only America stopped its wicked ways…that sort of political leadership would probably be so surprising that no one would believe it anyway.
I think it’s naive to assign all power to the US…and another form of America-centrism to think that we are the agents who control all actions everywhere.
But I also do not believe in any utopias or utopian theory. I do not believe there has ever been a “good” nation, nor will one ever exist, because ultimately I believe that history has shown that people are selfish and when threatened they are cruel, and some people feel threatened even when they have no reason for this belief.
I think the best we can do is to try to keep things simple and as small-scale as possible, because those are the circumstances in which more egalitarian and compassionate situations seem to thrive…and even then it’s not like some people aren’t selfish greedy fucks.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 13 2005 23:53 utc | 24
it appears the CIA was more reasonable than
well, that’s a nonsequitor, because you could never prove it. The CIA operates without legislative oversight. no country calling itself a democracy would have a CIA.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 14 2005 0:06 utc | 25
I’d like to take a slight detour just to remind us all that yellow cake was always a red herring.
According to the CIA, Iraq was in possession of 550 metric tons of yellow cake before the war, and yet this troubled the Bush administration so little that no effort was made to secure the stuff after the 2003 invasion. Is that any way to treat a casus belli?
Without a massive, eminently detectable and targetable isotope-separation infrastructure, of the sort successfully dismantled under the much-maligned UN inspection regime, yellowcake is useless. That’s true for the 550 tons Saddam already had, plus however additional much he was(n’t) trying to buy from Africa.
It was certainly worth finding out whether Saddam was still in the market for yellow cake, but this made no difference to the purported threat he posed to anyone (except ultimately to the looters and their families who poisoned themselves with it).
Posted by: ralphbon | Jul 14 2005 0:29 utc | 27
Gigot and Rove are certainly of the same evolutionary track. Whether they represent scientific evidence of slug intelligence is less certain.
Posted by: ken melvin | Jul 14 2005 0:48 utc | 28
yeah, Slothrop, you’re right about not really knowing. We really need another Church Commission. Right now, I can speculate based upon what I’ve read.
for my speculations, two situations come to mind…
1) the first coming from Ames’ quote, above, that the pols were leading the cry for military build up and a threat from the USSR. Ames’ CIA colleagues response was that they were worried that he “didn’t support the goals of the country…” not that he was wrong, just that he wasn’t an automaton working at the bidding of the Executive.. which is how is goes, right…the CIA is the Prez’s private secret police force, ala Savek and the Shah? …that’s what seemed to be the case with Iran/Contra (Reagan, we all know, was the original woodchopping sock puppet.)
Anyway, Ames backs up what other investigative journalists have written, though not for the same reasons.
2) Operation Northwoods was advanced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, afaik, not the CIA, although where does military intel stop and the CIA begin?
…and it also appears to be the case in the invasion of Iraq, the Executive branch was the one determined to go to war…even before they were elected. The Pentagon was “taken over” by a new Team B, including Cheney…something that is supposedly (according to Ray McGovern) unprecedented for a v.p. to do…or even a v.p. who’s really prez.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 14 2005 1:07 utc | 29
@RGiap, you disappoint me. We need someone to write Rove’s Eulogy, & I was hoping it would be you. This gang of Fascists & Theocrats is being thrown out & being replaced by a gang of Pirates more amenable to the concerns of Wall Street. I’d take Rove over Soros anyday. What’s great about Rove, and here’s what I expect you above Everyone to appreciate, is that he’s far better theater. And that’s true for the Repugs generally. He’s not a mad repressed bureaucrat, or an over-weening Narcissist like Clinton or increasingly Al Franken. He expresses the unremitting evil of the policies and methods he advocates. It’s so appropriate that the Repugs, almost universally are thieves, pedophiles, male homosexuals persecuting homosexuals, females waging war against women…The wonder is that the Soros party can advocate the destruction of Americans & the thievery of absolutely everything from everyone everywhere & not have those characteristics. How is that an improvement?
(I think I didn’t express this very well, which is why I was hoping you would come through for us, Oh Bard of the Moon.)
Posted by: jj | Jul 14 2005 1:59 utc | 30
Thank you, Alabama. Most of the background I’m familiar with–though I’m not sure that I buy it 100%. Sometimes it just seems like a very convenient good cop–bad cop cover story.
But how then does Wilson fit in: Was he a set-up or a “lucky” accident that the Powell faction was able to seize upon?
And does Bush I fit in, at all. Remember when Shrub was elected, the original buzz was that he would be running the country, not Cheney. Is he too old and senile–or is he the master “behind the scenes” puppeteer? Remember, he is the one with the Agency connections. How does he feel about his son going down? Or is this something he aquiesces to with sadness, but the knowledge that the apple fell pretty far from the tree–and was wormy too.
As for Kerry–one word–feh!
By the way, I think the calculation among the elite was between continuing the Clintonian “bleed Iraq to death” away from the media, a little longer–but sanctions were falling apart and other business interests (French!) were moving in, and attack now. A lot of the elite saw themselves in a bind; this was done more from a position of weakness then strength.
Malooga, Billmon has just posted a very droll and thoughtful post at the Whiskey Bar (“Spock with at Beard”) in which he proposes that Wilson is an honorable man, and also a little vain from time to time. In the light of Billmon’s post, your question then becomes, why would Wilson publish his offending Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes on 6 July 2003? It’s my guess that he must have felt really awful about the famous “sixteen words”–a little responsible, even–and decided it was time to lodge his protest. Since I suspect that he’s also rather timid, just as most of us are, he must have needed (and received) lots of encouragement from lots of people to take a step forward. It would be interesting to know who they were….I doubt that Poppy can watch five minutes of Damaged W. Goods without feeling keen, glancing, arrowy radiations of anguish crossing the length and breadth of his almost infinite narcissism. Why else would he spend so much time flying hither and yon with Bill Clinton–all of six months younger than his Abortive Boy in high office?
Posted by: alabama | Jul 14 2005 3:42 utc | 33
Malooga, don’t forget that even if they wanted to change policy, the invasion was totally unnecessary as it later came out that SH sent word that he’d agree to anything as long as he could stay in power. Bush-Cheney refused to speak to him. Doubtless that’s the path Clinton, BushDaddy & Scowcroft would have chosen.
For more on BushDaddy & Joe Wilson bradblog spoke w/Joe Wilson today & had some interesting info:
He told us that he’d be appearing on NBC’s Today Show tomorrow morning and would be repeating that call.
As well, he told The BRAD BLOG that he planned to read a letter on air which he received from Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush shortly after an article of his was printed in the San Jose Mercury News, on October 13, 2002, in which Wilson related his concerns about the pitfalls of the approach to Iraq being taken at the time by both the U.N. and the U.S.
In reply to that article, Wilson said that the former President wrote that he had “read your article and I agree with a lot of it.”
Additionally, Wilson explained, Bush 41’s own National Security Advisor, Brett Scowcroft had contacted him to ask whether he “could walk on over to the White House with the letter” at the time. Which apparently he did.
Wilson also had sent the article to Bush 41’s Secretary of State, James Baker.
“None of them responded saying you’re a Democratic partisan hack and your views suck,” said Wilson.
Posted by: jj | Jul 14 2005 4:15 utc | 34