Is Rove Taking a Bullet for Cheney?

I hate to get fooled again, and you've got to hand it to those Bush fuckers for being able, like good conjurers, to constantly divert our attention to something "big" while they slip something even bigger behind us.

But then it occurred to me that no one seems to be connecting the Valerie Plame Wilson affair, which involved the CIA, to the allegations that Dick Cheney visited the CIA offices at Langley as many as fourteen times, something that has been called unprecedented. Word was that he had been over there pressuring analysts to spin things the way the White House wanted for war, a war in which the chief beneficiary is the Halliburton company. Cheney, after serving as Secretary of Defense under Bush I then became CEO of Halliburton before becoming vice president. During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, he oversaw a massive privatization scheme in the military which set up the sort of transfer of duties and massive amounts of cash to private contractors.

So the question is this: is Rove taking a bullet for Dick? Is this a distraction from the real source of leaks to the press about Plame and others? Is it feasible that Dick Cheney would really have no idea who Joe Wilson was, even though it was Wilson who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War?

Just wondering. Someone else is wondering too, over at After Downing Street Memo. Go give it a read. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is purported to be a serious and thorough fellow and this observation by Justin Raimondo may prove rather prescient about what Fitzgerald is really after now:

If, however, Fitzgerald can prove there was a conspiracy inside the government to collect and selectively reveal classified information in order to crush political opponents, and shape U.S. policy, then the charges could be much more serious. By all accounts, the Plame investigation is said to be widening, and I would venture to say that by this time it is wide enough to include charges of espionage.

Indeed, against charges of actual espionage for political gain at the expense of national security, Rove's little leak would seem puny. Perhaps the plan is to throw Karl to the wolves, then pardon him and hope that Fitzgerald can't make any other charges stick.

Or maybe Cheney will conveniently croak just like William Casey did in time to damage the investigation into Iran-Contra. Maybe that's why Dickie hasn't been seen much lately. Maybe he's reading the writing on the wall and realizes that his number's up if he gets exposed as the real culprit here.

I wish I knew, but I'm still optimistic that these bastards are going to go down hard.

The Simplest Statement of the Rove Treason

It boils down to this:

Joseph Wilson went to Niger to ascertain whether or not Iraq was attempting to buy nuclear materials. Who sent him is irrelevant.

In the 2003 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush said this: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece entitled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," contradicting Bush's claim.

Robert Novak, citing two White House administration sources, announced that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.

The White House denied Karl Rove was a source. Bush said he would "take care of" anyone who is a leaker of classified information.

Two years later, Rove's attorney admitted Karl Rove was a source.

The White House refused to comment.

Rove currently retains his security clearance.

So in the course of two years, when did Bush know that Rove was the source? Why hasn't he followed through on his promise? Why is Rove still sitting behind Bush in cabinet meetings?

Wilson's motives are irrelevant. Who sent him is irrelevant. The facts are that Bush claimed Iraq sought Uranium, was proven wrong, and his closest aide disclosed the identity of a CIA agent who specialized in WMD in time of war in order to discredit Wilson, who had proven Bush wrong...or a knowing liar.

Rove is a traitor. He has aided and abetted the enemy by directly exposing an operative of the CIA who worked as a NOC, which means she had no diplomatic protection while undercover. All her contacts and assets in other countries--intelligence assets in the area of WMD--are now compromised. This has undercut our ability to fight the war on terror and prevent the proliferation of WMD into terrorists' hands.

Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
And those who cover for him are traitors as well.

And don't take my word for it. Go visit Bloomberg News for their take on things--hardly a left-wing bastion.

It's Not Partisan Hype: Rove Was and Is a Threat to America's Security

When yours truly was doing his duty during the Cold War in a classified position, among the things emphasized in the non-technical part of the training was the absolute necessity of remaining silent about the mission, the people doing the mission, and anything at all in any way connected to the mission. The reasons for this were simple. Just as we pieced together seemingly disconnected bits of information into usable wholes, so were our adversaries doing the same. A question about what one did or who one knew could be innocent, or could be the normal data collection that most intelligence operations is made of. A name here, a location there, measure some antennae on a building, observe the comings and goings of people, and before you know it, you've figured out exactly what some intelligence entity is up to and you can now work to thwart their mission.

So when it came to light two years ago in Bob Novak's column that two White House officials had exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, I naturally assumed that this would be one screwup that would not be countenanced by a White House which was staking its entire being on a war on terror. After all, exposing someone in intelligence operations, even someone who is not on a covert mission, is a very serious act, and had I or one of my colleagues back in the early 1970s done such a thing, we would have been stripped of our clearances, banished from any access, and likely court martialed for violating clear security rules. There would have been no question, no hesitation, and no spinning. You compromise security, it's over for you. Period.

So here we have the commander in chief of all US forces, a man who is at the top of the pyramid for our security, and his right-hand man, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, tells not one, or two, but at least three reporters that Joe Wilson's wife is in the CIA. However, innocent he may have been of Valerie Plame's darker assignments undercover, and however ignorant he may have been of how useful such information might be to skilled intelligence services, he broke the trust of his position.

Something else that is not discussed by our kneepad press is what might have happened to all those foreign operatives who were connected to Valerie Plame when she was indeed working overseas to investigate WMD. What has become of them? Once her name was out, those known to have socialized with her or been involved in the cover business under which she operated were in deep jeopardy. Fraternizing with an attractive blonde woman in business circles surely gets you attention in the Middle East, and if that blonde woman suddenly becomes known as a CIA agent who did extensive work on WMD in your country, well, you might find your testicles wired up to a telephone generator at some point while your relationship is explored.

That's why Karl Rove is dangerous and even treasonous. I expect him to follow the same code I swore to back in my day, and I also expect him to suffer the same fate I would have had I acted as he did.

Karl Rove is a traitor at worst, or at minimum a political partisan to whom power means more than the security of the American people. He needs to be taken down. And if George W. Bush has known this all along, then he too must go, and I expect to see articles of impeachment drawn up within days.

Of course, with a Republican Congress, that won't happen, which shows you just how corrupt and dangerous that party has become to our entire nation.

Just Two Ways in Which the Bush Criminal Empire Is Ruining Our Country

First, there is this little matter of using the wife of someone who criticized one the administration's lies about why we should invade Iraq, that being that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger. That "someone" was Ambassador Joseph Wilson, once ambassador to Gabon and also a former acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1991, whose actions won him high praise from then-president George H.W. Bush. Now that Karl Rove has been thoroughly fingered as the source for the outing of Wison's wife as a CIA agent (and fingering is going to seem quite pleasant compared to the prodding he'll get as this thing widens...and then there's prison life--ba-da-bum!), the White House spin is shifting to say that Rove did what he did only to discredit Wilson because Wilson was lying about who sent him to Niger and what he saw there.

The single largest charge against Wilson's credibility? That his wife recommended him for the mission. Given his background, it doesn't seem at all like the boss forcing you to take his ne'er-do-well son-in-law as your new supervisor, but that's the spin the White House and its whores keep making. They're intimating nepotism, but unfortunately for them, Wilson was possibly among the very best qualified people in the country for the mission. The White House just didn't like the results, because it directly contradicted their increasingly hysterical claims about Iraq's capabilities. Remember the "mushroom cloud" that Condie Rice and Chimpie kept saying would appear over us if we didn't invade?

So let's just weigh the credibility of these two men. Joseph Wilson is a lifetime public servant who put his own neck in harm's way on behalf of those in his charge, even showing up at a meeting with journalists in Iraq in 1991 wearing a noose around his neck. "If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own fucking rope," Wilson was reported to have said, staring down Hussein who had considered taking embassy personnel hostage. Wilson was also, as mentioned, ambassador to Gabon, and was familiar with the people, the culture, the politics, and the officials who were in a position to know something about their uranium supply and who might be in the market for it. He had also served as President Clinton's national security advisor on African affairs. He has had a stellar career, been honored by Republicans and Democrats alike, and has demonstrated courage under fire.

Then there is Karl Rove, fired by George H.W. Bush from his campaign in 1992 for leaking material to (surprise!) columnist Rovert Novak. He is known for his ruthless campaigns against Republican and Democratic opponents alike, the apotheosis of which was perhaps the smear campaign that took down John McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000, after McCain had wiped the floor with Bush Jr. in New Hampshire. Rove's brilliance and "total war" approach in any campaign has proven quite successful for Bush Jr., who by any measure is a second-rate intellect wrapped in an adolescent's temperament. Given Rove's penchant for scorched-earth retaliation against opponents, no one expects Bush Jr. to be the one to put the brakes on.

So if Rove attacks Wilson on the basis that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame recommended Wilson as envoy to Niger, given his extensive experience and service, how does that discredit Wilson? And since it is Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove (that's Chimpie's nickname for him) doing the leaking of these allegedly damning charges, why should anyone believe him, he who orchestrated the campaign that claimed that John McCain collaborated with his torturers at the Hanoi Hilton while he was a POW?

You make the call. Here's the the Los Angeles Times' Robert Sheer has to say about it:

In the end, though, what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.

"Depravity" is exactly the right word.

So now we're in Iraq. And the upshot? The Army is stretching to the breaking point. According Chicago Tribune piece,

According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in troop deployment guidelines.

These frequent absences from the U.S. and the exposure to combat not only have a negative effect on recruiting but interfere with the Army's ability to train troops in new skills or have them available to deal with contingencies elsewhere.

So are we stronger or weaker now after this ill-conceived war? Are we safer or in more danger?

And this takes us back to the crime that Karl Rove has committed, which is only one of many that were committed in leading up to the greatest, and international crime, of illegal war. Rove tried to suppress through intimidation and denunciation any report that contradicted the desired intentions of the Bushits to invade Iraq.

And even if there are a few of you hanging on to this notion of "pre-emptive war" as legitimate, you might want to take a gander at the U.S. Army website which contains a report by a military historian and analyst.

America will likely be unsuccessful in the war against terrorists through military superiority alone. A doctrine of preemption without a substantial nonmilitary component may well place the United States in a strategic box similar to that of Dulles’s massive retaliation: undertake military operations on the scale of a national invasion or do nothing at all. In practice as much as in policy, America’s defense doctrine must include, as the National Security Strategy outlines, more sophisticated and nuanced diplomatic initiatives and humanitarian programs, efforts designed, in former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s words, “to reduce the underlying sources of terrorist motivation and recruitment.”

With our military stretched to, and beyond, its limits, what seems like the most prudent path? More invasions based on more lies to feed the grandiose and increasingly insane dreams of glory for deserter George "Chimpie in a Flight Suit" Bush?

Now the iron is hot. This administration must be taken down. Bust Rove, impeach Bush, and send the whole criminal gang to the cells they deserve, or to the gallows, if the International Criminal Court dictates that it be so. This is our country they're destroying. It's time to take it back.

"A Climate of Fear"--Is This Our America?

From a Buzzflash interview with former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA operative by Karl Rove, in retaliation for Wilson's blowing the whistle on the Bushit lies about Iraq obtaining yellowcake uranium from Niger:

BuzzFlash: Up until now, hasn't Rove succeeded? His goal and modus operandi is to use any weapon possible to intimidate persons critical of his candidates or elected officials, even if it is harmful to the national interest. Doesn't the acquiescence of the media to the White House spin and the relatively few whistle blowers indicate that Rove's reckless bullying has silenced many people who would otherwise come forth with the truth?

Ambassador Joe Wilson: I have always said that I believed the outing of Valerie was a signal to others that, should they step forward, the White House would do to their families what they did to mine. I have also had a number of journalists share with me their own experiences of being intimidated by senior officials in the White House. We should not be surprised that a climate of fear prevails in Washington.

I don't think that those who stood to defend our nation over our history did so to enable a collection of gangsters to rule through a "climate of fear." Sixteen years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we find our own "leadership" adopting the tactics of that regime in the quest of perpetual power, power to wage illegal war launched on lies and then to silence critics through personal destruction.

Take the country back. Send these criminals to the stockades, starting with Karl Rove. And when he squeals, the whole fucking enterprise is going to unravel, mark my words. Karl thought he was untouchable, a god. But when the rough trade in prison reaches him, he's going to remember what mortality means, and I think he is going to rat out the bunch of 'em.