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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Watch Them Wiggle

I gotta say, it's almost comical watching Republicans trying to cover for their leader Karl Rove this week. In trying to defend the indefensible act of putting politics above national security, they have pulled out some of the lamest excuses I've ever heard. From Ken Mehlman's "Karl didn't reveal her FULL NAME, he only said Joe Wilson's wife" (too pitiful to even rebut) to Fox News' Carl Cameron's "The President never technically said he would fire the leaker" (not in the soundbite they used, but in quite a few others), it's been a roundelay of obfuscation, legal maneuvering, and outright lying. Some, like Fox' John Gibson, say things like "Karl Rove deserves a medal" for what he did (the Congressional Medal of Outing a CIA Agent, presumably); others like Rep. Peter King say what he did "took a lot of guts" (when going after someone's wife because the husband said something you disagree with is about the most cowardly thing you can do). Some say Wilson is a liar because he said that Dick Cheney sent him to Niger; in fact he said no such thing (and what Wilson's statements about that have to do with Rove outing Plame are beyond me; under what circumstances is it OK to compromise national security?).

It's so easy to knock down these talking points it's no longer worth doing. And all of them are besides the point. The point is that the President made it inescapably clear that whoever was involved with the leaking of Valerie Plame's name would be fired. And several days later, Rove still sits in his cushy office. The President's statement today was that he wouldn't prejudge the case based on media reports. I don't know how much clearer it can get than Rove's own lawyer admitting that Rove talked to Matt Cooper about Valerie Plame (oh, excuse me, "Joe Wilson's wife") before her name was public. But given how horrible the White House is coming off with their "no comments" and "ongoing investigation" nonsense, I can wait for the pressure to mount.

This all goes back to Iraq, and the danger of using shoddy intelligence to send the country to war. One particular piece of bad evidence, the "Saddam sought uranium in Africa" line, was found to be false, and to cover up this mistake, the President's top advisor outed Valerie Plame. It's the snowball effect writ large.

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