Did Father Stage Alleged Attack?

This all smells of the Nixon tactic of sending violent troublemakers, disguised as protestors to demonstrations. Highly successful in painting protestors as bent of destruction.

Edgar
Edgar, I remember it well. Just part of the Republican Party's bag of well-known dirty tricks tactics of long standing.

BBB
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Bush Family's Machiavellian: Karl Rove

A PARTIAL SLICE OF ROVE'S TIMELINE:

25 Dec 1950: Karl Rove born, Denver CO.

1970: Karl Rove sneaks into the campaign office of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon and steals some letterhead. He then prints up 1,000 party invitations promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing," which he then distributes to homeless shelters.

Rove was a "Young Republican" back when being a Young Republican wasn't cool (a historical era ranging from 1959 through the present). As a student at the prestigious University of Utah, Rove teamed up with a young Lee Atwater to seize control of the College Republicans political club in the early 1970s.

By all accounts, the race for the coveted chairmanship of the meaningless College Republicans organization was a portent of things to come. According to the Washington Post, the two men executed a balls-to-the-wall campaign to put Rove in the catbird's seat, and once there, he wasted no time getting his group involved in dirty tricks on behalf of Richard M Nixon's 1972 campaign. You may remember that campaign, it was the beginning of Watergate.

1971: Drops out, University of Utah.

Rove dropped out of college to become executive director of the College Republicans, all the while practicing dirty tricks on behalf of the candidates of his choice. According the Post, these tricks allegedly included identity theft, petty larceny and campaign fraud. Rove characterized these felonies and misdemeanors as a "youthful prank."

A political visionary, Rove recognized early on that he had the opportunity to leech onto not one, but two failed, third-rate presidents in the form of what is comically referred to as the "Bush Dynasty." Rove worked as an assistant to George Bush Sr. in the Republican National Committee during what is arguably the lowest point in the history of the Republican Party, the aftermath of the Nixon presidency.

1980: First person hired by the George HW Bush presidential campaign.

For the next decade or so, Rove helped the Bushes: George Jr. embarrass himself in a 1978 congressional bid, then bailed out of Bush Sr.'s first and failed presidential bid in 1979. Rove maintained a close buddyship with the future president Junior, however. In a high point of Time Magazine's history of powerful journalistic coverage, a 2001 report revealed that George W. Bush's pet name for Rove is "Turd Blossom."

1981: Starts political consulting firm Karl Rove & Co.

Rove helped Bush Jr. transform himself from rich-dilletante wastrel into rich-dilletante-wastrel-with-power in 1994, acting as his political adviser in Dubya's successful run for Texas governor. According to ABC News, more than half of the campaign's nearly $1 million budget went to Rove. Considering the challenge of making Bush look good, the sum was probably not out of line.

1993: John Ashcroft campaign pays Karl Rove & Co. over $300,000 to help with his senate race.

1999: The George W Bush campaign effort pays Karl Rove & Co. $2.5M for July through December. According to Rove, "About 30 percent of that is postage."

1999: Sells Karl Rove & Co..

Rove's tactics tend toward making politics more about playing percentages than kissing babies. An early adopter of direct mail and targeted computer lists, Rove is widely credited with making the Texas GOP the cash cow is today. He also specialized in converting conservative Democrats who were already Republicans in every meaningful sense into Republicans in name as well.

Dec 2000:Mar 2001: White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with executives from Intel, seeking approval for a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel supplier. The government rubberstamps the deal, and Rove's $100,000 in Intel stock surges.

Apr 2001: Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with Bush political advisers to discuss whether the actor should run for Governor of California in 2002. Karl Rove says "That would be really nice. That would be really, really nice."

Jun 2001: White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove holds almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks.

Jun 2001: White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with a group of Muslim activists including Sami Al-Arian.

30 Jun 2001: White House political adviser Karl Rove divests his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer.

30 Jun 2001: The White House admits that political adviser Karl Rove was involved in administration energy policy meetings, while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron.

After September 11, (2001) Rove found himself feeling cranky, according to investigative reporter Bob Woodward. Rove was pissed off because he wasn't being allowed to sit in on National Security Council and war cabinet meetings. Bush and Dick Cheney were afraid the politico's presence would send the wrong message.

Bear in mind, it wasn't that Rove wasn't being consulted. He was consulted about every single thing that happened in the White House and every decision that emerged from the Oval Office. He just wasn't being allowed to sit at the meetings himself. He had to get his updates after the fact from Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

Despite his enormous power, Rove was mostly spared any real scrutiny by the mainstream media, which preferred to write with grudging admiration about his alleged political skills and chuckle over the "Turd Blossom" thing. By the time the Iraq invasion rolled around, Rove was back to sitting in the meetings.

His thoughtful evaluation (told to Woodward) of the ramifications of invading a sovereign country and deposing its leader? "The victor is always right."

10 Apr 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with White House political adviser Karl Rove to discuss anything other than whether the actor should run for Governor of California in 2006.

14 May 2003: During a meeting with South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, President George W Bush brings only two officials: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and political adviser Karl Rove.

29 Aug 2003: Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson inferred Karl Rove as the White House insider who leaked his wife's identity as a CIA operative to the press. This ugly little incident revealed just how dark the dark side of Karl Rove could be, in a burgeoning scandal that could have serious consequences for the Bush White House.

A former U.S. ambassador by the name of Joseph Wilson was one of the biggest political liabilities the White House faced in 2003. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger early in 2002 to investigate whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Turns out, they weren't.

He reported this information back to the White House, which promptly ignored it. Bush cited the uranium story in his 2003 State of the Union address, Cheney cited it repeatedly, and the State Department cited it in several of its endless justifications for why the U.S. just had to invade Iraq.

When the war was "over" and still no Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found, Wilson pointed out to the media that he had TOLD the White House that there was no uranium purchase. He wrote about his fact-finding trip in the New York Times as well.

This did not please the White House. It was bad for politics, bad for poll numbers. And when the poll numbers are threatened, Karl Rove gets cranky.

In July 2003, arch-conservative Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, blowing her cover and endangering her life, not to mention national security. (Inexplicably, no one has gone after Novak over this issue.)

Wilson and his wife didn't take this lying down. They came out swinging. Wilson inferred Rove's "office" of being the source for the leak that endangered his wife's life and destroyed her career.

"Rove is someone who at a minimum would have condoned it and certainly did nothing to knock it down for over a week after the article appeared. The outing of my wife was obviously a political or communications move. The head of the political operation is Karl Rove," Wilson told reporters.

In late September, the Justice Department launched a full criminal investigation into the leak, which is an aggravated felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The White House has refused to speculate on the source of the leak. Despite widespread outrage, the White House declined to launch an internal investigation of the leak, with a Bush aide saying that it was "ridiculous" to suggest Rove was involved, and that "there has been absolutely nothing brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement." .

Needless to say, the prospect of the Bush Justice Department investigating a Bush political operative doesn't thrill Democrats, who have already called for an independent counsel investigation.

Fortunately for Republicans, the party leadership cleverly disabused the nation about the worth of special prosecutors and impeachment proceedings a few years ago, when they hounded Bill Clinton into a constitutional crisis over blow jobs.

2004: Where do we begin? The Swift Boaters for Truth smear campaign. The CBS forged documents re Bush's National Guard service. Etc. Etc.

Having three such incidents does seem like too much of a coincident.