Rove was the source of the Plame leak... so it appears

Of course, its all just coincidence that the Plame Game hotted up right when it became evident The Democrats stood to loose their grip on the last branch of government over which they had any influence, isn't it? I mean, how could one possibly suspect the Democratic leadership of opening a can of red herrings in order to justify the obstructionist plaint of "No consideration can be given to judicial nominees while this cloud hangs over The Administration". That would be preposterous, wouldn't it?

And just who is Miller/NYT "Protecting", and why? Does anyone find it odd the NYT, a key sparkplug for the Independent Counsel Investigation, now is, through Miller and the paper's support of her, obstructing the very investigation they so eagerly sought? I find interesting too that fallback positions already are being floated; "Well, even if there wasn't a crime] ... ", "OK, so Rove didn't identify her by name, but he confirmed ... ", and so forth. There even have been the preparatory rumblings of "coverup", if the investigation doesn't turn out to the advantage of The Opposition, "The Administration rigged it."

To me, what appears to be going on is the unravelling of the attack, and the beginnings of the snapback that will cut the legs right out from under those who so desperately - yet to this point not only futiley but counterproductively - have been seeking anything which might offer The Democrats some hope of recovery. One thing for which I've gotta give The Opposition credit; its consistent.

There is much we yet don't know. We shall see.

The entire Rove/Plame issue will not be who outed Plame but perjury, or obstruction of justice. Rove will remain untouched but the Bush Admin will not.(Rove is far more intelligent than Bush)

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

There are the facts and there is the passion.

From all I have read and seen on this issue, the primary sin of Rove (presuming it was a direct link) was to tell Scott McLellan that he had no involvement what-so-ever in the affair, and thereby leave Scott twisting in the wind before the slings and arrows of the outrageous Washington Press Corp.

Condsider that Rove signed the waiver to allow all members of the press with whom he spoke to reveal their source, AND he specifically told Cooper that he could reveal him as his source.

This is a political firestorm which has virtually no relevance to the lives and fortunes of the American people.

If Rove ends up taking a fall for this, so be it. He lived by the sword...

Rove will not be indicted, Bush will not fire him, and the world will move on unaffected.

and clinton's blow-job was relevant? the reasons for his impeachment were relevant to the lives and fortunes of he american people ?

any wonder the day the senate voted against impeachment he had a 65% approval rating.

and bush's now?

parados, SCOTUS ruled no such thing. SCOTUS refused to hear the reporter's appeal.

Doesn't it strike you as odd that nobody....and I mean NOBODY who criticizes or 'blows the whistle' on or accuses anyone in the Bush administration is ever criticized or touted as anything other than 'honest', 'courageous', etc. by many here on A2K? But whatever the Bush adminsitration says to defend themselves is inevitably declared hateful, dishonest, retalitory, smear tactics, etc. by those same people?

How much objectivity is at play here do you think?

Well, was it apparently or possibly...? .....You lose. He walks.

Published: July 17, 2005
"I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here."
- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.
"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence."
- Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see, was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three appearances before the grand jury. Therein lies the rub, or at least whatever case might be made for perjury.

Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.

Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.

These attacks, too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."

Finn,

Quite a difference in the reasons for those polls

Was Clinton not telling the truth about Monica? Yeah.. who wouldn't lie about an affair?

Was the affair much of an issue when it came to govt? Nope. It was only sex even if it did happen in the WH.

Was CLinton honest about govt? No reason not to believe him there. Things were going pretty well.

Most Americans, including you and I came to those conclusions and pretty easily.


In this case it is the truth about National Security affairs. Quite different from Clinton's lies. People think Bush is being untruthful about the war in Iraq and about the outing of a CIA agent. This isn't based on some personal issue but a govt one. There is quite a difference between the 2. Most Americans can see that difference.

The outing of a CIA agent has no effect on American's lives? Bush has told us again and again about 9/11. We just saw London bombed last week. Now you are telling us the loss of an intelligence agent and her contacts on WMD have no relevence to my life?

To top it off is this administrations constant talk about how well things are going in Iraq at the same time we see death counts of Iraqis and US soldiers every day. I doubt there is a single person in America that doesn't know someone that has gone or will go to Iraq. This is very close to people's lives.


Plame may not be the real issue that is driving the lack of trust but it may well be the straw that is breaking the camel's back.

kuvasz wrote:

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

There are the facts and there is the passion.

From all I have read and seen on this issue, the primary sin of Rove (presuming it was a direct link) was to tell Scott McLellan that he had no involvement what-so-ever in the affair, and thereby leave Scott twisting in the wind before the slings and arrows of the outrageous Washington Press Corp.

Condsider that Rove signed the waiver to allow all members of the press with whom he spoke to reveal their source, AND he specifically told Cooper that he could reveal him as his source.

This is a political firestorm which has virtually no relevance to the lives and fortunes of the American people.

If Rove ends up taking a fall for this, so be it. He lived by the sword...

Rove will not be indicted, Bush will not fire him, and the world will move on unaffected.

and clinton's blow-job was relevant? the reasons for his impeachment were relevant to the lives and fortunes of he american people ?

any wonder the day the senate voted against impeachment he had a 65% approval rating.

and bush's now?

And your point is?

Are you admitting this issue is irrelevant or the relevancy of Clinton's blowjob?

Clinton was impeached. The Senate voted against conviction which would have led to removal from office.

The process, like the only previous impeachment (Andrew Johnson) was politically driven. Unlike Johnson though, Clinton opened the door for his political enemies through his serial infidelities and his lying. the character flaws that should have prevented him from being elected (and would have had they been revealed prior to the second term election) did not justify the conviction and removal of a president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and fortunately enough Republicans crossed their party line to keep it from happening.

That the government was so consumed by the process was, in my opinion, reprehensible because of the time, energy and money it siphoned off the people's more substantive interests. I do not, however, have any sympathy for Clinton. His presidency was tainted thanks to his own character flaws.

As for polling at the time

On February 1, 1998 according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll:

Is Clinton hiding something? Yes - 62%

Are you satisfied with the way things are going today? Yes- 63%

(Note that while questions like these are generally touted as indicating approval or disapproval for the president, they most certainly have a much wider scope)

Should Starr stop his investigation? Yes 58%

Should Congress start impeachment proceedings No 85%

Is Clinton honest and trustworthy? No 53%

(These polls always amaze me. 62% believed Clinton was hiding something, but 53% believed him honest and trustworthy. Not sure how someone squares these opposites in his or her mind)

Did Clinton lie under oath? Yes 52%

Based on this poll one can conclude that the American people had had enough of Ken Starr's overblown and salacious investigation, and that even though a majority of them believed Clinton had lied under oath, that his crime didn't rise to an impeachable offense. I suspect that this had more to do with the subject of his lies (infidelity) rather than any forgiveness for lying.

In any case, I think one can easily make the argument that a president's lying under oath and sexual affairs in the White House are more relevant to the interests of Americans than the questionable leaking of a desk bound CIA agent's identity to a member of the press. Most people, including myself, have concluded that the presidents sins (albeit more relevant than whatever Rove stands accused of) didn't justify the extreme political reaction they received.

Now that we have that out on the table, can we return to the issue of Rove?