Daily Kos: True Patriots

Daily Kos: True Patriotsrue Patriots
by Hunter
Mon Jul 4th, 2005 at 13:04:49 PDT

Props to rioduran for reminding me of this 2004 Murray S. Wass piece (my emphases):

President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October [2003] that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.

But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

This is one of the better summaries I've seen, and every time I do see one of these, it just floors me. Every time. I mean, think about it...

* Bush Administration ::
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The fallback position of Rove and the other administration figures involved -- their defense against the crimes they are being investigated for -- is that yes, they did indeed shop Plame's covert status as widely as possible using the press, "conservative interest groups", and the RNC. But, their best argument goes, it wasn't technically illegal since "someone else" did the initial leak, so no harm, no foul.

In the end, I find this defense to be every bit as repulsive, felony or no. In the end, whether or not worse is proven does nothing to reduce the contemptibility of what is already known.

Remember, what Joe Wilson did was come forward to discredit a White House talking point that Iraq had been trying to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa -- a claim that was spurious then, and with further investigation fell completely apart. He even gave them warning first, and published an op-ed disputing the claims only after the White House continued to use them. For that, his wife became the target of a Bush Administration hit that spanned multiple agencies, was organized and executed by multiple top Bush advisors, and included coordinations with a variety of Republican interest groups.

How on earth did we reach the point, in this country, that a simple op-ed from a relatively unknown Ambassador require a White House orchestrated attack campaign of the level that the campaign against Valerie Plame apparently reached? Because CIA operative Plame, according to Rove and other Republicans, might have suggested her husband as an experienced candidate for the investigation?

That's it?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but so the fuck what? That was the all-impressive point of objection, the basis of a retaliatory movement that occupied the highest echelons of the Bush Administration? That?


How many Bush Administration officials were put on the case of making sure Valerie Plame was as "outed" as they could possibly arrange for? We know at least seven. Seven, tasked with leaking to contacts, calling reporters, or doing whatever else was necessary to attack Wilson by compromising his wife as fully, openly, and extensively as possible.

We know from Senate investigations that John Bolton, to give one specific example of an administration official, has a special obsession with the punishment of anyone -- agent, analyst, or foreign official -- who contradicted his "preferred" pre-Iraq War intelligence analysis. What we learn from the Plame case is that that wasn't unusual behavior. White House officials mobilized en masse to extract a particularly vicious punishment via the Plame outing. En masse. Whether it proves a felony or not, it is remarkable to think that the highest levels of government would take it so intimately upon themselves to destroy a single critic -- and that they would en masse think nothing of using leaked classified information as the centerpiece of a political hit.

At this point, nothing that happens in the Plame case will shock me. We already know the shocking part -- the level of attacks deemed acceptable and justifiable by Bush and his closest advisors.

This information has been known since 2003. At any point, Bush could have dismissed the culprits. Considering how many of them were involved, he'd have his work cut out for him in the restaffing department, but nonetheless it is transparently obvious what behaviors George W. Bush finds acceptable. What movements, among his staff, he rewards.


On this Fourth of July, I have to say -- my mind is mostly preoccupied with the character of the men chosen to lead this country. I thought Reagan a foolish but surprisingly effective figurehead; I knew George Bush 41 was neither. Nixon himself, for all his paranoia and viciousness, did occasional good. For all their faults, as much as I disagreed with them on much of substance and principle, I could begrudgingly respect each of them.

But for George W. Bush, there seems no agenda other than personal aggrandizement, and there seems no behavior that is unacceptable, so long as it treads defensibly just barely on the right side of technically probably not illegal. He is not a man in whom I can see the slightest hint of contemplation or cleverness. He is divisive for the sheer sake of division; he is vindictive, and petty, and from his public appearances a coward.

Helen Thomas caused a stir -- and provoked child-like retaliations -- when she opined George W. Bush to be the worst of modern Presidents. I can think of no counterexamples to prove her wrong.

It is important to remember, in all of this; Joseph Wilson, and his wife, were attacked simply because Wilson was right. The link between Iraq and Niger has been disproven; even the White House has confirmed that. Wilson's wife was attacked for the simple reason that the White House itself found her husband important to attack. And to attack this one family, this one act of factual dissent, the Bush Administration engaged the attentions of numerous government officials, a variety of Republican political entities, and all the press contacts they could muster.

Our country is better than these men. Felony or no, I am ashamed of them. And that shame represents a deeper patriotism than a hundred tattered flags waving from car antennae.