Treason forgiveable by W?

[welsh]

Apparently you can betray national secrets and get away with it, if you are working for W.

What does it take for George Bush to fire a member of his staff.

Now we find out that the architect of Bush's campaign strategy- a strategy which would sink to any depth to win- including denial, lies and deceit, is also the guy responsible for leaking to the news the identity of a CIA agent.

Sorry, CCR, I know you want to point fingers at Clinton for getting his dick sucked and lieing about it, but who does that compare to the deputy chief of staff betraying the identities of CIA agents?

At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in CIA Leak
By Richard W. Stevenson
The New York Times

Tuesday 12 July 2005

Washington - Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House refused on Monday to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter.

For Christ's sake W. It's simple. The words are "your fired!"

But some part of me wonders if the only reason we're hearing about this now is that he senior folks in the WH knows that W owes Rove, and figures this is the time to purge him out.

With the White House silent, Democrats rushed in, demanding that the administration provide a full account of any involvement by Mr. Rove, one of the president's closest advisers, turning up the political heat in the case and leaving some Republicans worried about the possible effects on Mr. Bush's second-term agenda.

Well, it's not like you can unelect W, right. ANd it's not like the Republicans already own Congress.

Or that W's agenda is already falling flat on its face despite having it all.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, cited Mr. Bush's statements about firing anyone involved in the leak and said, "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."

Don't hold your breath.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Rove, given his stature and the principles involved in the case, could not hide behind legal advice not to comment.

"The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly," Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.

What, "be honest to the American people."

For this administration- that's original. And too risky.

In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a Time magazine reporter in July 2003 without identifying her by name.

Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter.

Fire them?
No, this is the war against terror. We've got a president who likes the death penalty. Take them out and shoot them. But torture them first.

Fair is fair.

When one reporter, David Gregory of NBC News, said that it was "ridiculous" for the White House to dodge all questions about the issue and pointed out that Mr. McClellan had addressed the same issues in detail in the past, Mr. McClellan replied, "I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time."

A moment later, Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying Mr. McClellan was "in a bad spot here" because he had spoken from the same podium on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials - Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - were involved.

Oh, and this doesn't suggest that Cheney and Bush weren't aware of all of this?

Yeah.....

Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.

Mr. Rove made no public comment. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House now says its official position is not to comment on the case while it is under investigation by a federal special prosecutor, said Mr. Rove had gone about his business as usual on Monday. The official said Mr. Rove had held his regular meetings with Mr. Bush and other top White House aides, and was deeply involved in preparations for the Supreme Court nomination and efforts to push several major pieces of legislation through Congress this month.

It was that or start practicing using anal lubricant for his date with Bubba in the Arlington Federal Prison showers.

The officer was first publicly identified under her maiden name as Valerie Plame, "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," on July 14, 2003, by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He wrote that Ms. Plame was the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had recently written an Op-Ed article for The New York Times disputing an administration claim about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Mr. Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as the source of his information.

The criminal investigation into how the C.I.A. officer's name came to appear in a syndicated newspaper column two years ago continued largely out of public view. But the recent disclosure of evidence that Mr. Rove had, without naming Ms. Plame, told a Time reporter about the same time that Mr. Wilson's wife "works at the agency," thrust the case squarely back into the political arena. That reflected Mr. Rove's standing as among the most powerful men in Washington and his place in the innermost councils of the White House.

Because of the powerful role Mr. Rove plays in shaping policy and deploying Mr. Bush's political support and machinery throughout the party, few Republicans were willing to discuss his situation on the record. Asked for comment, several Republican senators said on Monday that they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion.

But in private, several prominent Republicans said they were concerned about the possible effects on Mr. Bush and his agenda, in part because Mr. Rove's stature makes him such a tempting target for Democrats.

"Knowing Rove, he's still having eight different policy meetings and sticking to his game plan," said one veteran Republican strategist in Washington who often works with the White House. "But this issue now is looming, and as they peel away another layer of the onion, there's a lot of consternation. Rove needs to be on his A game now, not huddled with lawyers and press people."

A senior Congressional Republican aide said most members of Congress were still waiting to learn more about Mr. Rove's involvement and to assess whether more disclosures about his role were likely.

"The only fear here is where does this go," the aide said. "We can't know."

Hey bud, how about that whole, "we covered up the truth from the American people" crime thing.

Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser, deputy chief of staff and political strategist, was plunged back into the center of the matter on Sunday, when Newsweek reported that an e-mail message written by a Time reporter had recounted a conversation with Mr. Rove in July 2003 in which Mr. Rove discussed the C.I.A. operative at the heart of the case without naming her.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, has said the e-mail message showed that Mr. Rove was not taking part in any organized effort to disclose Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Wilson is a former diplomat who traveled to Africa on behalf of the C.I.A. before the Iraq war to investigate reports concerning Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire nuclear material.

Mr. Wilson has suggested that the White House sought retribution by publicly identifying his wife, effectively ending her career as a covert operative.

Mr. Wilson has at times voiced suspicions that Mr. Rove played a role in identifying his wife to reporters, saying in August 2003 that he was interested in finding out "whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

In September 2003, Mr. McClellan said flatly that Mr. Rove had not been involved in disclosing Ms. Plame's name. Asked about the issue on Sept. 29, 2003, Mr. McClellan said he had "spoken with Karl Rove," and that it was "simply not true" that Mr. Rove had a role in the disclosure of her identity. Two weeks earlier, he had called suggestions that Mr. Rove had been involved "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department opened its investigation, Mr. McClellan told reporters that Mr. Rove, Mr. Abrams and Mr. Libby had nothing to do with the leak.

Mr. McClellan and Mr. Bush have both made clear that leaking Ms. Plame's identity would be considered a firing offense by the White House. Mr. Bush was asked about that position most recently a little over a year ago, when he was asked whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked the officer's name. "Yes," he replied, on June 10, 2004.

Under some circumstances, it can be against the law to disclose the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative. Mr. Luskin has said he has been told by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, that Mr. Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Democrats, as the minority party in both the House and the Senate, have no ability to push forward with a formal Congressional investigation. But Mr. Rove is such a high-profile political target that his role is sure to draw intense scrutiny from both Democrats in Congress and liberal interest groups.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform committee, called for hearings on what he termed "this disgraceful incident," saying that if it had happened in the Clinton administration the Republican-controlled House would certainly have summoned the deputy White House chief of staff to testify.

Yeah but now the Republicans need to stick together, no matter the hypocracy.

Mr. Rove has been caught up in the inquiry almost from the start. He was first interviewed by F.B.I. agents in 2003 during the preliminary investigation. Later, he was interviewed by prosecutors and testified three times to the grand jury.

The prosecutor is believed to have questioned Mr. Rove at the grand jury about his conversations with the Time reporter, Matthew Cooper, whose call to Mr. Rove on July 11, 2003, was noted in a White House log that was turned over to the prosecutor. Time turned Mr. Cooper's notes and e-mail over to the prosecutor last month under court order.

The 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identities of covert operatives is not easy to break. It has apparently been the basis of a single prosecution, against Sharon M. Scranage, a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana who pleaded guilty in 1985 to identifying two C.I.A. agents to a boyfriend.

A prosecutor seeking to establish a violation of the law has to establish an intentional disclosure by someone with authorized access to classified information. That person must know that the disclosure identifies a covert agent "and that the United States was taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." A covert agent is defined as someone whose identity is classified and who has served outside the United States within the last five years.

"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

= weasel.

 

[The physopathic Polock]

Just more proof that the democracy is a facade and that Republic is a rotten mess.

Why is it that Republican crimes are so much more potent yet so much more unseen? Does it have to do with that mentalities of "both" ruling parties? If so, then there must be a reason why the Democrats never pull this crap as often, but what?

 

[Bradylama]

I don't think the Democrats can pull any of this off because they know they can't get away with it.

 

[KillaKilla]

I don't think the Democrats can pull any of this off because they know they can't get away with it.

Are you implying that the republicans, after getting away with painfully obvious lies and misrepresentations for years without the american public(majority) complaining, have become arrogant enough to pull somehting like this? :gasp:

 

[RealEagle]

If you don't support George W. Bush and his administration, you support terrorism.

 

[Brother None]

What does it take for George Bush to fire a member of his staff.

If you fire people, they talk.

 

[welsh]

@ Bradylama- No the democrats have pulled similar shit in the places where they had enough control.

@ At Kharn- I have been thinking the same thing.
The way to keep a gang of theives together and secret is to keep them together and stop them from turning on each other.

Is it a coincidence that one of the first things that W does is extend the president's power to keep things confidential and beyond the public scrutiny.

And if Rumsfeld jumps shit, will he spill the beans?

And if W's administration is a gang of thieves, than those at the high end should be getting a bigger share of the spoils.

Thus the concequence of growing corporatism. Thanks to the Republicans.

 

[4too]

Politics By ANY Means

Politics By ANY Means




It's one thing to have one's third party activists smear John Mc Cain in the 2000 Republican Primaries, that's 'politics'. Life goes on.

It's another thing to -- sell -- a foreign policy, a preemptive invasion, A WAR POLICY, by personally attacking the critics of the hyped reality of Sad-dam's EXISTING WMD-s. REcall London was 45 minutes away from being NUKED.

That stuffy old 19th century Prussian gets in the quote dictionary by stating that 'war is politics (a.k.a. state craft) by another means'.

These Machiavellian mannerisms seem to imply that the U.S. foreign policy was for war by ANY means. And it is harder to stress the LIBERATION theme, the 'higher' motives, when mud slinging in the gutters of "politics as usual'.

And , the over selling of WMD wasn't necessary. This Administration had the momentum to act. Enforcing the 'No Fly Zone' and policing the "Oil For Food"
-- reconstruction -- project were the complex 'foot in the door' for intervention. Perhaps too complex to -- sell -- to J. Doe average America, and any potential ally for this coalition of 'the willing'. Not so much Keep It Simple - Stupid, but the arrogance of Keep it Simple FOR Stupid.

Seeking the lowest common denominator for political campaign communication appears to have fogged the vision, and the cheapened the choices of American foreign Policy.

The same political campaign - foxes - that were TOO clever with the WMD schtick, turned out to be too 'simple', believing that the invasion would BE taken immediately as a liberation by the majority of Iraqis. It would be a 'quick victory'. Mission Accomplished.

The cold hard reality is that there is still a WAR, of liberation, to win, also known as 'winning the peace'. Not sexy enough for the Glory Whores that populate the media and political circus.

It's all up to the boring, door to door foot slogging of light infantry on police duty.
Perhaps the high veteran police presence in the Reserves and the National Guard will inject the proper 'street smarts' that winning the 'hearts and minds' always seems to take. I suggest there are good people in 'the system' if they are allowed to perform to the best of their abilities. But, how are they served on the 'foreign policy front' by needless, useless misrepresentations: the over sale of - existing - WMDs and the hatchet job in protecting 'the honor' of the tart-ed up spin on WMD's.


And, we still have to ''trust'' these politicians to make the right decisions, on into a multitude of tomorrows, as they pursue their agendas by any means.....


But wait --- IT'S ALL GOOD!

The present spin is making this into a 'freedom of the press' issue!

It is not - politically correct - to imply the Iraq connection any more ...

One journalist goes to jail.
New precedent for punishing 'leaks'. Whistle blowers beware. Even if you never 'publish'. Your sources can be subpoenaed.

One journalist cooperates.
That writer, one of the stooges that named the 'secret agent' , WALKS.

Those that PLAY BALL with the Future Permanent Republican Majority are rewarded.

Carl Novak gets to kiss and tell, and preen his talking head persona,

so feeding the media circus, so perpetuating the political circus..

So perpetuating politics by ANY means....




4too

 

[John Uskglass]

If Bush fires Rove I don't think he will talk, and even if he does I hope there is not much to say.

If it's proven that Rove purposefully leaked a CIA agent's name with the intent of harming her or her spouse, then fire away, that's fucking nuts.

 

[welsh]

John- It's more than that.

It's not just the hypocracy of the current administration.

It's about the kind of country that is being made, what kind of future the current administration is creating for you.

How often does it need to be repeated- Bush's policies today are your inheritance.

Imperial quagmire wars, steeped debt, political corruption among the highest levels, more division between ethnicities and religions. Corporatism. That is the Republican legacy.


more on Rove-

Karl Rove's America
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 15 July 2005

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the CIA for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the CIA for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

 

[Maphusio]

Carl won’t talk... Carl is a fanatic... a lunatic. He has engineered most of the atrocities that the Bush administration has committed. Asides from that I think Carl is too valuable to the ideals of the religious evangelicals running the usa.

 

[welsh]

Except this whole thing has me troubled. How hard would it be for Rove to cover his tracks so we never knew about this? I mean it's been a year already, and the administration couldn't have done a better job of it?

Which is why I am wondering if this is something of a republican purge. There has been quite a lot of noise that the conservative revolution has swung way to the right, more than most conservatives would have wanted. Rove as architect is a central figure.

Once in power such central figures, especially of an ideological hardcore, can become a liability.

Problem here is if the republican sack him = political purge
If the republicans don't sack him = irresponsibility and unaccountability.

Either way Republicans can't win under this argument.

But then Rove is a shit who should be tossed.