Right Wing Nut House

We really have start thinking seriously about one aspect of this scandal that seems to have eluded all blogs and most of the MSM. It is an absolutely essential component to any Washington partisan dust-up and so far, everyone who has taken a stab at resolving the issue has come up miserably short. I’m talking about giving this puppy a moniker - one that fits easily in both newspaper headlines and on-screen promo frames (theme music to be determined later).

What the heck are we going to call this thing?

So far, I’ve seen some pretty lame attempts by the left to give the imbroglio its nom de scandale. They’ve tried to hearken back to their halcyon days of Watergate and in the process, dream wet dreams of bringing down the President himself by attaching the suffix “gate” to the scandal. The problem they have with this approach is the remarkable number of possibilities available. You have “Rovegate,” Plamegate,” Leakgate,” Wilsongate,” and that’s just for starters.

Clearly, we may have finally reached a point in our national life when the attachment of the suffix “gate” to every scandal may have outlived its usefulness. At first, it was clever. Then it became annoying. And now, it’s simply boring. We need something sexier, something more descriptive. Something that will help sell newspapers (God knows they need help!) as well as tear people away from Greta Van Sustern and their Natalee obsession. In short, we need to create an entirely new national narrative for our scandal plagued, celebrity obsessed culture.

I wish there was someway we could incorporate O.J. Simpson’s name into scandal monikering but take a couple of stabs at it yourself and you’ll see what a waste of time that is. There are just too many vowels. Similar results are achieved trying to incorporate J-Lo or any one of the notorious rappers whose hijinks and hoodlum antics just never quite rise to the sublime level necessary to be ensconced in the public consciousness to the point where their notoriety on “E!” or Comedy Central can translate to the political sphere.

Clearly, this is a serious crisis - a crisis in American letters as well as journalism. It’s pretty obvious we just don’t produce enough BA candidates in our top schools anymore.: Too many JD’s and MBA’s. What we need are people with the heart of a poet and the soul of a serial killer to come up with names of our political scandals that will once again rivet people to their TV’s and watch as self-important Congressmen and politicos preen, prance, prattle, and pontificate in order to give us a deeper understanding of the media frenzy.

Since no ideas are forthcoming to change the basic nature of naming our scandals, it looks like we’ll just have to fall back on the time honored tradition of naming the current dust-up after that mother of all scandals, Watergate. It was a glorious moment in the history of journalism we commemorate by naming our scandals thusly. It was when the self congratulations the press gave itself became so overbearing that after a while they got a collective crimped neck from trying to pat themselves on the back. They’ve been trying to recapture those moments ever since.

John Tierney has an idea:

So what exactly is this scandal about? Why are the villagers still screaming to burn the witch? Well, there’s always the chance that the prosecutor will turn up evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice during the investigation, which would just prove once again that the easiest way to uncover corruption in Washington is to create it yourself by investigating nonexistent crimes.

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:

What do you call a scandal that’s not scandalous?

Nadagate.

That’s a pretty good try. I think, however, I prefer “Cotton Candygate” which is a little more descriptive of the actual impact this scandal will have on far less important issues like avoiding being blown to smithereens by fanatical Islamists, social security reform, naming Justices to the highest court in the land, or other such trivialities.

“Cotton Candygate” - tastes good, gives a nice pleasant rush of euphoria for a short time, but in the end isn’t very filling. Yes…I think that describes what’s going on perfectly.

Not content with using the 1970’s Viet Nam analogy to explain the Iraq war, the left is now resurrecting another one of their glory moments from the 1970’s - the Watergate affair - to draw a parallel with the not-yet-named Rove-Wilson-Plame kerfuffle.

This posting on Daily Kos asks the famous question “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

You’ve got one question on your plate, Scott McClellan.

When did the President first learn of Karl Rove’s involvement in this case?

As of this morning, Day 4 of the saga, this is where the President stands:

Stonewall.

Of course, you can’t resurrect an analogy unless you use the terminology of the time. Hence, the use of Senator Howard Baker’s famous question on the President’s involvement as well as the use of “stonewall” - another Watergate era term.

This got me to thinking. As long as the left wants to get in a time machine and go back to the 1970’s, perhaps while they’re at it, they can bring back a few more cultural touchstones:

TOP TEN 1970′S ICONS THE DEMOCRATS CAN BRING BACK ALONG WITH VIET NAM AND WATERGATE

10. Mood Rings
9. Beanbag chairs
8. Black Light posters
7. Blotter Acid on Mickey Mouse Stamped Paper
6. Decent One Hit Weed
5. Pooka Shell Necklaces
4. Consequence Free Sex
3. Donna Summers
2. Moon Landings

And the number one icon I’d like to see the Democrats bring back from the 1970’s?……

1. Robert Crumb Posters

“STONED AGAIN”

Already diagnosed with PMS (”Persistent Moonbat State), New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s health problems took a turn for the worse today when, after the publication of his latest column on Karl Rove, it was discovered that the liberal ideologue suffered from an excess of bile production in the liver.

Doctors weren’t sure if the condition was life threatening but have determined that Krugman’s judgment, rationality, and memory have all been affected. One physician familiar with the case failed to see any of those symptoms saying that the columnist’s rantings and ravings were “par for the course” and asked “how can a disease affect qualities in a patient not present in the first place?”

There were several parts of Mr. Krugman’s column that physicians pointed to as evidence of the bile condition. For instance:

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.

“Note the use of nonsense language such as the term ‘nonpolitical truth’ which has no meaning in any context save the brain damaged Mr. Krugman’s imagination,” said Dr. Sixpak Chopura, brother of the famed self-help guru. “I mean, let’s get real. Ask yourself is there such a thing as ‘nonpolitical truth? What does that mean?” Dr. Sixpak asked.

The good Doctor also pointed out that the Comintern, which Mr. Krugman uses as a metaphor for monolithic agreement on political positions by Republicans was in fact a strife ridden, factionalized international congress of communist organizations who couldn’t agree on the time of day much less what communism was. He mentioned that any second grader who knew how to use a computer search engine could have figured that out in 30 seconds.

Dr. Sixpak fears that Mr. Krugman’s condition may be much farther along than first feared. He points to this passage in the column that proves Krugman may be hallucinating:

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.

Dr. Sixpak points out that not only does Krugman fail to offer any evidence for this assertion, but that the facts contradict his charge of Republican politicization of 9/11. A search of liberal websites in the days and weeks following 9/11 fail to turn up any evidence of such politicization and instead, show a respect for the President’s restraint on the subject. This pretty much puts the lie to the statement that “ground zero was still smoldering” when the Republicans politicized the attack.

Further evidence of Mr. Krugman’s flight from reality can be found in this passage, the Doctor said:

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.

Again, the Doctor points out the lack of evidence offered by Mr. Krugman to support such a baseless charge. In addition, he notes that there are plenty of “facts” to support the charge that the Democratic party is weak on national security including near monolithic opposition to every major weapons system in use by the Pentagon today, a 50 year campaign to undermine and weaken the CIA, a moral relativism with regards to terrorists and the states that support them, and opposition to strategic missile defense.

And that’s just for starters.

Finally, the Doctor points us to Mr. Krugman’s peroration as an example of the bile in his liver working its way through his bloodstream and affecting his brain:

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?

Where is this chorus, the Doctor asks, of conservative pundits praising Mr. Rove for being a whistleblower? Outside of the Wall Street Journal and a few dozen conservative blogs who linked to the article, there are precious few “pundits” saying that Rove is a hero. There are, in fact, many saying that Mr. Rove should go and almost a universal condemnation of the act of “outing” Wilson’s wife. (Note: Wilson himself in an interview yesterday said his wife was not a covert agent at the time her name was mentioned in the press).

“As for Mr. Krugman’s final question “How did our political system get to this point?” Perhaps we should be asking Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Raymond Donovan, and the dozen or so conservatives who were mercilessly smeared, tarred and feathered by Democratic Party campaigns in the 1980’s and 90’s before Mr. Rove was anywhere near the White House,” Doctor Sixpak said.

Doctor Sixpak said that Krugman needs a long rest, as far away from writing about politics as possible, in order to achieve a full recovery. “It’s apparent that excess bile production in Mr. Krugman’s liver will continue as long as he writes,” Dr. Dixpak said.

Here’s hoping Krugman takes the Doctor’s advice and perhaps join his colleague Frank Rich in writing restaurant reviews rather than political columns.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has a great round-up of links highlighting the latest in this so-far unamed scandal. On that note, the liberals are going to have to hurry. The way this thing is shaking out, the whole thing may blow over in another week or so.

Lorie Byrd has another superb round-up with some interesting thoughts:

If the source in this story is correct, Karl Rove has been done a great injustice. He has been smeared beyond belief. The “journalists” that have been pummelling Scott McClellan might have been better off directing their questions to some of their colleagues. I want to know who all these journalists were that cared so little for national security that they were throwing around the name of Valerie Plame.

Maybe Chuck Schumer should not be worried about Karl Rove’s security clearance, but instead should be working to revoke the press passes of these journalists who were endangering national security. While he is at it, they should also be denounced for trying to ruin Plame’s life and career, as they obviously had the express motive of getting retribution against Joe Wilson. What other motive could there be? Democrats and those in the media (Chris Matthews for one) have told us that was the obvious motive for speaking Plame’s name. (While I am on the subject of security clearances, did it not seem the least bit brazen and hypocritical to anyone else that Schumer and others were calling for Rove’s, rather than Senator Patrick “Leaky” Leahy’s?)

Indeed.

Bill Ardolino:

This critique from a man whose catalogue of contorted economic posits in service of partisan political goals resembles an unexpurgated copy of the Kama Sutra.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard economics “resembling” anything sex related. Or maybe economists have some kind of secret life we know nothing about?

In an update to an otherwise excellent post on the scandal, Joe Gandleman jumps the shark by agreeing with much of Krugman’s ridiculous rant:

MOST TROUBLING: Now that we indeed ARE at “this point,” how possible or unlikely is it that we can now UNGET to “this point”? Can we break out of this troubling era where people will change their political standards and values as they articulated them when it came to the opposition to allow their side leeway to do whatever they need to do to gain and stay in power?

And if there are no absolutes (just rip and read the talking points sent out by the RNC on the old talk show or incorporate them into your commentary to defend your side), what does it portend for the future?

Joe is making the same mistake Krugman makes; overgeneralization.

Did it ever occur to Mr. Gandleman that those “talking points” were themselves gleaned from commentary on the scandale from a wide variety of sources? I SAW EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE TALKING POINTS DISCUSSED SOMEWHERE ON THE INTERNET BEFORE KEN MEHLMAN EVEN SAT DOWN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO BE.

To say that there’s a unanimity of thought about how to defend Rove denies the obvious point: THE REASON THEY’RE USED EXTENSIVELY BY THE RIGHT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD POINTS AND MAKE SENSE. To say that we on the right are a bunch of automatons following some script laid out by the White House or the RNC makes Mr. Gandleman as loony as Krugman and the moonbats who are saying that Rove committed treason or that this cotton candy scandal is somehow comparable to Watergate.

I would strongly urge anyone on the left to lay back on this for a few more days. If not, and it’s shown in a couple of days or weeks that Rove was never the target of this investigation, you are going to look like bigger fools than you already are.

He’s baaaaack! Marvin Moonbat is in the House! (Go here for background on Marvin)

WHY DID ROVE STOP AT PLAME?

Well, I’m back.

The last time I wrote a column for my nutjob whacko neighbor Rick, a few of my friends found out about it and my anarchist cell put me on trial for consorting with the enemy. First, I didn’t know anarchists had trials what with them being against any sort of governmental institutions. Second, the punishment was, I thought, a little radical. Being forced to stand in front of a bunch of my friends and strip myself of all right wing influences by taking off my clothes and reading Noam Chomsky I thought went a little too far.

Anyway, Chloe and I decided that for the time being, I should cool it with the writing gig at the House. Instead, we concentrated on our studies and I’m proud to say, I now have a BA degree to my name. I’m not sure how my Anti-American Studies major is going to help me get a job but I’m not worrying about that right now. Chloe and I are off to the Amazon rain forest in a couple of weeks to study the rape of the environment and exploitation of indigenous peoples so I won’t have to get a job until at least September.

What convinced me to submit this article was my disgust with Karl Rove and the fact that he really blew it in outing that CIA agent. Why the hell did he stop there? Why couldn’t he have kept going and named a whole slew of covert agents? That way, everyone would know who is doing the dirty work for the corporate fascists who are running this country. It was really disappointing.

Oh I know we on the left are claiming it was treasonous to reveal the name of a CIA agent but c’mon! Who believes that? We’ve been against the CIA for decades! I remember one of my early childhood heroes was Philip Agee, the man who revealed the names of those CIA agents in Europe. My parents and their friends used to talk in glowing terms about how courageous he was and they laughed at how he really must have put a crimp in our intelligence gathering operations. Now that’s what I call “direct action.”

Isn’t it cool how were turning this “treason” bit around and tarring the wingnuts with it? I mean, you and I both know we could care less if something is treasonous or not. After all, one man’s treason is another man’s patriotism. Just ask Ward Churchill. But in order to get the sheep here in America mad at the repugnuts, we’re using the treason charge against Rove for revealing Valerie Plame’s name.

It’s f**king brilliant! I mean, if the public knew how much we really despised the CIA and wished that every single agent’s name were plastered all over the news, they might not think kindly of us. But by feigning outrage, we score big against Rove and his boss, President Chimpface.

The press, of course, is playing right into our hands. We knew they’d ignore the facts of the case in favor of going after Rove. We complain about the press a lot but when it comes to doing exactly what we need done in situations like this, they always come through. You’d almost believe that they were following a script written at Democratic party headquarters. Come to think of it…maybe we should get somebody to work on that right away.

At least this way, we’ll probably get rid of Rove. I only wish we could cook up something against Shrub. Maybe we could revive the National Guard stuff. Or the “Bush lied, people died” theme. One thing’s for sure, we’re going to keep pretty quiet about Iraq. Every time we open our mouths calling that effort a failure, it seems those idiot Iraqi’s do something stupid like hold successful elections or make progress toward a multi party democracy. Best to concentrate on other targets.

And of course we can’t talk about the economy anymore since that’s doing pretty well what with the steady growth and low unemployment. And it looks like we’ll have to lay low on the Bush is Hitler theme too since Dick Durbin gave all Hitler analogies a bad name with his Gitmo cracks. We’ll have to come up with something else. I thought his reference to Pol Pot showed some promise but really, who remembers that guy? It looks like we’ll be hard pressed to find some historical figure to replace Hitler when talking about Shrub. I’m not worried. We’ll come up with someone.

Well, I got to go. Chloe is busy meditating and praying to Gaia to keep us safe from the snakes in the rain forest. I don’t mind that so much but did she really need to bring that live rattler in the house to use as a sacrifice?

The recent revelations that one and possibly two of the London bombers visited Pakistan and may have trained at al Qaeda camps underscores the dilemma facing the United States when it comes to our relationship with Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf. On the one hand, he and his military have been extremely cooperative in rounding up al Qaeda terrorists, including some of the group’s top leadership. On the other hand, Musharraf’s promised political and social reforms that would have neutralized Islamic extremists have not been forthcoming and, judging by recent developments, may have been a sham all along.

Since the attacks of 9/11, Pakistan has received $2.64 billion in aid, $113 billion of that in security assistance. What have we gotten to show for that money?

As mentioned, the Pakistani security services have rounded up a dozen or more of top al Qaeda leadership including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. KSM has since begun to talk and his insights into al Qaeda have been invaluable. The Pakistani’s also claimed to have killed 600 al Qaeda soldiers as well as hundreds of Taliban holdouts.

Pakistan has also operated as a forward base for our assistance to Afghanistan as both a center for international aid and a military staging area for Afghan operations.

The Pakistani’s have lent valuable assistance to Afghanistan in the training of both the army and internal security services.

Musharraf shut down al Qaeda training camps operating in Pakistan as well as promising to crack down on extremist schools - the madrasses - that indoctrinate hundreds of thousands of poor Pakistani children with a philosophy of hatred of the non-Islamic west.

As for the minuses, there are plenty:

1. Despite its extreme poverty, Pakistan continues to spend enormous amounts of money on its nuclear program that threatens an important emerging ally of the United States in India.

2. After an initial burst of reforms when Musharraf came to power in 1999, human rights groups in Pakistan complain that the pace of reform has slackened and, in some cases, regressed under pressure from Islamist elements in the Pakistani parliament and the military.

3. Instead of shutting down the madrasses, Musharraf’s government has allowed them to flourish and has done nothing to cut off the flow of foreign money pouring into the establishment of these schools.

4. Musharraf has deliberately weakened pro-democracy political parties which has allowed a coalition of extremist Islamist parties to gain ascendancy in parliament and in the countryside. The most radical of these parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA, controls two provinces in the mountainous northwest of the country on the border with Afghanistan where it’s believed Bin Laden may be hiding and it’s thought that the Taliban utilizes as a safe haven against coalition attacks. It’s debatable how much real control Musharraf maintains over these provinces as he has forbidden any coalition military operations there.

5. After shutting down al Qaeda training camps following 9/11, there is evidence that many of the camps have reopened with the government’s blessing.

Admittedly, Musharraf is in an extraordinarily dangerous predicament both for his government and his personal safety. The army - especially the intelligence service - is riddled with Taliban sympathizers according to many reports. And he has been forced to forgo important reforms because of the dicey political situation. In short, he is unable to make any headway against the traditional “mullah-military alliance” that has governed Pakistan since his predecessor General Zia turned Pakistan into an Islamic republic during the 1980’s.

This Newsweek article spells out some of the risks to Musharraf’s rule:

Senior government officials told news-week that the president worries that demolishing Zia’s legacy too rashly could spark widespread violence. Musharraf must also contend with elements of the armed forces who are steeped in General Zia’s culture. “Breaking away from deeply held customs will take some time,” argues General Sultan. “We believe in bringing change not through revolutionary but evolutionary means.”

Government critics point as well to other worrisome developments. While secular opposition parties are prohibited from holding public demonstrations, the MMA can call its people to the streets without the threat of a police crackdown. Pakistan will soon issue new machine-readable passports to its citizens. The government had planned to exclude any mention of the passport-holder’s religious affiliation on the document. But Muslim groups objected, and last month the government acquiesced to their demands. The new passports will not only identify the religion of every Pakistani, but also his or her sect. Religious minorities fear the passports will widen the sectarian divides that plague the country.

And this backsliding does not bode well for the United States in the War on Terrorism:

Gen Musharraf promised a policy of enlightened moderation but little has been done. Thousands of religious schools still spew out hate against non-Muslims and leaders of militant groups still wander the country giving sermons.

Gen Musharraf has squandered the lavish aid and support given to him by the US and Britain after September 11. Extremism continues to flourish and democracy is further away than ever.

This month the widely circulated magazine Herald reports that a dozen training camps for militants, which closed down after September 11, were revived in May with official blessing.

Last month several Pakistani-Americans arrested on terrorism charges in California, admitted to training in such camps. The London bombers were probably in touch with a local Pakistani group rather than al-Qa’eda.

President Bush has cut Musharraf an enormous amount of slack. It’s time for the Pakistani president to either put up or shut up with regards to democratic reforms and carry through on his promise to crack down on the madrasses that are poisoning the minds of young Pakistani’s and radicalizing another generation of Islamic militants.

And President Bush should absolutely and without delay tell Musharraf to shut down the al Qaeda training camps… or we will do it for him.

It’s time for Pakistan and its president to decide once and for all: Are they with us or against us in the War on Terror?

In an ideal world, the decision to go to war would be taken only with the agreement of the entire national security community. The CIA, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and all the bureaucracies that make up the complex world of national defense in a country that spends nearly one half a trillion dollars to protect itself - all would recognize a threat and agree that military action was necessary.

We don’t live in a perfect world. The fact is, as the military and national security state have grown over the last 50 years, the probability that a consensus can be achieved for action except in the most extraordinary circumstances has disappeared. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times the United States miliary has gone into action since the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis with the entire national security apparatus on the same page.

I use the Cuban Missile Crisis as a benchmark because of the herculean effort it took for the so-called “Ex-Com” or executive committee of the National Security Council to reach agreement on the blockade that eventually resolved the crisis. We know from declassified documents as well as the memoirs of particpants that there were heated disagreements on both the nature of the threat and what our response should be. Eventually, there was a recognition that the chances of a nuclear exchange with Russia were so great that something short of air strikes and invasion should at least be tried before the military options were used. The resulting blockade along with a secret deal for the US to remove medium range Jupiter missiles from Turkey defused the crisis.

The debates that raged during in the Viet Nam war in the defense establishment hindered the war effort and placed agencies at odds with both each other and at times the White House. To bomb or not to bomb? How many troops? What will China do? There were disagreements on all of these items and many more. And the way to have your position prevail was to try and discredit competing positions by leaking damaging information that undercuts the rationale for taking a particular action. The leaking wars got so bad in 1971 that Nixon sowed the seeds of his own destruction by organizing an anti-leaking squad known as the Plumbers. Their notorious activities with respect to not only leakers of classified information but also the President’s enemies have been well documented.

In the years following Viet Nam, military actions were taken in response to provocations like the hostage crisis or the disco bombing in Germany. And even here, consensus was difficult to achieve. For example, there was opposition from the CIA to the bombing of Libya in April of 1986 fearing it would make a hero of Gadhafi in the arab world and increase his influence. The reason we know this is because the information was leaked within 48 hours of the bombing. In this case, the objective was not to affect policy but rather give ammunition to the political opposition.

This factionalism at the CIA may be at the bottom of the entire Rove-Wilson-Plame affair. Flashback to 2003 and this interesting article by Howard Fineman of Newsweek. Fineman explains the historical context of the debate over Iraq going back to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. On the one hand, you had the realpolitik group who believed that we could use Saddam as a counterweight against Islamic radicalism. On the other hand you had then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and the “Neocons” agitating for regime change to start a democratic revolution in the middle east:

The “we-can-use Saddam” faction held the upper hand right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait a decade ago. Until then, the administration of Bush One (with its close CIA ties) had been hoping to talk sense with Saddam. Indeed, the last American to speak to Saddam before the war was none other than Joe Wilson, who was the State Department charge’ d’affaires in Baghdad. Fluent in French, with years of experience in Africa, he remained behind in Iraq after the United States withdrew its ambassador, and won high marks for bravery and steadfastness, supervising the protection of Americans there at the start of the first Gulf War. But, as a diplomat, he didn’t want the Americans to “march all the way to Baghdad.” Cheney, always a careful bureaucrat, publicly supported the decision. Wilson was for repelling a tyrant who grabbed land, but not for regime change by force.

That history is one reason why, in the eyes of the anti-Saddam crowd, Wilson was a bad choice to investigate the question of whether Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa.

It appears then, that Cheney and Wilson had a “history” long before the Iraq war even started.

Flash forward to February, 2002 when Ambassador Joe Wilson arrives in Niger seeking answers to the questions about Saddam’s efforts to purchase yellow cake uranium. In his New York Times Op-Ed of July 6, 2003 Wilson claims that he made the trip at the behest of…who? Here are his words:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.

“Agency officials” asked him to make the trip so they could provide a response to Cheney’s office on the question of a “report” regarding yellow cake sales to Iraq. Wilson says that he never saw the “16″ word” document that some say is a forgery and some say otherwise, but that he believed it to be a forgery based on the names of government officials who were not even in the government at the time.

Fair enough. But here’s where things get very strange, indeed. In an interview with LA Weekly, Wilson admitted he had been talking to reporters for months about this story:

I was determined that the story was going to have to get out. I did not particularly want the story to have my name on it. I wanted the U.S. government to say what they said on July 7, that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. So I began responding to reporters’ inquiries, but always on background. I didn’t want the publicity, but more to the point, there is a nasty habit in Washington of attempting to destroy or discredit the message by discrediting the messenger, and it was important to me that the message have legs before those who would want to discredit the messenger found out who the messenger was. So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

Did you anticipate retaliation?

Nobody that I knew thought this was going to be any more than a two-day story. The day after, when the White House said the 16 words do not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address, I personally stopped accepting invitations to talk about this issue. I did those interviews I had previously agreed to do before the White House spoke, and then I didn’t speak again until the week after Mr. Novak’s article came out in which he leaked the name of my wife as a CIA operative.

In other words, between the President’s State of the Union speech on January 20th, 2003 and July 6th when he wrote the Op-Ed piece in the Times, Wilson was talking to reporters all over town, telling them that the President was using false information as a justification for war.

Now why would he do that? Is it possible he was doing at the behest of his wife? Tom Maguire asks that question and links to the Walter Pincus Washington Post article that quotes a “senior CIA analyst” about WMD intelligence and how it was handled by the Administration:

So, a CIA analyst is criticizing the President anonymously in June for mishandling intelligence. In July, a former ambassador comes forward, also criticizing the Administration’s handling of intelligence. Is the Ambassador simply a professional, detached, objective careerist from the State Department offering his own point of view?

Or is it at all relevant in assessing his credibility to know that he is in bed with a CIA professional? Does knowing that give a hint as to what side he might be on in this discussion?

What Maguire and others are speculating about is that Plame was using her husband to augment the CIA’s own leaking on the Administration’s handling of intelligence. And that given Wilson’s chattiness with the press, is it possible that Plame’s relationship with Wislon was not only “common knowledge” as Andrea Mitchell of NBC said, but got to be known as a result of Wilson’s own efforts to discredit the President?

Did Wilson “out” his own wife?

The fact that Wilson suspected Rove as the leaker as far back as July of 2003 opens up another interesting line of questions. Since Wilson had been talking to the press for months, could Wilson have gotten that information from a journalist who actually talked to Rove?

I think it’s fair to say that the CIA is an executive-branch agency that reports to the president of the United States. The act of outing the name of a national-security asset was a political act. There is a political office attached to the office of the president of the United States, and that political office is headed by Karl Rove. It seems to me a good place to start.

I would have thought a good place to start would have been the Vice President’s office, given the history between the two. We’ll probably have to wait until all the principals - Rove, Judith Miller, Cooper, Scooter Libby, and Novak - lay it all out for us. At that point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wilson-Plame-press connection was the axis of a faction in the CIA that for both political and policy reasons, opposed the war in Iraq.

This is the dirty business of government being exposed to the light of day. On the one hand, you have the White House with a President duly elected that has made the tough decision to go to war. On the other side, you have a political faction at the CIA who can justify their opposition to the Administration by chalking it up as differences in policy. The amazing number of selective leaks prior to the election that constantly put the administration on the defensive with regards to what they knew about WMD before the war was another manifestation of the partisanship of this faction. Given the mountains of intelligence analyses prior to the Iraq war on WMD, to cherry pick opposing views and then leak them to the press was an outrageously partisan attempt to discredit the President.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph that describes this “old guard” faction being in opposition to the President’s re-election, a retired CIA veteran explains the rift:

Bill Harlow, the former CIA spokesman who left with the former director George Tenet in July, acknowledged that there had been leaks from within the agency. “The intelligence community has been made the scapegoat for all the failings over Iraq,” he said. “It deserves some of the blame, but not all of it. People are chafing at that, and that’s the background to these leaks.”

Fighting to defend their patch ahead of the future review, anti-Bush CIA operatives have ensured that Iraq remains high on the election campaign agenda long after Republican strategists such as Karl Rove, the President’s closest adviser, had hoped that it would fade from the front pages.

Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba’athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war.

And this quote from another retired veteran illustrates the spin this faction was directing toward the press:

These have been an extraordinary four years for the CIA and the political pressure to come up with the right results has been enormous, particularly from Vice-President Cheney.

“I’m afraid that the agency is guilty of bending over backwards to please the administration. George Tenet was desperate to give them what they wanted and that was a complete disaster.”

With the simmering rows breaking out in public, the Wall Street Journal declared in an editorial that the administration was now fighting two insurgencies: one in Iraq and one at the CIA.

Having lived there for many years, I know that Washington is an insanely political town. Politics colors everything, from where you eat to what parties you attend. It’s a twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week obsession. It should come as no surprise that even war takes a back seat to the jostling for power.

It’s doubtful that Rove will survive. If the President digs in his heels about letting him go, it will only make matters worse. The Special Prosecutor’s investigation will have it’s own leak factory going and every little tidbit that refects badly on Rove will be trumpeted to the skies by both lefty blogs and the MSM. The only thing that could possibly save Rove’s job is a revelation so shocking that it blows both the MSM and lefty blogs out of the water and proves them wrong. If Judith Miller is in jail because she’s protecting herself or some other source (Joe Wilson?) from prosecution, then Rove may be able to weather the storm.

If not, expect Rove’s resignation by the end of the month.

When is the killing of helpless infants justified and when should it be considered infanticide?

Jim Holt’s excellent article in the New York Times places that question in both an historical and religious context and asks “Are we humans getting more decent over time?”

Infanticide — the deliberate killing of newborns with the consent of the parents and the community — has been common throughout most of human history. In some societies, like the Eskimos, the Kung in Africa and 18th-century Japan, it served as a form of birth control when food supplies were limited. In others, like the Greek city-states and ancient Rome, it was a way of getting rid of deformed babies. (Plato was an ardent advocate of infanticide for eugenic purposes.) But the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all condemned infanticide as murder, holding that only God has the right to take innocent human life. Consequently, the practice has long been outlawed in every Western nation.

Holt then outlines the practice of the Groningen Protocols that provide legal guidelines to physicians for ending the life of a suffering infant. But when is it ever morally correct to kill a live baby? Mr. Holt gives a fair definition of the “sanctity of life’:

At first blush, a call for open infanticide would seem to be the opposite of moral progress. It offends against the ‘’sanctity of life,” a doctrine that has come to suffuse moral consciousness, especially in the United States. All human life is held to be of equal and inestimable value. A newborn baby, no matter how deformed or retarded, has a right to life — a right that trumps all other moral considerations. Violating that right is always and everywhere murder.

That would be the absolutists view - a view held by many social conservatives. But living as they do in the real world, doctors and parents must sometimes deal with tragic circumstances that make the absolutist view ring hollow:

Take the case of a baby who is born missing most or all of its brain. This condition, known as anencephaly, occurs in about 1 in every 2,000 births. An anencephalic baby, while biologically human, will never develop a rudimentary consciousness, let alone an ability to relate to others or a sense of the future. Yet according to the sanctity-of-life doctrine, those deficiencies do not affect its moral status and hence its right to life. Anencephalic babies could be kept alive for years, given the necessary life support. Yet treatment is typically withheld from them on the grounds that it amounts to ”extraordinary means” — even though a baby with a normal brain in need of similar treatment would not be so deprived. Thus they are allowed to die.

Clearly, there are exceptions to the sanctity of life precept. But is it morally right to cross the line between allowing a baby to die and doctors and parents actively participating in the killing of the infant? Holt frames the question fairly:

The distinction between killing a baby and letting it die may be convenient. But is there any moral difference? Failing to save someone’s life out of ignorance or laziness or cowardice is one thing. But when available lifesaving treatment is deliberately withheld from a baby, the intention is to cause that baby’s death. And the result is just as sure — if possibly more protracted and painful — as it would have been through lethal injection.

And that’s the dilemma that Groningen is supposed to “solve.”

My own view is that while the morality of the Groningen Protocols can be justified in extremely rare cases, the potential for abuse of its guidelines is so great that adoption of its rules will be fraught with danger.

The problem arises when there is a conflict between a Doctor’s obligation to his patient (the suffering infant) and his desire to serve the interests of the parents. It may be difficult and painful to contemplate, but the fact is that there are some parents who would view a malformed child as a burden they would not wish to bear or worse, an inconvenience they could do without.

At one time, there were federal guidelines regarding such cases that prevented Doctors from allowing these infants to die. Called “Baby Doe Guidelines,” they mandated giving life sustaining care to infants with Downs Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and other non-fatal conditions. The Supreme Court eventually struck down some of the guidelines, rejecting the Reagan Administration’s arguments that they were a civil rights matter. The medical community has since generally followed the guidelines but many pediatric professionals believe them to be too constraining and, in many cases, simply ignore them.

And this brings us to what Mr. Holt calls “passive euthanasia.” The case that precipitated the Baby Doe Guidelines is a good example:

A famous test case occurred in 1982 in Indiana, when an infant known as Baby Doe was born with Down syndrome. Children with Down syndrome typically suffer some retardation and other difficulties; while presenting a great challenge to their parents and families, they often live joyful and relatively independent lives. As it happened, Baby Doe also had an improperly formed esophagus, which meant that food put into his mouth could not reach his stomach. Surgery might have remedied this problem, but his parents and physician decided against it, opting for painkillers instead. Within a few days, Baby Doe starved to death.

Another grey area would be the condition known as spina bifida. The condition occurs approximately once in every 2,500 live births. There are 4 different types of spina bifida, ranging from the mildest form where there are few complications, to the most severe type that is painful for the infant and would entail a lifetime of intense and constant care by the parent. The fact is, that nearly 9 out of 10 spina bifida patients will survive if given the proper care and treatment. Surgery is mandated for the most severe cases. The point is, that it is treatable 90% of the time.

My concern with the adoption in the United States of any Groningen-type guidelines is that the decision to euthanize a child - either passively or otherwise - will have input from the Doctors and parents, which is well and good.

But who speaks for the child? Who stands up for the innocents to insure that both the parents and Doctor are truly acting in the interest of the infant? And while wide latitude must be granted the family and their primary physician in any decision like this, the sanctity of life doctrine demands the maximum protection for any life - be it a week old or a century old - be maintained. The question that I’m asking is before any decision to end life is made, who represents the weakest, the most vulnerable members of society - those who cannot speak for themselves?

I don’t know the answer or even if there is one. All I know is someone from a higher pay grade than I should be asking before we adopt the Groningen Protocols or something similar here.

UPDATE

My blogbud Raven who blogs at And Rightly So gives some valuable input in the comments section below (#2). Raven has extensive experience in this field and is a compassionate, caring person who asks some of the same questions I do:

Who answers for the one who stands to lose it all?

We place a higher value on the life of others by deciding that if they aren’t LIKE US, they wouldn’t want to be alive. Who are we to do this?

This is the issue that I believe our liberal and libertarian friends tend to dance around and not address. If you’re an atheist like me, the kind of moral authority to end life comes from the collective conscience of society. This collective conscience is expressed in a variety of ways, most notably by decisions of the courts or by legislation. But what if the majority believe one thing and the courts and legislative bodies express another?

In a case like that, shouldn’t we fall back on - dare I say it - tradition? I don’t want to hear about polls or surveys that show “X” percentage of Americans support this or that. Everyone reading this knows that those polls can be radically skewed by the way the question is framed. I would hazard a guess and say that if an infant’s condition is treatable, the overwhelming majority of Americans would be in favor of life rather than passive euthanisia or some kind of Groningen type solution regardless of the “burden” on the parents or society.

Last week’s vote for the Council’s best was extremely close. In the end, thanks to the tie breaking vote being cast by the Watcher himself, The Education Wonks came away with top honors for their excellent article on “Border Freebies: Using The Race Card To Get An Education.”

I finished in a four way tie for second with E-Claire (”Happy Independence Day”), Dr. Sanity (”A Brief History Lesson”), and Rymes with Right (”Just say no to Journalistic Privilege”).

Finishing first in the non Council category was Makaha Surf Report’s excellent post “Today I Leave for War.”

Finishing second was Varifrank’s “Nostalgia is a Mental Disease.”

Some excellent bloggy goodness from the Watcher!

In an interview published this afternoon with Byron York of NRO, Karl Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin says that Cooper “burned” Rove on the Plame story.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Cooper memo actually clears Rove of the political aspect of the scandal by proving that the White House was not seeking revenge for Joe Wilson perfidy but rather Rove was trying to warn Cooper off on Wilson’s main thesis - that Saddam never attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from Nigeria.

Luskin expands on that theme to show that rather than the White House calling reporters all over town trying to sabotage his wife’s career, it was Cooper himself who initiated the dialog on Plame:

“By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,” Luskin said of Cooper. “If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.”

Luskin told NRO that the circumstances of Rove’s conversation with Cooper undercut Time’s suggestion of a White House “war on Wilson.” According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are “indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out.”

“Look at the Cooper e-mail,” Luskin continues. “Karl speaks to him on double super secret background…I don’t think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson’s wife.”

Nor, says Luskin, was Rove trying to “out” a covert CIA agent or “smear” her husband. “What Karl was trying to do, in a very short conversation initiated by Cooper on another subject, was to warn Time away from publishing things that were going to be established as false.” Luskin points out that on the evening of July 11, 2003, just hours after the Rove-Cooper conversation, then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement that undermined some of Wilson’s public assertions about his report. “Karl knew that that [Tenet] statement was in gestation,” says Luskin. “I think a fair reading of the e-mail was that he was trying to warn Cooper off from going out on a limb on [Wilson's] allegations.”

Luskin also sheds some light on the waiver signed by Rove back in 2003 in which he gave permission for any journalist with which he had spoken to talk to the both Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald and the grand jury investigating the leak. For some reason, both Cooper and the jailed Times reporter Judith Miller didn’t think the waiver was broad enough - even though Fitzgerald had signed off on it:

Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller have expressed concerns that such waivers (top Cheney aide Lewis Libby also signed one) might have been coerced and thus might not have represented Rove’s true feelings. Yet from the end of 2003 or beginning of 2004, until last Wednesday, Luskin says, Rove had no idea that there might be any problem with the waiver.

It was not until that Wednesday, the day Cooper was to appear in court, that that changed. “Cooper’s lawyer called us and said, “Can you confirm that the waiver encompasses Cooper?” Luskin recalls. “I was amazed. He’s a lawyer. It’s not rocket science. [The waiver] says ‘any person.’ It’s that broad. So I said, ‘Look, I understand that you want reassurances. If Fitzgerald would like Karl to provide you with some other assurances, we will.’” Luskin says he got in touch with the prosecutor — “Rule number one is cooperate with Fitzgerald, and there is no rule number two,” Luskin says — and asked what to do. According to Luskin, Fitzgerald said to go ahead, and Luskin called Cooper’s lawyer back. “I said that I can reaffirm that the waiver that Karl signed applied to any conversations that Karl and Cooper had,” Luskin says. After that — which represented no change from the situation that had existed for 18 months — Cooper made a dramatic public announcement and agreed to testify.

Finally, Luskin says that Rove is not hiding behind the legalistic defense that he didn’t mention PLame by name. When asked if Rove was the target of Fitzgerald’s investigation, here’s what he said.

Luskin also addressed the question of whether Rove is a “subject” of the investigation. Luskin says Fitzgerald has told Rove he is not a “target” of the investigation, but, according to Luskin, Fitzgerald has also made it clear that virtually anyone whose conduct falls within the scope of the investigation, including Rove, is considered a “subject” of the probe. “‘Target’ is something we all understand, a very alarming term,” Luskin says. On the other hand, Fitzgerald “has indicated to us that he takes a very broad view of what a subject is.”

Finally, Luskin conceded that Rove is legally free to publicly discuss his actions, including his grand-jury testimony. Rove has not spoken publicly, Luskin says, because Fitzgerald specifically asked him not to.

What all this adds up to is something truly bizarre. It appears that someone is giving Judith Miller some of the worst legal advice in history. My guess would be that her attorney (or Miller herself) is a raving leftist who believes that Rove is going to do some kind of double back flip and land behind Miller pointing his finger at her as Plame’s outer. After all, everyone knows that Rove, the mastermind, is capable of anything.

If what Luskin says is true, Miller should be able to walk out of that jail free and clear. That is, unless she’s protecting someone else. And given the fact that Plame’s job at CIA was common knowledge in Washington, it could very well be that Miller’s main source is another reporter.

Or, if you prefer, this Rovian nightmare may soon be “Guckerted.”

What in the Sam Hill am I talking about?

Oh, c’mon now. You all remember Jeff Gannon. Mr. Gannon was a writer with the now defunct Talon News who by day, was a mild mannered reporter that got a daily White House pass to attend press briefings and ask softball questions of Scott McClellan.

It was Mr. Gannon’s nighthawk activities that were, um…a little, shall we say, unusual.

It turns out that Mr. Gannon was actually one Mr. Guckert, male model, escort, and possible homosexual prostitute. And the left, to put it mildly, went ballistic. It was all Gannon-Guckert all the time at Kos, DU, Atrios, and a host of other lefty blogs. There were questions that needed to be asked, screamed the lefties. What kind of questions?

So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we’re talking about. It’s looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a “daily basis.” They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, “inappropriate,” whatever. Monika wasn’t a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can’t find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Since the White House knew…something, is it possible that someone in the White House was sleeping with Guckert?

This was the next phase of the blogswarm. Speculation on who was sleeping with Guckert ranged from Scott McClellan (”He’s cute!”) to Karl Rove (”He’s got the power!”), to Republican Chairman Ken Mehlman (”He’s single!”)

All the while the story was churning on the lefty side of the sphere, the rest of the world went on with its business, paying no attention to this three ring circus that got more and more bizarre as the weeks went on. The MSM paid no attention. Conservative bloggers paid no attention. Even the White House press corps let out a collective yawn. Then like spoiled children, the left began to throw a collective tantrum that this hugely important story wasn’t being covered by anyone. They whined that, as the idiot above from Americablog breathlessly pointed out, “Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it?”

Well, so much for the prescience of Americablog.

Finally, one by one, the lefty’s gave up and went back to what they’re good at - trashing America and spouting conspiracy theories. The Gannon-Guckert story passed into history, a victim of something the left could never grasp: Just because they said so didn’t make it true.

And now another lefty blogswarm is in full churning mode with the Rove-Wilson-Plame imbroglio and history has a chance of repeating itself. The Rove story may become “Guckerted.” That is, the lefties may once again be churning up a lot of froth that in a few days, may fizz out. After all, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has made it clear that Rove is not a target of his investigation. And as many bloggers have been pointing out all day, there’s a very good chance that Rove himself may have been informed of Plame’s status as an employee of the CIA by another reporter, which would explain Judith Miller’s hesitancy to name her source. She could be protecting a fellow journalist. The idea that she would be protecting Rove, who has released journalists from any pledge of confidentiality, is loony.

So Rove, legally at least, appears in the clear at this point. But, as I speculated yesterday, I doubt whether he’ll be able to hang on to his job. Judging by the very impolite and pointed questions asked by the White House press corps yesterday and today, Rove may be gone by the end of the month.

And this scandal, like the Gannon-Guckert brouhaha, will disappear from everywhere but the conspiracy minded lefty blogs who will cling to the idea that if they only try a little harder, they’ll be able to bring down the President himself.

UPDATE

Tom Maguire keeps plugging away at this story. One of the more fascinating aspects that hasn’t been talked about much in the MSM was this apparent war that was going on between the Administration and a faction at the CIA who were rabidly partisan Democrats. As the prospect for finding WMD in Iraq faded, this faction saw an opportunity to not only hurt the Presisdent’s re-election chances, but also shift blame for their titanic failure off the shoulders of the CIA and place it in the lap of the Administration:

Here’s Maguire post from yesterday.yesterday. I’m lazy so go to his site for all the links in this update:

MORE UPDATES: On the subject of CIA factions, here is Walter Pincus, in his famous June 12 piece that relied on Wilson as a source (and was ridiculed by the SSCI report):

And does the “indicative of larger problems” ring of the “fake but accurate” defense - ignore Wilson’s misprepresentations and confusions; if he brought “a little literary flair” to his storytelling, it was because Bush lied!