And as far as I'm concerned, barring a truly explosive revelation in this issue (say, Colin Powell finally deciding he's sick of being scapegoated by these fucks and coming clean to save what's left of his soul), there's not much more to discuss until Patrick Fitzgerald comes down from Mount Olympus to hand off his laundry list of investigative findings (and presumably indictments, whether for perjury or espionage).
However, the estimable Kevin Drum has a particularly useful perspective on the whole mess:
Step back from Plamegate for a moment and ask yourself a broader question: why did the White House react so violently to Joe Wilson's suggestion that the story about Saddam Hussein trying to procure uranium from Niger was false? After all, as conservative apologists never tire of pointing out, Wilson didn't really debunk George Bush's words in the 2003 State of the Union address. Bush said only that Saddam "sought" uranium from Africa, while Wilson merely provided evidence that no uranium ever changed hands. The fact is, Wilson's report didn't invalidate Bush's statement.
So why did the White House go nuts? What were they so scared of that they went into full-blown smear-and-destroy mode?
Exactly. As has been pointed out across the internets, the nut of this is not what Rove "knew" or didn't know, nor is it the endless parsing of Valerie Plame's actual status. The question is why Rove (and Libby, and probably several others) performed in this capacity against relatively picayune revelations on Wilson's part. After all, even many pro-war Bush supporters readily acknowledged from the outset that they weren't sure, but they'd rather be safe than sorry (the "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" reasoning).
Everything from the chronic dearth of press conferences (though they're having them regularly these days, to try to shore up the remaining hardheads who haven't figured these weasels out yet) to the practice of cherry-picking audiences for things like campaign stops and Social Security "town hall" meetings, bespeaks a very serious dedication to the art of obfuscation, and a real aversion to any real discussion of the issues. One drawback of running the country like a business (though in general, we are for such a principle) is that when you get a guy who wants to be a CEO, he acts like a CEO -- and those guys brook no disagreements, especially public ones.
Although conservatives insist with bilious disdain that the CIA was staffed by do-nothing bureaucrats afraid to follow the Iraqi WMD evidence where it led, the exact opposite was true. Although it's unclear how much of this was due to CIA culture and how much to White House pressure, the reality is that the CIA was far more bullish about Saddam's WMD programs than it should have been. They continued to report the uranium connection long after State Department analysts had made it clear that it was based on forged documents, and they continued to insist that the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges long after Department of Energy experts had conclusively debunked it.
Without those two things, there was no evidence left that Iraq was reconsituting its nuclear program aside from the procurement of a bit of dual use equipment and some hazy reporting of personnel movements. As the SSCI report concluded last year, "the judgment...that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, was not supported by the intelligence."
In other words, the White House political operation wasn't lashing out just because of Joe Wilson. They were lashing out because they believed their political lives depended on their own supporters continuing to believe that Saddam had been actively working on a nuke program. Without that belief, they'd lose support within their own base even if they eventually found evidence of chem and bio programs.
In Karl Rove's world, the base is sacred, and nukes were the key to their support. Joe Wilson threatened to open a crack in that support, and that's why he had to be destroyed.
That's it right there. Everything -- and I mean this quite literally, everything -- is seen as political currency by Karl Rove, right down to whether Bush picks his nose with his right or his left index finger. (Studies indicate that Christian conservatives strongly believe that the left hand represents evil, and thus should only be used for unclean tasks, like nose-picking, butt-wiping, and jerking off.)
But seriously folks, the fact is that these guys simply cannot tolerate any discussion about things which have already been decided. They don't want Americans in general thinking about it, they don't want their base questioning their judgement, and they sure as hell don't want their subordinates at State or DoD or one of the intel agencies piping up in public with something so annoying as facts. That just won't do.
And the fact that they sincerely believe this, that we -- their bosses -- are children who can't handle the truth, who just need to be told what to do and what to put up with from our subordinates in Washington, is all the more reason that they all need to be kicked to the curb, pronto.
And it all starts with Turd Blossom, the architect of this mess.
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