I watched Ken Mehlman (RNC Chairman) on Meet the Press yesterday. Republicans keep trying to say that the Rove leak is no big deal, but it is clear that the White House and the Republicans are terrified. Democrats can smell the blood in the water. The Brain is going down. He has to. There are already too many facts and public statements that make it clear he has to go, even if he isn't indicted. (Although I’ve got to admit, it is fun watching Republicans try to find creative ways to save him.)
In an attempt to keep from digging a deeper hole, the White House will say nothing. Better to send out people like Mehlman to obfuscate and spin. And can he ever spin! When Russert tried to get him to answer a tough question, he resorted to the usual repertoire of defenses. Blame the Democrats. Answer a different question. Distort the truth. Give the party line; Karl Rove is a good man who is being unfairly defamed by the Democrats for political gain before the facts are in and the special prosecutor has determined if a crime was actually committed. That's not just a run on sentence, that is the breathless way Mehlman answered most questions. The facts that are already in the record show that Rove was using classified information that hurt national security to extract revenge on a political foe. He had no business even acknowledging that "Wilson’s wife" worked at the CIA. Spin it any way you like. Those are the facts.
The Republicans see Rove as a master political strategist who is key to recent Republican successes. The Democrats see him the same way and, therefore, are working hard to bring him down. Politics has become a blood sport and Rove is a surgeon. I could have said butcher, but give the man credit. He knows how to make his man look good and the opposition look bad. But he also doesn't mind playing dirty. What goes around comes around, Karl. The spin won't work so you are about be hung out to dry. It's time for you to leave the government and make a bundle as a consultant.
Back to Mehlman. Would I buy a used car from him? Not a chance. But a washing machine? You bet.
Political
2 comments:
Please post the link that proves Plame was a covert agent. There are lots that claim it or alllude to it, but there is no proof. Even her husband Wilson admitted that at the time Novak wrote his story she was not covert.
No covert, no crime.
Kindof like outing George Bush for working in the executive branch of government. Shhhhhh. Did I say that?
I suppose the only people that could say that with certainty is the CIA and I believe their policy is not to publicly respond to those kinds of questions. So like much of this case, we don't yet know all the details, but if she wasn't a covert agent, why did the CIA ask Novak not to use her name?
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/01/blitzer.novak/
At this point we have to assume that if she wasn't someone who the CIA wanted to protect, there would have been no crime and the investigation would have stopped many months ago. The CIA would at some point have to confirm her status to the Special Prosecuter or again, there would be no case and the investigation would have stopped.
We know that Karl Rove confirmed that Plame worked for the CIA and he didn't want his name associated with that information. Your final paragraph proves my point. If Valerie Plame's work at the CIA was such common knowledge, why didn't Scott McClellan just stand up and mention it at one of his daily briefings? Why did Karl Rove have to leak it? And why, when this furor started, didn't he just stand up and say "Yes, I spoke with Novak and Cooper, but my comments were not illegal because Plame wasn't undercover". Maybe he didn't know for sure. And if he didn't, his leak violated his security clearance agreement and he shouldn't have said anything. The actions of Rove and the Bush White House are the proof that there was at least the probability of a crime and Rove's secrecy and silence is damning evidence that he knows he was doing something wrong if not illegal.
Maybe he can't be convicted, but what he did was wrong and he should pay.
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