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But when all is said and done, if the programmers projected it would draw high ratings –- to which Keith Olbermann attributes the leeway he's been given for the past few years -- they would have spotlighted the case. Apparently, Plamegate fell short in its gossip quotient, an arcane equation one imagines a marketing company uses focus groups to calculate. The sad truth is that the networks were probably correct in their assessment of the American people. In these taxing times the bulk of the public seems to prefer relaxing with lighter fare like Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton and MWWs, rather than facing hard news or committing to a complicated spy story, no matter how compelling the characters. Finally, let's sum up why the hard right went after, with both bared teeth and talons, the Plame Affair. When it comes to circling the wagons around Cheney, it would have done so even if armed with only picks and axes. But we also need to recall those fateful aluminum tubes Iraq had been importing ostensibly for nuclear use. As David Corn wrote in "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA": "The undercover work being done by Plame and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence (DCI) Nonproliferation Center strongly contradict[ed] those previously-reported beliefs that these aluminum tubes could be used in a centrifuge for nuclear enrichment." Then, when her husband augmented her work with his Times editorial, a synergy was created. The Wilson's initiatives became more than the sum of their parts -- thus increasing the administration and hard right's anger exponentially. Why, the Wilsons were a veritable tag team of traitors. The had to be stopped by any means necessary -- even treason. Let's leave it to the inimitable Juan Cole to outline the aftershocks. "If you thought that the vice president might casually betray your identity if he thought it politically convenient to do so," he wrote on Informed Comment, "you'd be crazy to put yourself" in the position of a covert operative. "So the judge threw out the lawsuit," he continues. "But we will all be paying the damages." Not usually given to damning pronouncements, Cole nevertheless intones: "the United States will be punished for what Cheney Inc. did to Plame Wilson." First posted on Scholars and Rogues.
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues. "It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth."
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