By the Standards of his Hero Nixon, is Rove a Traitor?

As a young man growing up in Salt Lake City, Rove adhered strongly to the Nixon Vietnam position. He accepted Nixon's position of demonizing opponents of the Vietnam War, including questioning their patriotism.

After Nixon's death progressive historians asserted that Nixon and his administration's foot soldiers demeaned true patriotism by embracing a narrow standard wherein, if they failed to support a flag waving posture operating lockstep within Nixon's narrow dogma relating to Vietnam, they were labeled as unpatriotic.

Like so many of Nixon's stalwart young supporters, including William Kristol, Dick Cheney and others, Rove had no stomach for traveling to Southeast Asia and fighting for a cause he verbally supported.

When time ultimately substantiated the anti-Vietnam War contingent position that no domino theory existed and hordes of Asians, spearheaded by the Chinese, never sought to invade America via San Francisco Bay or any other way, the chicken hawks never changed their position.

The same holds true with Rove's position on the Iraq War as well as an issue that has awkwardly surfaced as he hawks his new book this week in the media, that being his leaking, along with the late ultra right political columnist Robert Novak, of the name of CIA weapons analyst Valerie Plame.

On the war Rove repeats the same stale claim that the Bush Administration was compelled to act in Iraq through a justifiable concern that Saddam Hussein contained the wherewithal and the desire to launch a nuclear attack against the United States.

What Rove fails to consider, much less confront, was that the Project for the New American Century had urged an Iraq War on President Bill Clinton without success.

He also ignores the activities of Dick Cheney in seeking to pressure the CIA to deliver "facts" indicating an Iraq nuclear threat, nor does he consider those secret meetings with the corporate aristocracy led by the formerly Cheney led Halliburton to divide up the fruits of impending battle before the first Shock and Awe attacks on Iraq.

Nor does he say anything about that UN weapons inspection team led by Sweden's Hans Blix. The group had theretofore found nothing and asked for time to finish their inspection and deliver a final report. That effort was pre-empted by a Bush war declaration and attack.

Now on to the outing of Valerie Plame. Rove insists he owes no apology to former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan after lying to him about not passing along information to the media about Valerie Plame, resulting in McClellan's presenting unknowing false information regarding Rove's culpability.

McClellan was philosophical about Rove's stonewalling, stating that to someone who regards politics as warfare it is not possible to reason with him.

On the Today Show on Tuesday Rove declared to Matt Lauer that his outing of CIA weapons specialist Valerie Plame was "no big deal." Think of it, here was someone in harmony with the Nixon position demonizing anyone who opposed his Vietnam War policy no matter how sincere the intent, and even if such individuals actually served in the conflict, which Rove would not do.

In the case of Valerie Plame her life was placed in jeopardy, along with the lives of all those with whom she communicated. She was destroyed forever as a source, as well as anyone with whom she interacted. In terms of her sources, their lives were also placed in jeopardy.

How about any information derived from Plame efforts, including any Iraqi effort to acquire nuclear weapons? Such efforts are also severely compromised upon Plame's identity becoming known.

So on the one hand Rove ardently supported a false Nixon standard impugning the patriotism of sincere individuals who believed that the Vietnam War was wrong.

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