Did Rove out Valerie Plame intentionally. Newsweek reports that last year, Rove stated to CNN, "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Currently, his lawyer is equivocating, saying that since he didn’t say her name, it doesn’t count. What a pile of shinola. If I tell you to go spit on Laura Bush’s husband and you spit on George W. Bush, then I can’t use the excuse that I didn’t say his name.
The thing is, according to The Progress Report, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said it was a "ridiculous suggestion" that Rove was "involved in leaking classified information." Clearly, it was NOT ridiculous.
WE have to ask, when Bush promoted Rove to deputy chief of staff, did Bush know that Rove had made the calls and told the reporters about Joe Wilson’s wife (so what that he didn’t use her name. It wasn’t necessary.) There are two possibilities. First, Bush knew, in which case, he has been covering up for Rove and failed the nation in allowing Rove to stay in office. The alternative consideration is that Rove denied his guilt. This makes him a liar. Even if he uses his equivocative evasions to explain his lie, it is clear that by reasonable standards, he lied to the president. Since it is likely that the fanatic Bush loyalists will all be willing to hop on their swords to protect the president, we can assume that the story will be that Rove didn’t tell Bush. That means that Rove will have to confess that he lied to the president. We may never know if Bush and others knew.
But there may be a simple solution. Have Karl Rove take a lie detector test. Under the law, he’s not required to do so, but this is not about little technicalities. This is about the honesty and credibility of the chief advisor to the president. If Karl Rove is as innocent as he says he is, he shouldn’t have a problem submitting to a polygraph test. And, since George W. Bush is so confident that his first advisor is honest, he shouldn’t object to Rove undergoing the exam.
Let’s ask some simple questions.
Did you call the reporters with the intention of outing Valerie Plame? If he is innocent, the answer should be no.
If the answer is no, then he should be willing to answer this question: If you did not intend to “out” Valerie Plame, what was your intention?
While we have him hooked up to the polygraph, it would be nice to ask these questions: Did President Bush know you were making the calls?
Did President Bush encourage you to make the calls.
Who else knew you were going to make the calls.
Who else has known that you made the calls?
The first announcement of the Time’s Cooper e-mail was almost two weeks ago. Did President Bush discuss this with you at that time? If Bush did discuss it then, then he should have said or done something then. There’s no excuse for silence any more on this. Loyalty for an ally becomes treachery when the facts are clear that the ally betrayed the nation.
This is such a nice simple way to clear up this whole mess. Answers to these basic questions could clear Bush and Cheney out of the Whitehouse and could easily get some of the top right wingers out of the senate.
There’s one hitch—the right wing echo chamber. Right wing billionaires and extremists have invested billions of dollars into the most powerful political weapon ever developed and they are using it full blast to neutralize the real story that Rove is a despicable traitor who sold out an undercover agent for the sake of petty revenge, and that Bush was probably in on it. Instead, they are using distraction techniques, counterattacking Joe Wilson, suggesting poor Karl Rove was just trying to talk a reporter out of covering Wilson’s bad information about the yellowcake uranium from Niger.
On Fox, they emphasize that at Newsweek only one reporter mentioned Rove. So what? There were reporters at other publications. They parrot the pathetic talking point that Rove never mentioned Valerie Plame’s name. So what? Rove referred to Joe Wilson’s wife. Same thing.
I love it. The more they evade and delay, the longer they hold off facing this head-on, the worse they look. Maybe they can’t face it head on because it’s such a can of worms, the whole administration is involved. Can you say “President Frist?”
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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Yes Rove is a liar. But you know who has been getting away with more through this whole scandal is Robert Novak. Now reporters who are flag waving patriots say they stand behind doing the right thing and observe the law...then go and print classified information... tells me they are hypocrisy makers to the max.
Why is the Press so called above the law on these matters of revealing American spys? Seems to me they hold and share a sense of responsibility to the people they serve.
To constantly sidestep Robert Novak and his original commentary on the Plame disclosure is to not get the whole truth. Rove and Novak deserve to share time together.
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Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 11:12:09 PM
I certainly believe that this incident is simply business as usual in a political climate where Dick Cheney stated that since they won they can damn well do as they please. For five years now this sort of hatchet job has been modus operendi for those deemed disloyal. If one goes back to the Clinton years remembering the nonstop slander and dishonesty it is quickly evident that these scumbags care little for honesty, morality or political civility.
My credulity is reserved for how little these actions have affected the Bush loyalists. I work amongst the very red, and listen to their comments about how Plame was a desk jockey and not really outed, how Rove didnt say her name, how this is just more of the sour grapes from the "liberals and leftists" still sore about continually losing to the right. I see an occasional flash of shame when I note that outing Plame may have endangered operatives in the field, or that the law is very specific about publicly sharing classified information, which is certainly the case here, and makes actual reference to naming CIA operatives by name or by inference. But these guilty looks are fleeting indeed and they quickly retreat to the talking points so readily and quickly spelled out for them by that class A felon, Rush Limbaugh, by that arguable psychotic Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the fully armed talking heads that fill our airwaves with Bushs' crap.
Thus the problem ,as ever, reverts to the lack of a concerted effort by the Democratic Party to get a coherent , specific, accurate and on message response out to the vast audience that, lacking any balance whatsoever in the news they are exposed to daily, believes that biased drivel.
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ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2386 comments)
on Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 10:25:32 PM
