Feeding Frenzy
Today's comment put to me, well actually it was more like Tuesday, but I'll deal with it today, was "I think you're getting obsessed with the politics thing." So, as the thinking kind of guy that I am, I thought about this and my response is, "Jesus Christ! These bastards have sold the entire country down the river and you're NOT obsessed with it???"
Now all kidding aside, the investigation of the Plame Affair is the most important thing to happen in Washington in 30 years.
Not Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman." That was bad because of a lot of things, but that was pure partisanship that generated it (the Paula Jones case) and continued on the same line. The Jones case was a prime example of a case that was brought forward for the sole purpose of damaging a sitting President and it was insulting on multiple levels. The culmination of which (and yes, that's a pun) was the infamous blue dress that stayed I guess polybagged in Monica's closet. Ewww.
Not Ollie North smuggling documents out of the White House in Fawn Hall's underwear, which sort of has that same Monica-esqe ewww-ness to it, or the rest of Iran-Contra, where the White House deliberately circumvented the law of the land in selling arms to the Iranians, illegal, but ostensibly for a good cause, and then did so a second time by funneling the money from those sales into funding the Contras, in theory a good cause, but in practice people that we hated so much five years earlier that we helped the Sandanistas overthrow them.
Not April Glaspie's "misunderstood" comment that Iraq-Kuwait was a regional conflict that we wouldn't get involved with.
Not the Iranian hostages, and Carter's inability to get them out.
No, you have to go to Watergate before anything approaching this happens. A couple of guys in CREEP decided in would be a good idea to go poking around the Democratic offices and see what they had planned for the 1972 election that was then covered up, do you see anything approaching this magnitude. In 1972 if Richard Nixon disavows the burglars and gives up the guys in CREEP, he probably goes down as one of the better presidents of the 20th century. Instead, all of the things he did well and all of the things he did poorly which may have had some balance, going to China vs. bombing Cambodia, ending the gold standard vs. price controls, fail to find anything to balance Watergate.
And Watergate may not be on the same level. This time, the White House lied to the American public to get a war. In the course of doing that, Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice-President, outed a covert CIA agent. I don't think there is much doubt about that at this point, and that is what the current frenzy surrounding Pat Fitzgerald is about. The media cannot WAIT to see who all gets named in the indictments, but Libby's name will be right at the head of the list. Did he violate the covert agent law? Maybe. Did he violate any number of other national security laws? I think the answer to that is going to be yes. Was Karl Rove involved? I think the answer to that will also be yes. Were Dick Cheney and George Bush involved? Probably not in the actual leak, but in trying to keep the information from getting out? Based on reports in the New York Daily News absolutely.
In the next week every bit of this is going to come to a head as the indictments are handed down. This is not like Watergate that started at a low level and percolated up to destroy the Nixon Administration. Right now, based on data from an Ipsos Poll a majority of this country thinks Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war. And this is before the real information has even come out. What is going to happen, and very quickly, is that the information will come out, and at that point, people will go over everything that has happened in the last five years.
This won't be liberals going off the deep end, it won't be places like DailyKOS saying the emperor has no clothes. It will be the Washington Post. It will be the Chicago Tribune. It will be the New York Post in 3 inch block letters. It will be CNN. It will be FOX News. And they will do it for one simple reason. They either join in, or they get branded as the blind mouthpiece and no one listens anymore. That means no ratings, no circulation and no money, and at that point, they can fold up the tent and go home.
Why am I "obsessed" with this? Because the sharks can smell the blood in the water, and they're always hungry.
Now all kidding aside, the investigation of the Plame Affair is the most important thing to happen in Washington in 30 years.
Not Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman." That was bad because of a lot of things, but that was pure partisanship that generated it (the Paula Jones case) and continued on the same line. The Jones case was a prime example of a case that was brought forward for the sole purpose of damaging a sitting President and it was insulting on multiple levels. The culmination of which (and yes, that's a pun) was the infamous blue dress that stayed I guess polybagged in Monica's closet. Ewww.
Not Ollie North smuggling documents out of the White House in Fawn Hall's underwear, which sort of has that same Monica-esqe ewww-ness to it, or the rest of Iran-Contra, where the White House deliberately circumvented the law of the land in selling arms to the Iranians, illegal, but ostensibly for a good cause, and then did so a second time by funneling the money from those sales into funding the Contras, in theory a good cause, but in practice people that we hated so much five years earlier that we helped the Sandanistas overthrow them.
Not April Glaspie's "misunderstood" comment that Iraq-Kuwait was a regional conflict that we wouldn't get involved with.
Not the Iranian hostages, and Carter's inability to get them out.
No, you have to go to Watergate before anything approaching this happens. A couple of guys in CREEP decided in would be a good idea to go poking around the Democratic offices and see what they had planned for the 1972 election that was then covered up, do you see anything approaching this magnitude. In 1972 if Richard Nixon disavows the burglars and gives up the guys in CREEP, he probably goes down as one of the better presidents of the 20th century. Instead, all of the things he did well and all of the things he did poorly which may have had some balance, going to China vs. bombing Cambodia, ending the gold standard vs. price controls, fail to find anything to balance Watergate.
And Watergate may not be on the same level. This time, the White House lied to the American public to get a war. In the course of doing that, Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice-President, outed a covert CIA agent. I don't think there is much doubt about that at this point, and that is what the current frenzy surrounding Pat Fitzgerald is about. The media cannot WAIT to see who all gets named in the indictments, but Libby's name will be right at the head of the list. Did he violate the covert agent law? Maybe. Did he violate any number of other national security laws? I think the answer to that is going to be yes. Was Karl Rove involved? I think the answer to that will also be yes. Were Dick Cheney and George Bush involved? Probably not in the actual leak, but in trying to keep the information from getting out? Based on reports in the New York Daily News absolutely.
In the next week every bit of this is going to come to a head as the indictments are handed down. This is not like Watergate that started at a low level and percolated up to destroy the Nixon Administration. Right now, based on data from an Ipsos Poll a majority of this country thinks Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war. And this is before the real information has even come out. What is going to happen, and very quickly, is that the information will come out, and at that point, people will go over everything that has happened in the last five years.
This won't be liberals going off the deep end, it won't be places like DailyKOS saying the emperor has no clothes. It will be the Washington Post. It will be the Chicago Tribune. It will be the New York Post in 3 inch block letters. It will be CNN. It will be FOX News. And they will do it for one simple reason. They either join in, or they get branded as the blind mouthpiece and no one listens anymore. That means no ratings, no circulation and no money, and at that point, they can fold up the tent and go home.
Why am I "obsessed" with this? Because the sharks can smell the blood in the water, and they're always hungry.
posted by Mike N | 8:33 PM
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