Friday, July 15, 2005
Rove, aka, Traitorgate (or whatever to call this)
What is this about? The media tend to reduce such to personalities, fitting the Republican spin. Was Rove bad, or is he being unfairly slimed? They’re reluctant to view it as being an Abuse of Power, the White House’s machinery being used to quash people. And it certainly doesn’t want it connected to Iraq. After all, that’s what this is about- silencing someone who challenged the propaganda that got us into war. Joe Wilson makes this clear in all of his appearances. It's all about Iraq. The Downing Street Memo is further proof that the Brits knew we would invade regardless of the evidence and Wilson challenged the lie about Niger uranium and the aluminum tubes.
The WaPost’s Richard Cohen is on it.
Washington is electrified with the abundant energy of buzz from a scandal -- speculation about Rove, about Bush, about Cheney's aide, Scooter Libby. Who leaked? Who may have lied? How did Novak slip the noose? But the real scandal is the ongoing mess in Iraq, the murder just the other day of innocent children (is there any other kind?) and the false notion that, somehow, taking out Hussein would make us all safer. London gives the lie to that. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071301989.html
Eric Alterman addresses this as well
In the sorry spectacle of the ongoing Karl Rove/Judith Miller/Matt Cooper episode, it's easy to forget just what inspired this whole tawdry mess. Remember, it all dates back to 2002 and early 2003 when the Bush administration was trying to make its weak case for war in Iraq look stronger. This made it necessary, according to the judgment of Rove, his accomplices, and their journalistic patsy, Robert Novak, to engage in a campaign to smear Joe Wilson, who was dispatched by the CIA to Africa to investigate George W. Bush's false assertions that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons.
When Wilson came back and cast doubt on the claims—going public in The New York Times when the administration continued to stick to the story he had personally investigated and discovered to be false—the Bush team pushed back hard, reportedly leaking to Bob Novak and several other journalists that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA and got him the assignment. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=885973
What’s at Stake: Reminder: This leak by a government official could constitute a felony. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 states that a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines. It merely requires an act of disclosure.
What’s to happen? The Republicans remains confident, that their control of government will enable them to stonewall. And, they seek to change the subject, so that the coming debate about the next Supreme Court Justice will become The Story, and media interest in Rove will fade.
The Goal: Have Bush fire Rove? Again, Bush and the Iraq war lies should be the target. Besides, it’s hardly a likely scenario. I’m not the first to wonder if that would be like having Pinocchio fire Geppetto.
The Right Counter-Attack: The charges would be laughable if they didn’t have the power. Recall the absurdity of so much put forward by others who have used the big lie. But, no, I won’t bring up Josef Goebbels.
There is their technique of attacking the opponent’s strength, which usually has worked, an inversion that finds Rove the heroic whistleblower trying to knock down a campaign of disinformation from Joe Wilson and which hangs Cooper and Wilson as lying scoundrels. All of their spokespeople utter the RNC Talking Points. It was hardly surprising to hear Bush use the same wording as spokesman McClellan.
Newt Gingrich stayed on the Talking Points on the Today show: Rove didn’t say her name and is being smeared; Wilson lied when he claimed that Cheney sent him and/or authorized his Africa trip. [Wilson never made the claim].
They go after Matt Cooper as well. Fitzgerald will get ‘his’, when necessary.
Rove lawyer Robert Luskin: "Cooper's truthful testimony today will not call into question the accuracy or completeness of anything Rove has previously said to the prosecutor or the grand jury." And, that Cooper was spinning (the truth) “in a pretty ugly fashion.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5139995,00.html
Sean Hannity: Cooper ‘set Rove up’, and David Brooks, on NPR, repeated that ‘the investigation’s still on-going’, it’s all a “frenzy”, Wilson is lying and repeated many Administration lies and that it’s so ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4754569
The Wall Street Journal take: "The White House political guru deserves a prize" for telling the truth and "exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson as his wife."
Rep. Peter King asserts that the Media “should be shot”, Rove is showing guts by challenging Wilson’s account, and the Republicans should “fire enough bullets” till the Supreme Court story overwhelms the Rove mess.
And, they’re going after critics in the Senate: Harry Reid introduced an amendment to the homeland security appropriations that would prevent anyone who discloses the identity of a covert CIA operative from having a security clearance. They countered with their own, which would strip security access from any senator who repeated a statement by an FBI agent which was subsequently used as "propaganda" by America's enemies. In other words, the law is targeted at the likes of Sen. Durbin, making it against the law to say what he said last month.
The text of the so-called 'Frist Amendment':
"Any federal officeholder who makes reference to a classified Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the floor of the United States Senate, or any federal officeholder that makes a statement based on a FBI agent's comments which is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations thereby putting our servicemen and women at risk, shall not be permitted access to such information or to hold a security clearance for access to such information."
Other Republican Testimonials to Rove http://www.gop.com/news/Read.aspx?ID=5627
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fallujah: Four months after the allegedly successful cleansing of the city, the Fallujah is again embattled. The army is under-trained and hot-headed, unable to halt bomb-making and questionably gaining the support of the populace.
But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.
Somewhere in the bowels of Falluja, the former guerrilla stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad, where four American contractors were killed in an ambush, and the bodies of two were hanged from a bridge, in March 2004, insurgents are building suicide car bombs again. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/international/middleeast/15falluja.html?
Anti-missiles on airliners: Testing, testing. Lasers to divert missiles, years away; worth it? Many doubt…
The government will begin testing anti-missile equipment on three airliners next month, a first step toward what could be the most expensive security upgrade ever ordered for the nation's aviation system.
Both Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems will rig out-of-service planes with laser defense systems designed to misdirect shoulder-fired missiles, said John Kubricky, director of the Department of Homeland Security's systems engineering and development office. Test results will be sent to Congress early next year.
It could take years before passenger planes carry protection against missiles, a weapon terrorists might use to shoot down jets and cause economic havoc in the airline industry. The tests will help the nation's leaders decide whether they should install laser systems on all 6,800 aircraft in the U.S. airline fleet at a cost of at least $6 billion. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050714/1a_lede14_dom.art.htm
Terror Allocation: Pork, not Security NY Times editorial:
This was a sad week for the war on terror. The Senate voted, disgracefully, to shift homeland security money from high-risk areas to low-risk ones—a step that is likely to mean less money to defend New York and California against terrorism and more for states like Wyoming. Before the vote, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made a powerful appeal to the senators to distribute the money based on risk. But the Senate, led by Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and other small-state representatives, put political pork ahead of national security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/opinion/opinionspecial/14thu1.html
Rehnquist Retirement / Death Watch. Not yet.
"I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."
Word has it that he was tired of the media encamped on his street.
Venezuela: Much. Michael Parenti’s account of his recent visit, noting gains in health care, the elimination of middlemen, and:
In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal market “adjustments” of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. Successive Administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation.
Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:
A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted—this past March a large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes
Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment
The government has set up a marine conservation program and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples
Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers
Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry—80 percent of which is still publicly owned—have been halted and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration
Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2005/parenti0705.html
Parenti also provides some working definitions:
A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services and who supports the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.) The term “leftist” is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media, but seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined, allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact, which precludes rational examination of its political content.
Meanwhile Chavez’s opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in April 2002 against the democratically elected government, are depicted in the U.S. media as champions of “pro-democratic” and “pro-West” governance. We are talking about the free-market plutocrats and corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more people in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by Chavez in his years of rule.
-R
What is this about? The media tend to reduce such to personalities, fitting the Republican spin. Was Rove bad, or is he being unfairly slimed? They’re reluctant to view it as being an Abuse of Power, the White House’s machinery being used to quash people. And it certainly doesn’t want it connected to Iraq. After all, that’s what this is about- silencing someone who challenged the propaganda that got us into war. Joe Wilson makes this clear in all of his appearances. It's all about Iraq. The Downing Street Memo is further proof that the Brits knew we would invade regardless of the evidence and Wilson challenged the lie about Niger uranium and the aluminum tubes.
The WaPost’s Richard Cohen is on it.
Washington is electrified with the abundant energy of buzz from a scandal -- speculation about Rove, about Bush, about Cheney's aide, Scooter Libby. Who leaked? Who may have lied? How did Novak slip the noose? But the real scandal is the ongoing mess in Iraq, the murder just the other day of innocent children (is there any other kind?) and the false notion that, somehow, taking out Hussein would make us all safer. London gives the lie to that. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071301989.html
Eric Alterman addresses this as well
In the sorry spectacle of the ongoing Karl Rove/Judith Miller/Matt Cooper episode, it's easy to forget just what inspired this whole tawdry mess. Remember, it all dates back to 2002 and early 2003 when the Bush administration was trying to make its weak case for war in Iraq look stronger. This made it necessary, according to the judgment of Rove, his accomplices, and their journalistic patsy, Robert Novak, to engage in a campaign to smear Joe Wilson, who was dispatched by the CIA to Africa to investigate George W. Bush's false assertions that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons.
When Wilson came back and cast doubt on the claims—going public in The New York Times when the administration continued to stick to the story he had personally investigated and discovered to be false—the Bush team pushed back hard, reportedly leaking to Bob Novak and several other journalists that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA and got him the assignment. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=885973
What’s at Stake: Reminder: This leak by a government official could constitute a felony. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 states that a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines. It merely requires an act of disclosure.
What’s to happen? The Republicans remains confident, that their control of government will enable them to stonewall. And, they seek to change the subject, so that the coming debate about the next Supreme Court Justice will become The Story, and media interest in Rove will fade.
The Goal: Have Bush fire Rove? Again, Bush and the Iraq war lies should be the target. Besides, it’s hardly a likely scenario. I’m not the first to wonder if that would be like having Pinocchio fire Geppetto.
The Right Counter-Attack: The charges would be laughable if they didn’t have the power. Recall the absurdity of so much put forward by others who have used the big lie. But, no, I won’t bring up Josef Goebbels.
There is their technique of attacking the opponent’s strength, which usually has worked, an inversion that finds Rove the heroic whistleblower trying to knock down a campaign of disinformation from Joe Wilson and which hangs Cooper and Wilson as lying scoundrels. All of their spokespeople utter the RNC Talking Points. It was hardly surprising to hear Bush use the same wording as spokesman McClellan.
Newt Gingrich stayed on the Talking Points on the Today show: Rove didn’t say her name and is being smeared; Wilson lied when he claimed that Cheney sent him and/or authorized his Africa trip. [Wilson never made the claim].
They go after Matt Cooper as well. Fitzgerald will get ‘his’, when necessary.
Rove lawyer Robert Luskin: "Cooper's truthful testimony today will not call into question the accuracy or completeness of anything Rove has previously said to the prosecutor or the grand jury." And, that Cooper was spinning (the truth) “in a pretty ugly fashion.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5139995,00.html
Sean Hannity: Cooper ‘set Rove up’, and David Brooks, on NPR, repeated that ‘the investigation’s still on-going’, it’s all a “frenzy”, Wilson is lying and repeated many Administration lies and that it’s so ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4754569
The Wall Street Journal take: "The White House political guru deserves a prize" for telling the truth and "exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson as his wife."
Rep. Peter King asserts that the Media “should be shot”, Rove is showing guts by challenging Wilson’s account, and the Republicans should “fire enough bullets” till the Supreme Court story overwhelms the Rove mess.
And, they’re going after critics in the Senate: Harry Reid introduced an amendment to the homeland security appropriations that would prevent anyone who discloses the identity of a covert CIA operative from having a security clearance. They countered with their own, which would strip security access from any senator who repeated a statement by an FBI agent which was subsequently used as "propaganda" by America's enemies. In other words, the law is targeted at the likes of Sen. Durbin, making it against the law to say what he said last month.
The text of the so-called 'Frist Amendment':
"Any federal officeholder who makes reference to a classified Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the floor of the United States Senate, or any federal officeholder that makes a statement based on a FBI agent's comments which is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations thereby putting our servicemen and women at risk, shall not be permitted access to such information or to hold a security clearance for access to such information."
Other Republican Testimonials to Rove http://www.gop.com/news/Read.aspx?ID=5627
What’s Happening, Iraq: Fallujah: Four months after the allegedly successful cleansing of the city, the Fallujah is again embattled. The army is under-trained and hot-headed, unable to halt bomb-making and questionably gaining the support of the populace.
But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.
Somewhere in the bowels of Falluja, the former guerrilla stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad, where four American contractors were killed in an ambush, and the bodies of two were hanged from a bridge, in March 2004, insurgents are building suicide car bombs again. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/international/middleeast/15falluja.html?
Anti-missiles on airliners: Testing, testing. Lasers to divert missiles, years away; worth it? Many doubt…
The government will begin testing anti-missile equipment on three airliners next month, a first step toward what could be the most expensive security upgrade ever ordered for the nation's aviation system.
Both Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems will rig out-of-service planes with laser defense systems designed to misdirect shoulder-fired missiles, said John Kubricky, director of the Department of Homeland Security's systems engineering and development office. Test results will be sent to Congress early next year.
It could take years before passenger planes carry protection against missiles, a weapon terrorists might use to shoot down jets and cause economic havoc in the airline industry. The tests will help the nation's leaders decide whether they should install laser systems on all 6,800 aircraft in the U.S. airline fleet at a cost of at least $6 billion. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050714/1a_lede14_dom.art.htm
Terror Allocation: Pork, not Security NY Times editorial:
This was a sad week for the war on terror. The Senate voted, disgracefully, to shift homeland security money from high-risk areas to low-risk ones—a step that is likely to mean less money to defend New York and California against terrorism and more for states like Wyoming. Before the vote, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made a powerful appeal to the senators to distribute the money based on risk. But the Senate, led by Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and other small-state representatives, put political pork ahead of national security. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/opinion/opinionspecial/14thu1.html
Rehnquist Retirement / Death Watch. Not yet.
"I am not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits."
Word has it that he was tired of the media encamped on his street.
Venezuela: Much. Michael Parenti’s account of his recent visit, noting gains in health care, the elimination of middlemen, and:
In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal market “adjustments” of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. Successive Administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation.
Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:
A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted—this past March a large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes
Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment
The government has set up a marine conservation program and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples
Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers
Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry—80 percent of which is still publicly owned—have been halted and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration
Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2005/parenti0705.html
Parenti also provides some working definitions:
A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services and who supports the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.) The term “leftist” is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media, but seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined, allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact, which precludes rational examination of its political content.
Meanwhile Chavez’s opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in April 2002 against the democratically elected government, are depicted in the U.S. media as champions of “pro-democratic” and “pro-West” governance. We are talking about the free-market plutocrats and corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more people in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by Chavez in his years of rule.
-R
