I haven’t seen the possibility talked about much – if at all – of President Bush having played an active role in the Plame affair. Then I read this in one of Billmon’s posts last night:
As Larry O’Donnell recently noted at the Huffington Post:
All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.
The prosecutor’s secret evidence, eh? A very serious crime, you say? Judges that think the prosecutor is on to something? That sounds kinda promising. What if it does go all the way to the top?
And now BushCo is in full damage control – albeit showing a rather stoic public face. It could explain a lot of the White House’s reaction. If they are setting Rove up to take the fall when the final responsibility lies with Bush, it might very well look like this. Knowing he and Turdblossom’s relationship, this isn’t too much of a stretch. He’s probably known all these years of managing Bush that this day might come.
I’m getting alternating flashbacks now. One of Nixon limping out of office. The other of Ray-gun saying he couldn’t remember anything (probably correctly). What do you see?
I’d say the reverse, if anything. Bush doesn’t order pizza without Rove’s go-ahead.
you’re right. I totally forgot to add Cheney to the poll, too.
and public image come into play. We all think he is an incompetent dumb-ass. We saw how he performed in the debates. We know he is fed answers when making public speaking appearances. We all assume in the back of our minds that Rove and Cheney run everything anyhow, so it isn’t a stretch to think Rove was acting without Bush’s knowledge.
But I doubt it. I think Bush at least knew Rove was going to try to trash Wilson, if not how. I imagine Rove saying, “I can take of this, George. I’ll just ruin the guy.” and George said, “You know best, Karl.” I emphasize that I think that is the minimum involvement Bush had… he may have known exactly what Rove had planned, and said, “Do your thing, Karl.”
All Bush has to say is something along the lines of, “Karl was doing what Karl thought best without my knowledge. I often gave him leeway to do so; I trusted his judgment. In this case, he made a mistake and he will face the consequences.” That will be enough for all the righties and will even maintain Bush’s decisive leader BS image in their eyes. No, that isn’t a joke. I have a brother-in-law who claimed Bush was being a strong leader on 9/11 when he sat in the classroom as the twin towers burned because he knew he had picked the right people to be in his administration and “could count on the people below him to do their jobs well.”
The question is, will Rove take the fall without taking Bush with him, or will he squeal like a pig when faced with his own imprisonment?
Gee. . .you all are so much more optimistic than I am. I say no matter what they find, no one goes to jail, no one is fired and nothing changes. This is the greatest “If we pretend we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist” group of criminals I’ve ever seen. They are 3 card monty Pros, the experts at misdirection. If they have to bomb some country to take our attention away, I have no doubt they will. . .or have someone bomb us.
Absolutely… If this doesn’t die down soon, like over the weekend, Bush may well nominate someone TRULY outrageous for the SC on Sunday evening so that TraitorGate doesn’t get a second week of banners…
Or they may just decide something like “ah, screw it, let `em bitch. They’re just peasants and your peasants are always bitching about SOMETHING anyway…”
It’s not like there’s anything practical that can be DONE at this point. An impeachment resolution goes nowhere, RNC owns the election computers… absent the pitchfork and torch brigade, there’s not much gonna happen and if they just wait it out some nymphet’ll get preggers with Elvis’ next love child or some such and Rove walks.
I am much more optimistic than you, I’m happy to say — bolstered this week by great polls and a spine starting to grow in our press corps.
This isn’t going away soon; hopefully, never. I think Americans have a inate sense of right and wrong, and as difficult as it has been to watch the last five years, I don’t think the Republican neo-con-job can get this genie back in the bottle. Once the majority doesn’t trust that Bush is correct or truthful, which is what this week’s polling shows, then the whole house of cards begins to tumble. The flypaper theory has tragically been proven wrong, there is corruption from DeLay to Cunningham, Fitzgerald has convinced several judges that there are some very serious charges here, enough to give Fitzgerald leeway.
In other words, Bush staked his whole legacy on Iraq, proudly declaring that “history will judge us”. As Iraq is finally detached from 9/11, the manipulation of intelligence to get us there becomes more and more known, the corruption and abuse that have taken place while we’ve been there — suddenly 1,700+ American lives, 15,000+ American wounded, and yes, even 150,000+ brown-skinned people that had nothing to do with 9/11 suddenly matter.
I’m going to grab your coattails and ride with you. I so hope you are right and that I am so, so, wrong.
I’m sure Karl would happily go to prison for georgie boy, but I doubt whether Dick would bother to protect either one of them. I can see the fool president trying to put the blame (for everything) on one of the others. What a pitiful crew.
Where is Dick anyway?
rid me of this troublesome priest?