We heard it earlier today from four longtime CIA agents and in BooMan’s captivating rant. We read it in tomorrow’s New York Times, this time from Frank Rich:
It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.
More Frank Rich gems:
- “To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail.”
- “Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship.”
- “… Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller’s fate.”
- “That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.
Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush’s fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week’s erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan …”
- “This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit – the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes – is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.”
- “The brief against the administration’s drumbeat for war would be just as damning if [Wilson had] never gone to Africa. But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora’s box it can’t slam shut.”
I just read that column a little while ago and thought it was terrific and right on.
I have Rove, et. all on google alert and am getting a regular feed of negative stories around the country and the world…
Impeachment too is being talked about quite often.
How interesting, Diane. Are the overseas papers mostly the ones talking impeachment? (‘course, that’d require an ethical Congress, sigh.)
And it would leave us with President Chaney, unless he was also impeached.
I think Cheney [the real pResident in charge] is going in this one too! I htink he is the biggest duck in the puddle. Have you heard that he went to GW hospital for some chest pain or something to that effect?
No they are mainly US ones and all over the US, now some of them are letters to the editors and not articles, but there is quite a flutter of both, also web site entries. I get a notices about one or the other about every 1/2 hour and have for days now. A lot of letters to editors in the red states.
Also the DSM, all of it, I may have to turn off one of the alerts as I am just getting too many, my mailbox is overflowing..
The are a few that are pro bush (or spin), but the preponderance are anti Bush/Rove,etc.
See this story I got yesterday and it’s quite a good story:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/07/16/m11a_mcevoy_0716.html
“I’m certainly happy that George W. Bush and Karl Rove are not Democrats. If they were, just imagine the mess this country would be in right now, even worse than the mess it is in.
First, there would be cries of “treason” directed at Mr. Rove from the Republican ranks. Some of the more overheated members of Congress would demand that he be taken immediately out back of the Capitol and shot by a firing squad.”
“the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it’s essential to protect the king.”
Here’s to hoping the knight falls on his sword…
I too signed up for google alert. I hope it works for me an dyou too…:o)
Finally!
This is so sweet. That blockquote you have up there (yes, I read the article) is fantastic. Frank Rich of NYT is laying
the responsibility squarely on the pResident and those closest to him. This will be going downhill so fast from now on…
Yippi!
God, ask, I hope you are so very right on with this! I am so ready for it to happen too.
Susan, I think it is the tip of the iceburg, so to speak. Once thsi all gets out and is thought about by the American PPL we will all be so dismayed by this administration that our worst fears have come true. The neocons have out-did themselves and now they are caught in the box so appropriately discribed here.
All the loose ends can be brought together and a case for true espionage happening here in America and the DSM are just part of it.
I remember watching Richard Nixon resign on television in 1974. I was 12 years old. Pretty young, but still I had a sense that it was big, historical. I believe this is when I first became aware that leaders aren’t perfect. That they will lie to you with a straight face.
What is happening in this country and with this president today has made what Nixon did look like a kids game. The lies and crimes that have been perpetrated on us, our military, Iraq, and the world are so monumental and devious that they cause an anger in me that is difficult to describe in it’s intensity. If somehow this Administration could be stopped today, it would still cost us countless lives and years trying to repair the damage already done. We will all be paying for the sins of our leaders for a long time to come. Removing Bush from power and prosecuting him for war crimes is only the first step in a long journey back.
I want to give you 500 “4” for that comment. I was old enough to see what was going on but did not think it could ever happen again….but…………here we are
I remember that moment that Nixon, upper lip sweating profusely, looked into the camera and blubbered “I am not a crook.”
Let’s hope we all get to witness Bush’s Nixon Moment.
Let us PRAY that we all get to witness that moment. That things all go that smoothly and that well. However, the depths of sheer evil that this administration reaches…the sheer brilliance of its main players, people like Rumsfeld and Cheney and even Karl Rove, roly-poly figure of weak-chinned fun that he may appear…makes any comparison with the Nixon cast ridiculous. These people are on a whole ‘nother level of competence than were the Nixon crew, and the plot will be much more complicated this time (and much more violent as well), I fear.
When you have a President who is in reality only a figurehead and the vast majority of the American people do not understand this one salient fact…all bets are off.
Cheney is the key, here.
The Queen in this chess match.
Topple him, and the King is easy pickings.
Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney Cheney.
Get THAT into the heads of America, and we will be OK.
Leave him standing…and all bets are off.
Even The Economist, behind a subscribers only firewall, is noticing Bush&Rove,Co. is in doo-doo.
Fascinating, Captain. I have never encountered this phenomena before.
This is off topic but very funny.
“CNN “Bullshit Coverage” On Karl Rove”
Lou Dobbs Tonight Show on July 15, 2005, as Lou was introducing a piece on the Rove story.
Lou says, “…Rove testifying that he first learned about Plame from columnist Robert Novak, a CNN contributor. Danna Bash reports.”
Immediately after that you can clearly hear a female voice on mic whispering “that’s bullshit”.
Then Dana Bash continues with her report.
The video clip is attached. You have to watch and listen!
“http://satire.myblogsite.com/blog“
that is way tooo funny for words! could it be that someone in the control booth did that on purpose? :o)
have we ever in our history had an administration tried and convicted of espionage?
Nope.. an impeachment with Andrew Johnson and Clinton (both brought about by Republican guile), endemic corruption with the poor Grant, and a near impeachment with good cause of Nixon… and now we have a presidency that wraps up the very worst of any ex-president and distills it into the drunken orgy of idiocy we have in the Bush’s and we might have our first sitting traitor.
would not this be the cats meow if the whole gang of them went out the door and in such a way that the republican party was defunked for a very long time!
I would love that..
oh! what a lot of people don’t remember is that the same thign happened to them in the mid 20th century.. the combination of the depression in the 30’s and MyCarthyism in the 50’s the public finally got so fed up that the Reps weren’t able to take congressional power byack for 30 years!
May we be headed for more of those good ol’ Times, Brenda!
high fives
high fives back at ya Kiddo!!!!!!
It’s so thaT I feel if i breath the wrong way it wont happen.. but can it be that we’re finally on the way to getting rid of these fools?
((standing by to do cpr!…:o)..)) Please do take a deep breath…..:o)
I have been saying so since June 12th, see my sig line. not sure what happened right now that day, but I felt in my heart it was a turning point and I wanted to mark the day…Maybe it was the Bolton vote!
I would disagree with Mr Rich on just one thing: he says that the real victims are the american people: the iraqi people have suffered immeasurably more. The american people are victims of this group of crooks – but so are people throughout the world.
Not only is this column wonderful because Rich totally nails the entire lying BushCo administration, but he does it in a way, and in a newspaper, that’s going to reach into the homes of Mr. & Mrs. Average American, who likely do not read blogs.
His column runs on the NYT wire and is picked up by hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers across the country, and editors at regionals (I suspect from some of the editorials and LTEs) have been dying for strong statements on this whole mess.
Plus, as a former drama critic, he ties all the political actors into entertainment references that people recognize. He writes about politics as if it were bad theater, which it is.
This is more like it. This and other pieces tying Cheney and the neocons to this emerging scandal. This is what I meant when I said that concentrating just on Rove was not enough. Rove will resign—so what?
I’m especially happy it was Frank who gave it focus. He was my editor a long time ago and I’ve always thought highly of him. He’s naturally loyal so I don’t expect him to say anything about Judy Miller unless and until anything damaging becomes public, but he’s managed to get to the nub of all of this anyway.
Well done, Frank. Now let’s the rest of us keep our eye on the ball.
One odd thing about this brouhaha.
I hear plenty of sound, hear lots of fury in those voices, see plenty of articles and coverage, but for all the rumpus and poll data I detect that the issue is at a flat crest.
Where does this story go?
Unless this story goes somewhere beyond “He did it? No, no that guy did it? Or, did he?” sort of shell game coverage, all the copy and megabytes this side of Redmond, Washington will go for naught.
Sorry to be the wet blanket, but howling about Rove, Libby, Cheney, Bush, Robert Earl, Miller, Novak and the rest of the caricatures and fright-wigs involved in this disaster is NOT reaching the public, and the “Tune Out Point” that point where the public tunes out a story unless something breaks loose is fast approaching. There are too many players in this tale of horror to readily digest, and dismissal of the public confusion is a recipe for regret!
I have to hand it to the corporate media, they’ve done a bang-up job of turning this story into a run-around Vaudeville skit. Think about it. The government seeks to investigate possible treason and espionage, nasty stuff.
BUT! Within a month, a reporter is in jail facing possible criminal contempt, the entire core of the administration has been pored over, Karl Rove is like “whack-a-mole”-one second up and the next second down, and everyone this side of Laura Bush is viewed with a baleful eye. Do you see the confusion…..there are too many suspects!
Fitzgerald is tight lipped and professional, unlike the partisan Ken Starr. Until Fitzgerald speaks, we will be only guessing, and blown about by this or that story form this or that “authoritative” source. The one and only authoritative source is Mr. Fitzgerald.
[Though I do like Frank Rich’s latest!]….:o)
In a comment earlier in this thread, BrendaStewart wrote “Have we ever in our history had an administration tried and convicted of espionage?”
My answer:
Dream on.
That’s not the way it works here. The system is too big and has too many REAL checks and balances.
MEDIA checks and balances, mostly.
Of which Mr Rich’s work is but one example.
Nixon’s crimes were huge.
He ostensibly went down for a bungled burglary, but he REALLY went down because the true power in this country…the Permanent Government, so to speak (Corporate power, intelligence and military power…) lost confidence in him. He disobeyed them and he paid the price.
The same with JFK.
Really…the same with Clinton, only the part of the PermaGov that did THAT was heavily right wing and ideologically driven. It was a new consolidation (neo-con-solidation) of power. The centrist, business as usual, The-Business-Of-America-Is-Business power LET it happen. Out of weakness.
Out of sheer, overweight, complacent stupidity.
But now those same people see that indeed BushCo is BAD for business. And they are finally going after its ass.
However…an entire administration tried for espionage woild be even WORSE for business. So it is going down for the minor outing of a so-called spy.
Someone who willingly worked for an organization that has been MOST effective in using REAL terror to enforce the will of the American oligarchy for well over 50 years.
Not for the 100,000+ deaths on both sides of the Iraq conflict.
Not for the literally TRILLIONS of dollars of graft that have been made by this war.
Not for the totally failed tactics that they have used in prosecuting this in itself bogus “War On Terror”.
And not for the lies used in the treacherous runup to the invasion of Iraq.
For a trumped-up leak.
Sorry.
Let’s call a spade a spade here.
If they DO go down, the PermaGov will have made damned sure that it is not for their REAL crimes, because it still believes in the strategic initiatives that have been the root of the war.
They still believe in economic imperialism supported by military force.
In cheap oil, to be precise.
Mr Rich…who we MUST remember works for the insidious NY Times, the same paper that shamelessly hoorahed the Iraq invasion, the same paper that supports every Israeli position at the expense of both national security and the lives of millions of Muslims…includes in his little piece this telling paragraph.
The ghost in HIS machine, as it were. In the machine for which he works.
—
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit – the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes – is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.”
—
Not a WORD about strategy.
About underlying causes.
About Blood For Oil.
Not a word about the ruined lives of millions of Iraqis.
OR Palestinians or anyone ELSE in the third world, for that matter.
The poor American people. Boo hoo. Grossly fat, tranced out in front of a hypnotic media system, driving their hugely wasteful cars to their hugely wasteful supermarkets to stock up on MORE things to take them through the lovely summer weekend.
Barebecue sauce and bad beer?
The real victims?
I think not.
Victims of bad taste, at most.
Not a word on WHY so many “terrorists” are willing to self-immolate in a cause.
“Why…they’ve got to be CRAZY!!!”
Maybe so…
Maybe not.
When the tide of public opinion turned against the Vietnam War…WAS turned really, by the media… images of the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc
were used to press home the heroism of the Vietnamese people.
Of course that WAS a totally self-sacrificial thing to do. But is that any more noble than willingly killing oneself in an act of war? A war in the justice of which you believe?
And don’t tell me about “civilians”. The US kills “civilians” as if they were GNATS when it is about its imperialist enforcement work.
Bet on it.
Maybe it was the Buddhist MONKS who were “crazy”.
Or again…maybe not.
But either way…the fact remains that Mr. Rich is spinning for the establishment.
For the left wing of the PermGov.
Which when you get right down to it is the left wing of the RIGHT wing.
So let’s not get too giddy over the apparent turn of events in the media.
Parse every word for its real meaning.
And remember that if we do not effect a real revolution in the STRATEGY of the United States…in our energy strategy and in our international economic strategies as well, particularly regarding the other 4/5ths of the population of the earth that we laughingly refer to as “The Third World” (As if they were just a bunch of dark-skinned singing and dancing extras in some Marx Brothers movie.)…then we are simply postponing the inevitable by replacing BushCo with some version of BushCo Lite.
And Frank Rich wasn’t such a hot Broadway critic, either. Known as “The Butcher of Broadway” by some of his targets (I was there…I saw it, up close and personal), we have to ask ourselves:
How on EARTH did an opinionated, prissy, ignorant little theater critic rise to such a position of prominence in the world of political pundits?
—
(http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/RICH-BIO.html)
In addition to his work at The Times, Mr. Rich has written about culture and politics for many other publications. His childhood memoir, “Ghost Light,” was published in 2000 by Random House and as a Random House Trade Paperback in 2001. The film rights to Ghost Light have been acquired by Storyline Entertainment. A collection of Mr. Rich’s drama reviews, “Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993,” was published by Random House in October 1998. His book, “The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson,” co-authored with Lisa Aronson, was published by Knopf in 1987.
Before joining The Times, Mr. Rich was a film and television critic at Time magazine. Earlier, he had been film critic for the New York Post and film critic and senior editor of New Times magazine. He was a founding editor of the Richmond (Va.) Mercury, a weekly newspaper, in the early 1970’s.
—
For whom does Mr RICH really work?
(Wink wink, nudge nudge…)
Beware the orthodoxy.
Of EVERY wing.
Later…
Oh WOW!!!! Man, can you say things or what!!
I can still dream, can’t I??!!!
If I can dream the impossible dream, then, just maybe, it might come true.
Listen, I do care and I suppose I care way toooooo much about America. Who is to say. Maybe I am a little ignorant of some issues. Who is to say. I am one who wants the wrong to be righted and then maybe then we can start to build the world and America back together in such a way that we can all live in peace.
This takes lots of talking to one another and listening to each other. I will try not to judge anyone or anything till I can see thru the fog of said topic.
But please allow me to dream….Anyhow, I want to thank you for your imput. Yet more for me to digest here. Whew!!!!!! :o) Hugs