In the spirit of the Fitzmas season, with its sacred rituals of gloating, I couldn’t help but bring up a direct hit by “Wry the Greek”, posted as a diary titled Harry Reid, That Sneaky Devil! after hearing of the Miers withdrawal. (Isn’t that a medical procedure?)
Read MoreNiranjan Ramakrishnan, writing at Counterpunch, reminds us of a very disturbing reality: the fact that many of us hope that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will finally be the one to finally convince all Americans that the Bush administration lied its way into the Iraq war and that he will tell us all exactly how it happened.
Despite the fact that most Americans are now opposed to the war and President Bush, many still choose not to hold the Bush administration fully accountable for what it has done. If they did, they would be screaming for their representatives to impeach Bush and Cheney for what they’ve perpetuated: the destruction of Iraq and the deaths and injuries of countless soldiers and civilians – all based on lies.
We see it in congresspeople on both sides who, as Meteor Blades reminds us, still call the war a “mistake”. As he tells us: this was not a mistake, this was a deliberate deception by power-hungry warmongers. Surely there can be no greater outrage than knowing that your country’s leaders have sent its sons and daughters to die over lies.
Yet, here we are on the eve of possible indictments in the Plame affair, after more than 2000 US soldiers have perished in Iraq and the people’s best hope for getting to the bottom of the trail of deceit that led there is one lone prosecutor – Patrick Fitzgerald – because those in power and those in the opposition cannot rock the foundations of the administration hard enough to move them out of DC permanently.
As Counterpunch’s Ramakrishnan, concludes:
So why is this riveting the country’s attention? Because the story follows the familiar theme so beloved of Hollywood and John Grisham — the lone hero struggling against a sinister web of evil, where everything comes down to one last battle on the edge of the cliff . Now playing at a TV set near you: Fitzgerald Against the Machine.
But when institutions have been hollowed out, consigning checks on unbridled power to hopes of individual heroism and goodness, we have doubly arrived, to the promised land of the Reagan revolution, and at the doorstep of the third world.
There is something very broken about a system of government that is unable and unwilling to thoroughly account for how it got itself into an illegal war and that refuses to inform its people and the rest of the world about how it will finally get out.
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal (subscription only) adds its voice in Friday’s edition to those at the NYT and WaPo which have both reported that Libby will likely be indicted for making false statements and that Karl Rove is still in serious legal jeopardy, regardless of the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald’s current grand jury ends its term on Friday. Indictments of others involved in the Plame leak case have not been ruled out.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer has tried in recent weeks to persuade Mr. Fitzgerald not to charge his client, and met with the prosecutor as recently as Tuesday to discuss the case.
The potential indictment of Mr. Rove has been considered a nightmare scenario by members of the Republican party,
Welcome to the nightmare the rest of us have been living ever since Bush and Turdblossom took over the country.
In a WSJ companion piece on the leak investigation, “At Root of Leak Probe
Is Prewar Dispute”, reporter Jay Solomon details the rift between the White House and the CIA with the help of two of our regular contributors: Larry Johnson and Col. Patrick Lang.
WASHINGTON — At the root of the investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative is a feud between the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House over whether top administration officials politicized intelligence information in the buildup to the Iraq war.
With charges likely to be filed as early as today, the ripple effects of that feud are still being felt. The same tension over prewar intelligence that led to the leaking of a CIA operative’s identity also led to finger-pointing between the agency and the White House and contributed to a decision to reorganize the intelligence community and put the CIA under new White House oversight. Dozens of senior CIA analysts and covert operatives, including the No. 2 at the Directorate of Operations — the agency’s clandestine network — have in recent months left the Langley, Va., offices, often to higher wages in the private sector.
Now some intelligence professionals think indictments might help clear the air by effectively penalizing administration aides for intruding into intelligence matters and prompting the White House to tread more carefully. And that, say current and former intelligence officials, might embolden the CIA to be more forceful in its analysis, without fearing information would be twisted.
Any indictments would be a “huge deal … because they will help restore hope that the system works,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department.
According the article, there is also growing tension as Bush appointee John Negroponte, Director of the Office of National Intelligence, attempts to reorganize the system by “stripping out some units of the CIA and placing them under his direct control” along with “seeking to institute standard procedures across the intelligence community, such as ways to handle clandestine agents”.
Much displeasure has also been aimed at Porter Goss who has been tasked with overseeing the restructuring of the CIA:
Critics say Mr. Goss brought senior-level aides and an aloof management style that didn’t mesh with the CIA’s culture, and failed to restore the confidence of the U.S.’s principal intelligence body.
The article goes on to look at the history of conflicts between the White House, CIA analysts and former CIA Director George Tenet who claimed the CIA had a “slam dunk” case to invade Iraq.
Responding to the White House’s claims that there was no political pressure on intelligence analysts and professionals before the war to fix the intelligence and that the Fitzgerald investigation may finally prove that there was, Col. Patrick Lang tells the WSJ:
Read More“Many people will feel vindicated,” said Patrick Lang, a former head of human intelligence collection at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, who has regular contact with many active analysts and agents. “There’s a deep sense of satisfaction among those who were pressured [on intelligence issues] but were told not to say they were pressured.”
Who knows what Fitzgerald has in store for us today. One thing’s for sure: there’s a lot of people lying awake in their beds tonight in DC.
Let’s finish the week with – what else – an indictment cartoon.
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Political Animals – Featuring an All-Nude Cast!
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