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News, Views, & Analysis Governments, Lobbies, & the
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'Today, What Karl Rove Said is the story. And there's every indication that for the first time, he is in deep shit."
From the Blogosphere:
David Corn reports this morning that Newsweek has obtained a copy of emails sent from Matt Cooper to his editor revealing that Karl Rove is the source of the Plame leak. "There now is clear-cut evidence that Rove was involved in--if not the chief architect of--the actions that led to the outing of Plame/Wilson. If he's not in severe legal trouble, he ought to be in political peril," he says, and in another post, explains the full ramifications.
10 July
<>
"I can understand why the White House might want the American public to be talking about Judith Miller instead of the larger story about someone in the White House breaking the law to crush a political opponent. But I do not understand why the media prefers to talk about Judith Miller over what appears to be the first wave of a Watergate type scandal," writes Jeffrey Feldman. 8 July
"Apathy? Disbelief?
Actually, I don't think those are the reasons. What we are seeing in this total silence from the press on a scandal of Watergate proportions, is the Dan Rather Effect on the media." Read on to learn about the Dan Rather Effect. (Frameshop) 8 July
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ROVE and the WHITE HOUSE
on the run this time
Is Karl Rove Screwed, or Not?
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 11 July. If you read MER and BlogWashington.com you have known for some time that the Karl Rove/White House scandal would soon be exploding in Washington with potentially devastating political results. It's a modern-day Watergate-like cover-up saga so far missing a modern-day Deep Throat. But in the past few days this major story is beginning to emerge from journalistic hesitation and cowardice on the part of what we all now call the 'mainstream' and 'corporate' media. It was more than a week ago on 2 July that the following appeared at BlogWashington.com:
Another reality which will soon, finally, be leaking out further in Washington because of the confidential sources investigation, is that it was non-other than White House Rasputin Karl Rove himself who outed former deep-cover CIA operative Valerie Plame. But don't expect the powers that be in Washington to really do anything about Rove... If there were accountability and justice in today's Washington Karl Rove would be indicted, for what he did and which is about to come out, actually broke a law protective of undercover CIA operatives...
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Is Karl Rove Screwed, or Not?
<>By Jan Frel*
<>
(Alternet, 11 July) A week ago, what Karl Rove may have done to expose the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame was just another gone-nowhere, 2-year-old, dusty Bush scandal on the shelf, relegated to languish among the lies that got us into the war in Iraq and the doctored FDA reports that suppressed the risks of Big Pharma's moneymakers.
Today, What Karl Rove Said is the story. And there's every indication that for the first time, he is in deep shit. That's really what everyone wants to confirm: Is Karl Rove screwed, or not? And luckily for us, for the first time he's going to have to answer some questions on terms other than his.
Kenneth Lerer, a former top exec for AOL-TimeWarner, nailed in the Huffington Post how times have suddenly changed for Bush's Svengali advisor. Here's the world Karl Rove until now has lived in:
[When] Rove says he can't be quoted, he's not quoted. Period. He knows what he says will never ever come back to haunt him. Talk to the reporter. Say what he wants to. Move on to the next call. It's like talking to your psychiatrist or rabbi/priest: It's a private conversation never to be repeated.
And now in the present:
But now imagine if some of the things you said to your psychiatrist, rabbi/priest all of a sudden were to become public. Shit. Now you understand Rove's problem.
But, considering the fact that not one of the seven hairs on Rove's balding head has been so much as singed since Bush took office, it's worth looking at what it is that will take the man down. Is it the court case, or will it be political damage?
David Corn points out that Rove doesn't need to go jail for this incident to do grievous harm to the White House -- and that's what we all care about anyway, right? That for once, Bush or Rove or somebody in the administration gets an uppercut that keeps them down on the mat, or at least out for an eight-count. It's about seeing that you can hurt these folks, who have been miraculous untouchables in their first four-and-a-half years.
Corn writes, "This is proof that the Bush White House was using any information it could gather on Joseph Wilson -- even classified information related to national security -- to pursue a vendetta against Wilson, a White House critic. Even if it turns out Rove did not break the law regarding the naming of intelligence officials, this new disclosure could prove Rove guilty of leaking a national security secret to a reporter for political ends. What would George W. Bush do about that?"
Corn reminds us that in George Bush's statements on the leak scandals of 2003, Bush threatened to "take care of" anyone behind the leak. And that he ordered anyone with knowledge about the Plame affair to come forward. Corn writes, "Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination?"
Rove is certainly nailed for that. His firing would certainly approach the political damage so many have waited years for.
But it will take media bullying and a concerted effort by all the progressive bully pulpits to turn the Rove's role in the Plame affair into the Question That Bush Must Answer. Oddly enough if it comes down to a political and media battle, Karl Rove is screwed only if a convincing public case is made that what Rove Did Was Wrong, and that Karl Rove Is Screwed.
Reading all the articles and analyses out there, it's pretty clear that no one has a clue if the court case will bring down Rove; with the possible exception of Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in charge of the case, and even then, he probably doesn't have a clue, either. Not very satisfying, is it? Imagine that despite all this frenzy, no one has even got a solid lead so far on whether on not Karl Rove will be indicted, and if you consider that the stretch between being indicted and going to jail for something is longer than Tom DeLay's list of ethical scandals, there's no point in waiting to find out if Rove will plea-bargain for parole before he turns 60.
Consider Sunday's Big Revelation, which comes from Michael Isikoff in Newsweek. Isikoff published a copy of an email by Time's Matt Cooper in his report that names Rove as the source who leaked Valerie Plame's identity. Here's the money-shot sentence pulled whole-cloth from the email: "It was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."
Not only this, Rove is now known to have leaked this information before Bob Novak wrote about it in his infamous column of 2003, a loophole of Rove's potential defense now sealed. Potential defense, because of course, if Rove hadn't talked about Plame until Novak published his column, then Rove would be able to say that he learned about Plame reading the column.
So he's screwed, right?
Well, there's no proof that Rove lied about this yet, because in what has become his central public testimony is that he didn't know or leak her name. By saying "she" or "Wilson's wife," or whatever, he's not necessarily lying. Whether Rove lied under oath is still a private matter between Fitzgerald and the grand jury. And then the only other way Rove goes to jail is if he "knowingly" blew Plame's cover, and of course, whether or not someone knowingly did something is one of the hardest things to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is one thing causing a distraction from the wave of reports on the Rove scandal, and that is much of the reporting itself. All the big breaking stories on the Rove scandals carry a tone that makes it clear that each word tapped out by every journalist from Michael Isikoff of Newsweek to Dan Balz at the Washington Post was produced in an atmosphere where the authors were judging their work against the giant stories of journalism: the Pentagon Papers, the discovery of Mai Lai massacre, Watergate. Same with the TV analysts and their pronouncements.
The vanity of these these power-hungry hacks swarming around Karl Rove's fate is, I think, revealed perfectly in the very same email from Time's Matt Cooper that confirmed Karl Rove as his source. Cooper writes with boyish glee that Rove told him these things about Valerie Plame on the condition that they use the Tree-House Gang's highest security clearance: "double super secret background." Cooper of course agreed, but only on the condition that Rove would supply the chocolate bars.
But that's another distraction from the real story here, which is that for the first time, there is real blood in Bush's political waters -- and that Karl Rove Is Screwed. Alternet, 11 July.
* Jan Frel has worked as an editor for AlterNet and TomPaine.com, and is a contributing editor to Personal Democracy Forum.
http://www.alternet.org/story/23451/
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July 2005
It's The Damn Policies Stupid!
(July 20, 2005)
Long-time MER readers will not find all this a total surprise. We've been 'preaching' for some time that what is happening today can in fact be traced back to what has happened ever since the end of World War I in the Middle East, to Western policies ever since the carve-up of the old Ottoman Empire. It was then, at the so-called 'Paris Peace Conference', that the Turkish Muslim Empire of old was ended by force of arms and the Arab peoples tricked once again by those who professed 'self-determination' (the 'freedom' slogan of that era) but were in fact determined to deny the Arabs their independence and any semblance of democracy.
American Terror and the Coming War With Iran
(July 19, 2005)
"In their ignorance and arrogance, the Bushists will almost certainly strike at Iran -- despite the fact that even Iranian dissidents support the effort to make their nation a nuclear power and would join the mullahs in retaliation. The result will be a
conflict far surpassing the horror and magnitude of the Iraq disaster."
George Bush's Twisted and Perverted World
(July 18, 2005)
So much for real democracy. Even in the supposed 'bastion of freedom', the United States of America, we are all now closer than ever to living in what has to be considered a complicated modern day police-states using pre-fascist techniques. That is what omni-present 'survelliance', unchecked Gulags, 'Patriot Acts', Supreme Court 'stop the vote counting' decisions, torture techniques, legalized 'censorship', CIA covert and black ops, and continual press manipulation are really all about.
A BIG WARNING - Too Little Too Late Too Bad
(July 18, 2005)
Unfortunately, tragically, those who oppose what the Israelis are doing are not only very weak, they are badly organized and led -- miserably and probably fatally in fact. This 'Warning' Statement 'to raise the alarm' published over the weekend by three Israelis is an example -- correct in the warnings and conclusions, badly written, even more badly presented, and without any serious strategy other than a kind of pathetic assertion to sign another petition that has no chance of any kind of having any impact...only further misleading people as to what is really involved and what the situation really requires.
(July 18, 2005)
(July 18, 2005)
Greg Szymanski Articles - 9/11 Conspiracy
(July 18, 2005)
Witchhunt against Ward Churchill
(July 17, 2005)
ISRAEL and SHARON'S LATEST AND GREATEST DECEPTION
(July 16, 2005)
There are very few print magazines that deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a serious and sophisticated way. One of these is a bi-monthly English magazine called Challenge; and this editorial from the current issue is of particular interest and importance at this particular time. All the more so with the Israelis so outrageously trying to cajole and extort still further billions from the U.S. -- a financial swindle on top of what really rises to the level of a major historical and political scam. It is indeed always challenging to really understand the actual, rather than the public relations, policies of Israel; and of the U.S. as well. More and more in fact.
Arafat's 'Stealth Assassination' Confirmed
(July 13, 2005)
Last November, long before any other credible expert news and analysis media, and even as the Israeli/U.S.-chosen Palestinian leaders were strenuously denying it, MER repeatedly published articles detailing the "STEALTH ASSASSINATION" of Yasser Arafat.
Washington Prepares More Attacks in the name of the 'New World Order'
(July 12, 2005)
Nothing like more 'terrorism', more appeals to no-nothing patriotism, and more 'defending the homeland' jingoism to rally the people around the flag, no matter what the long-term costs, no matter how much social polarization and opposition... Washington's current political/military and domestic/international time-table goes something like this: Get one or two right-wing appointees within a few months onto the Supreme Court, get the Israelis out of little imprisoned Gaza giving the false impression of 'progress' in the 'Middle East Peace Process', claim to be fast-track training Iraqi regime troops so the Iraqis can be blamed themselves for not 'stabilizing' their country and/or for the escalating civil war; and then be ready to strike one way or another whenever the timing and excuses are suitable against the remaining 'evils'... Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas.
Washington Firestorm over Rove, Court - Calculating Next 'New World Order' Strikes
(July 12, 2005)
"...and then be ready to strike one way or another, whenever the timing and excuses are suitable, against the remaining 'evils'... Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas."
Recent MER Articles
(July 09, 2005)
Has Karl Rove Finally Screwed Himself?
(July 11, 2005)
If you read MER and BlogWashington.com you have known for some time that the Karl Rove/White House scandal would soon be exploding in Washington with potentially devastating political results. It's a modern-day Watergate-like cover-up saga so far missing a modern-day Deep Throat. But in the past few days this major story is beginning to emerge from journalistic hesitation and cowardice on the part of what we all now call the 'mainstream' and 'corporate' media. It was more than a week ago on 2 July that the following appeared at BlogWashington.com:
POPE FANS FLAMES OF CHRISTIAN - MUSLIM WAR
(July 10, 2005)
Add to these acts and statements of the Pope of Rome, certainly the most visible and powerful symbol of Christianity, the ever-increasing Evangelical 'Born Again' nature of American society these days on top of George W. Bush's public assertion of 'Crusade' both in word and deed, and you have a formula for escalating religious-inspired warfare for a long time to come. Things are now escalating further out of control into a real 'Clash of Civilizations'; though this certainly did not have to be.
The Apartheid Wall - A Year After the Historic ICJ ruling
(July 9, 2005)
Meanwhile the Israelis have continued racing ahead not only with 'The Wall' but also with their grand design to further build and consolidate the great majority of settlements they plan to keep and expand, while feinting 'withdrawal' from the small few they have always planned to give up as far too costly, isolated, and 'dispensable'.
It is all a receipe for much further conflict, bloodshed, and turmoil in the years ahead; just as it is this Jews Vs Arabs conflict in the 'Holy Land' which in the past has so poisoned the region and indeed now the world.
Britain had been warned says Robert Fisk
(July 8, 2005)
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours."
The Most Cowardly War in History
(July 8, 2005)
"The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future."
Egypt - "It's Like 1952"
(July 7, 2005)
"Egyptian society is boiling. We have seen this only one or two times in the past 80 years,"
Receiving MER - Free, Easy, Necessary
(July 7, 2005)
"Finally, I am beginning to understand, as I see so many parallels right here. I look forward to more valuable insights coming from your publication."
White House Threatened?
(July 6, 2005)
Is it really conceivable that in 2005 a legal investigation about who in government leaked the name of a secret CIA operative to the media could unravel the Bush Administration? There are so many differences from what happened to President Nixon in his second term. But even so legal proceedings have a kind of insolation from normal politics, none other than top Bush Adviser Karl Rove is being fingered as the man who did it, and supoenas are said to have now been issued for White House and Air Force One records involving Rove.
Front Nixon to Bush - 'Where Is The Press Now?' Asks Actor Robert Redford
(July 5, 2005)
He was the big star in the ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN Movie that made the Watergate scandal and 'Deep Throat' famous. Now he is saying quite loudly that President Bush is like President Nixon but that the press is not doing its crucial investigative job as it should. Redford chose American Independence Day, the 4th of July, to make his comments. And it was The Sunday Times two Sunday's ago now that published their tale of "Britain's Deep Throat":
Judith Miller and Karl Rove
(July 4, 2005)
"Miller...has a formidable track record of egregious violations of journalistic standards and best practices, and a habit of sending the public off on what turn out to be wild goose chases. Relying on a small circle of highly interested parties (often anonymous "sources"), she became the leading journalistic purveyor of the fallacy that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he was tied to Al-Qaeda."
Iraq Quagmire Indeed! 42% support Impeaching Bush
(July 3, 2005)
"...more than two-in-five (42%) voters say that, if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment. While half (50%) of respondents do not hold this view, supporters of impeachment outweigh opponents in some parts of the country."
Karl Rove Fireworks Looming
(July 2, 2005)
It's been rumored for some time; but now that the long investigation is going to definitely and legally 'out' Karl Rove as 'the source' -- in this case according to federal statute an illegal act knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent -- what is fast approaching is some fierce political and legal fireworks immediately after the 4th of July fireworks.
Recent MER Articles
(July 1, 2005)
From Germany To America
(July 1, 2005)
"What no one seemed to notice...was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider.... What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."
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