Peabody Award Winner Flays Bush/Rove To The Bone

PUBLIC CATCHING

ON TO DIRTY

DEEDS
By Bill Gallagher Link

DETROIT -- Lying and denying, kicking and screaming, the Busheviks are defending comrade Karl Rove from the enemies of the state who are attacking him. We now have the "smoking gun" evidence that Rove was involved in the sordid scheme to "out" CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Retribution, a quintessential Rove political weapon, brought him to expose Plame and risk national security in the process to get back at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about George W. Bush's phony claims that Saddam Hussein was shopping for enriched uranium. Wilson debunked the bogus story that Iraq was seeking the nuclear material in Niger. That was a body blow for the Busheviks, who had worked so diligently to "fix" intelligence and build the lies to justify the invasion of Iraq.

A few weeks ago, when Rove claimed liberals coddled terrorists and wanted to provide them "therapy," I offered a few thoughts about the deputy White House chief of staff, the president's "brain," and designer of his political career.

I wrote, "Karl Rove is the most vile, despicable, duplicitous, power-addicted, warmongering, lying neo-fascist in the administration, save Dick Cheney and the man who lets them run the government for him."

Yes, I know. I am prone to benevolence and understatement.

Additionally, Rove is a treasonous coward, the most manipulative and cynical political operative since Rasputin. He has brought his political venereal disease to public life and Rove's clap has infected a large segment of the once-respectable Republican Party. He has mainstreamed and brought to national practice his ruthless partisanship, grand diversions and deceptions and, above all, his model of winning elections by using any means necessary to destroy opponents.

The fellow travelers defending his treachery share Rove's shame. For two years, the White House denied he played any role in the plot to attack Joe Wilson by exposing his wife's work, calling suggestions of Rove's involvement "totally ridiculous." Now, with even Rove admitting

his involvement, his apologists are

defending his treason.

A Wall Street Journal editorial calls the disclosure of the identity of a covert CIA officer a "pseudo-scandal" and says that Rove "deserves a prize" for being a "whistleblower."

On the Fox News Channel, the American Pravda and White House news agency, blabbing-head John Gibson said Rove should be given a "medal" and that he was glad someone finally outed Valerie Plame. The Republican spin was that Rove was only trying to help reporters get the story straight. Had anyone in the Clinton administration done what Rove has admitted to, these same people would be calling for the death penalty. Their hypocrisy is boundless.

The Rip Van Winkles in the White House press corps finally woke up and started calling the Busheviks just what they are -- shameless liars who will deny the truth with the conviction of flat-earthers.

The pressure of having his lies exposed and having to lie some more is clearly taking a toll on White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He looks like a just-goosed Pillsbury doughboy.

As the reporters grilled him, you know McClellan was thinking "God, where is Jeff Gannon when I really need him?"

Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, was the fake reporter McClellan and Karl Rove provided White House press credentials to so he could repeat their talking points, pretending he was asking serious questions. Guckert's night job was as a homosexual prostitute, an apt complement to the services he provided the Busheviks during the day.

McClellan repeated George W. Bush's faith in Rove, a man the president often calls "turd blossom." That's Bush's tribute to his conviction Rove has the uncanny ability to make something sweet and pretty spring from something not so pleasant.

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence," McClellan said.

NBC's David Gregory and ABC's Terry Moran stripped McClellan of any credibility and respectability, pointing to his litany of lies in claiming Rove had "no involvement" in discussing Wilson and his wife with reporters.

But many others in the corporate media are just where Rove wants them -- focusing on the narrow question of his criminality. Far more significant is Rove's admitted role in chatting with reporters about Wilson and Plame's relationship, and his clear intent to discredit Wilson and his findings about the Niger hoax.

This whole scandal is about one of the biggest lies the Busheviks used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Without the enriched uranium story, Bush couldn't scare the hell out of people in a State of the Union address, Condoleezza Rice couldn't make her ominous "mushroom cloud" references, Dick Cheney couldn't recite his solemn claim that Saddam Hussein was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons," Colin Powell's speech to the UN would have had more holes in it, and Donald Rumsfeld's inflated assessments of Iraq's weapons would have burst earlier.

These slimeballs are not really

Republicans and they are hardly

conservatives. They are Busheviks, first and foremost. They don't care about the virtues of our republic or any kind of principle. They don't care what their serial lying does to public discourse. Power alone drives them. Karl Rove will do anything to seize and preserve power. That is his opium, and he used another addicted soul to feed his habit.

Rove's most sinister deed, so far, is the creation of George W. Bush as a marketable and successful political product. Rove made this turd blossom and the results for our nation and the world are catastrophic.

Rove saw potential in Bush his own family didn't. Here was a drunk, later dry-drunk, untreated alcoholic, who failed in nearly every business he touched. On several occasions, his daddy's pals and Saudi influence-peddlers had to rescue George W.'s oil ventures from the jaws of bankruptcy.

Then Bush pulled a few insider-trading tricks to improve his cash flow. A special prosecutor, spending years and $70 million to investigate George W.'s business dealings as Ken Starr did with Bill Clinton's, would have found some real dirty deals. George W. didn't have to put up a dime of his own money when his daddy's pals cut him a share of the Texas Rangers baseball team. That also gave Bush a high-profile position. The corporate welfare the City of Arlington, Texas, provided enriched the team and eventually made Bush a multimillionaire in his own right.

Rove saw his opportunity and groomed Bush to run for Texas governor against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards. Suddenly, Richards was rumored to be a lesbian.

Bush was elected and this occasionally affable but intellectually lazy mediocrity was presidential material. Rove had his eye on the White House.

First, they had to destroy John McCain's candidacy, and in the South Carolina primary, rumors surfaced that McCain had fathered an illegitimate, biracial child.

You could smell the foul stench of "turd blossom" in South Carolina.

Rove and George W. Bush are actually not ideologues. They really don't believe in anything but power and money. They have created a political empire based on a seamless garment of greed. Greed feeds the power. Power feeds the greed.

Karl Rove may be in trouble, but even if he has to vacate his White House office, he'll still have Bush's ear and he'll still be able to spin out his lies.

Bush's personal credibility is plunging. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows the percentage of people who believe Bush is "honest and straightforward" fell to 41 percent from 50 percent in January.

But why has it taken so long for the American people to catch on? And why do so many still buy the big lies?

Karl Rove has that all figured out and that's why he's vital for George W. Bush. Their malignant symbiosis will endure, and more decent people will suffer and die as a result.

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Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.