The TREASON of the current administration

CONTEMPTIBLE

TRAITORS:

GET THEM OUT OF

GOVERNMENT — NOW

I think it is crucial to keep the fundamental point clearly in mind with regard to the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame story. Even though Bush’s defenders have tried to minimize the significance of this controversy in numerous ways and will no doubt continue to do so, now more than ever, the attempts at distraction are beside the point. For example, it doesn’t matter if Plame had not been overseas in some years; it doesn’t matter whether Plame was still under “deep cover” (that may indeed matter for certain legal purposes, but not in terms of the larger political and moral issues); and so on.

No: all that matters is that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, and one who worked in the especially critical area of weapons of mass destruction. Despite this overwhelmingly important fact, the Bush administration—the administration that claims its “War on Terror” is more important than anything else in the world, and that relies on its “determination” to fight our nation’s enemies to quell all doubts and questions about any of its actions—made Plame’s identity known to the public, via leaks to the press. And the Bush administration did this as only one part of an exceptionally nasty game of silencing its critics, as a way of seeking revenge against Joseph Wilson, who had dared to question one of the administration’s claims about the supposed threat that Iraq represented. The administration thus hoped to send a message to any possible future critics of its actions: shut up if you know what’s good for you. If you don’t, we will do anything to discredit and destroy you.

By exposing her identity, the administration undercut the CIA’s ability to work against the spread of dangerous weapons, it put our nation at greater risk, and it placed not only Plame’s life in danger—but also the lives of all those in Plame’s network of contacts, a network built up over many years of work. We will never know how many people may have been endangered by the administration’s actions, or how many people may have died as a result. On top of this, we had all of Bush’s statements that he wanted to get to the bottom of the story, that he wanted to know what had happened, and that he wanted everyone who worked for him to tell the full truth about their part in this story, if any.

We know now that all of this was a charade, and a lengthy series of vicious, contemptible lies. If Bush had genuinely wanted to know the truth, he could have demanded that people start talking, at least to him, or he would begin asking for people’s resignations. He could have brought all the pressures commanded by the Presidency to bear to discover the truth. He did next to nothing, except mouth empty platitudes and strike poses. These were not standard-issue, everyday political lies: these were lies going directly to a matter of national security, lies on a subject of the gravest importance. And they were lies which directly contradicted Bush’s public stance as brave, intransigent warrior against our nation’s enemies—the role upon which he depends for his political survival.

But now we know that at least one of those closest to the President was prepared to sell anyone out, and to put our nation at great risk—all for the sake of political revenge, and for the sole purpose of shutting up the administration’s critics. If I were an elected official at any level of government, I would demand that Bush resign immediately. That is the least he should do—and hopefully a much harsher fate will be his at some point, via the appropriate legal and/or political means. If government officials do not demand Bush’s resignation, that is only a measure of their own cowardice.

In writing the foregoing, I assumed that Rove’s resignation should be a foregone conclusion. However, in the depths of corruption in which the Bush administration is mired, no such assumption is justified. It is a measure of the Bush administration’s mendacity and hypocrisy that, even under circumstances such as these, they may offer the necessary soothing phrases and meaningless words one more time—and do nothing else at all.

David Corn writes:


In that email [obtained by Newsweek], Cooper wrote that he had spoken to Rove on “double super secret background” and that Rove had told him that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s “wife…apparently works at the agency on wmd issues.” “Agency” means CIA. Read the full Newsweek piece here, and read my item below on why it is so important. 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. I explain in full the ramifications of this smoking email below.

In the earlier post, Corn writes:


But this new evidence does show that Rove—despite his lawyer’s claim that Rove “did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA”—did reveal to Cooper in a deep-background conversation that Wilson’s wife was in the CIA. No wonder special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursued Cooper so fiercely. And Fitzgerald must have been delighted when Time magazine—over Cooper’s objection—surrendered Cooper’s emails and notes, which, according to a previous Newsweek posting by Michael Isikoff, named Rove as Cooper’s source. In court on Wednesday, Fitzgerald said that following his receipt of Cooper’s emails and notes “it is clear to us we need [Cooper’s] testimony perhaps more so than in the past.” This was a clue that Fitzgerald had scored big when he obtained the Cooper material.

This new evidence could place Rove in serious political, if not legal, jeopardy (or, at least it should). If what I am told is true, 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?

On September 27, 2003—after the news broke that the Justice Department, responding to a request from the CIA, was investigating the Plame/CIA leak—White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the Plame/CIA leak, “That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing.” He also declared that the allegation that Rove was involved in this leak was “a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true.” Days later, Bush issued a straightforward statement about the Plame/CIA leak:

There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.

Perhaps Bush won’t have to “take care of” Rove if this new evidence does not lead to a prosecutable violation of the law. But Bush also called on any government official with knowledge of the leak to “come forward and speak out.” Has Rove done so? No. So it seems he violated a presidential command. Would Bush be obliged to fire him for insubordination? And there’s another key point to consider: whether Rove told the truth when he testified to Fitzgerald’s grand jury. Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, has acknowledged that Rove appeared before the grand jury, and Luskin has said that Rove did speak to Cooper prior to the publication of the Novak column. But what did Rove tell Fitzgerald and the grand jury about this conversation with Cooper? And—here’s the big question—does Rove’s account jibe with the new documentary evidence that Newsweek is scheduled to disclose. If it does not, Fitzgerald would have a good start on a perjury charge against Rove.


I noted yesterday, in an essay about the lessons to be learned from the London bombings: “I say those lessons are obvious, even though Bush and his most dedicated defenders have now proven definitively that they can deny anything, and that they will enthusiastically make the most blatantly self-contradictory arguments without a trace of reluctance or intellectual integrity.” I therefore have full confidence that Bush’s cheering chorus of sycophants will easily be able to reconcile their vision of Noble Leader with this latest confirmation of the perfidy committed by someone in what is most likely the highest position of trust in his administration. If the catastrophe of Iraq and the unending trail of blood cannot cause them even a momentary qualm, I see no reason to think this news will.

In the final analysis, I don’t give a damn about the legal technicalities, and I don’t care whether Rove’s actions satisfy every jot and tittle of the applicable statute. It would certainly be just to see Rove in jail, but in political terms that isn’t the point.

The point is a simple one: Bush and many of those in his administration are untrustworthy on the most fundamental level. They don’t care about national security, and they don’t care about the lives of those whose safety they are sworn to protect, despite all their vacuous statements to the contrary. When their own credibility was put in question, they were prepared to endanger our safety, and they were prepared to put people’s lives in peril—including those people who worked the hardest and took the greatest risks in seeking to protect the United States from danger.

In moral and political terms, if not in strictly legal ones, these people are traitors—to the United States, and to each and every one of us. These people are unfit to serve. They should be denounced and forced out of government, now and forevermore.

If some of them go to jail as well, fine. But get them out of government. Now.

In this case, it is not an exaggeration but the literal truth to state: people’s lives are at stake—including yours, and mine.