Fitzmas, and the Day that Wasn't
Obviously, this is a huge day in American politics. I. Lewis Libby was indicted on five counts; two of which are perjury charges, and because they are felony charges, they are no laughing matter. Karl Rove and his lawyers seem to have slipped the light fantastic and avoided indictments, for now anyway.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has stated that the investigation is not over, but the grand jury he's had empaneled for the last two years must adjourn, and any evidence of further charges must be brought before a newly selected grand jury.
What stinks to the absolute high heavens in the outing of this CIA operative is that it wreaks of a slime and divide operation run by Karl Rove. This case has his shit smears all over it. When William Kristol of the Weekly Standard complains about the "
criminalization of politics", there's one sure cure: get rid of the fucking criminals.
Fitzgerald got one of them today, but not the "architect".
Don't believe me, read James Moore's
book, or Josh Green's
article in the Atlantic Monthly.
The Cheney administration is up to their ears in this investigation, and as others have pointed out, the
real President's Chief of Staff was indicted today. In some weird way the rule of law actually still matters in this teetering republic of ours.
Lest Americans kid themselves about this whole affair, catching Karl Rove is like trying to snag a catfish with rubber gloves on. Trust me, he'll get away.
My only solace is that when the definitive history of George W. Bush's presidency is written, Karl Rove will go down as the worst thing to ever happen to American politics. Ever.
Altercation
Here's some great stuff from
Eric Alterman. He's an historian, a writer, a professor, media expert, and whip-smart. He, like yours truly, opposed the Iraq War from the get-go:
Liberals who like to lose
I am not one of these people who argues that the so-called “liberal hawks” made it possible for George W. Bush to start this disastrous war. I think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company, would have gone to war no matter what and would not have allowed anything at all to stop them. But the liberal hawks did succeed in weakening opposition to the war, as well as liberalism. By refusing to face up to the true character of this administration; its dishonesty, its incompetence; its arrogance and hubris and its utter contempt for the nuts and bolts of the incredibly difficult and complex task of attempting to remake an entire society, they are guilty at the least of criminal negligence. I try never to speculate on the motives of any given individuals. And I know that some liberal hawks were genuinely—one might even say—idealistically misguided. Some were merely careerists—no one in America has paid a political price for their catastrophic judgement vis-à-vis Iraq—and many liberals have been rewarded with new “relevance” on the cable news networks and generous book advances. A second motivation—unconscious I suppose—is that some liberals prefer losing to winning. The media seem to prefer these liberals to the tougher-minded kind. They pretend that turning on powerless liberals is somehow braver than standing up to the Bush administration and its entire propaganda apparatus in the conservative (and a healthy chunk) of the mainstream media. But of course there is no price for this and the rewards are considerable. In the meantime, right-wingers must have a good laugh at these ‘principled’ who take every political question on its merits but always end up finding fault with their own side.
I don’t know what motivated Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, here, identified in the mainstream media as one of those “responsible” liberals who is always voicing his contempt for his own side, to support the war any more than I know why, in the New York Times Book Review, he felt compelled to undermine three strong critiques of the Bush administration’s incompetence and malfeasance while endorsing its behavior in areas where he simply passed along false or incomplete accounts of its actions. (That is really the only way to defend these people alas.) But I’d by lying if I pretended to be surprised to find him defending Rove, Libby (and God willing) Cheney against indictment for their attempt to smear honest public servants like Joe Wilson and his CIA agent spouse, Valerie Plame, while breaking the law in doing so. Patrick Fitzgerald’s case offends Weisberg’s sense of principle and propriety. He had little problem with a $73 million dollar investigation into Bill Clinton’s blowjobs but he is put off by the attempt to get to the bottom of some of the nefarious political operations that were necessary to sell this dishonest and destructive war. He’d prefer that Rove, Cheney, Libby, etc., remain in power to continue to destroy what remains of value in our public life, and to smear liberals as pro-terrorist and anti-American in the process. I’m sure that position goes over quite well among talk-show bookers but I can’t imagine it’s going to do the country any good. (Am I the only person who finds the idea of right-wingers saying to one another, “Well, gee, I’d have a moral problem with doing this if only those liberals—like Republican Robert Fitzgerald—hadn’t gone ahead and done it first. Now I feel no moral qualms at all..." a bit much?)
Yeah, right.
He puts into words what I've been thinking for quite some time, and obviously far better than I ever could. I opposed the war because it was a horrible choice for American foreign policy, and American security in general. Whacking a dormant hornet's nest in the middle of the most volatile region on the planet never seemed like a good idea to me, much less sending some of our best citizens over there to die for it. Hell, even a war criminal like Henry Kissenger will tell you that containment works, and it was working in Iraq. Something that's rarely mentioned is that if the U.N. weapons inspectors had been allowed to to complete their tasks, the entire world would've known that Iraq was completely weapons-free, nevermind the two no-fly zones over the northern and southern thirds of the country.
Liberals are continually sneered at for being softies on national security, and the media runs with that tripe every time an election comes around. Liberals like me believe that sending our military off on some fool's errand in the sand is detrimental to national security, not good for it. Guess what? Now that our military is stuck in the sludge in Iraq, military action, if we should ever need it, is off the fucking table when it comes to North Korea. That's a grievous misuse of American military power. When President Bush tells us that using force in Iraq was a last option, I see him and his tragic legacy whistliing past the graveyard. He's a liar. Military force was his
first option, never his last. (And let's be fair, Richard Cheney runs the entire operation in the White House, but Shrub certainly is complicent.)
This is, as I saw it back in the summer of 2002, the horrible debacle that has unfolded before us all. I tought it would be handled badly by this crew, but I never dreamed they'd fuck it up like this. Face it, there are no good options left. That Liberal hawks went along for the ride is really sorry, but at least we have a new meaning for the word "douche bag".
What cooks my goose is that the media endlessly trumpets the conservative line that Republicans are the only ones that can keep us safe, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Five years of their policies, stomping around the planet like a stupid elephant, make it all painfully clear that their way doesn't work. All you're left with is high body counts, and no credibility.
Liberals have a better way. Now that we're all acting on a global stage, what of international alliances? NATO? Security agreements? The U.N.? Can't these be useful tools in making the world safer? This is as simple as a fourth grade sandbox argument, one which conservatives avoid, and it's called "getting along with others." Put logically it's simple, but in their minds American hegemony trumps all, and God save the appeasers.
Toensing: Nutjob at the Wheel
Most younger folks won't remember the Saturday Night Live skit featuring Toonces the Driving Cat, but believe me, it was priceless. In my head I keep trying to rhetorically shoe horn Republican legal hatchet woman Victoria Tonesing's commentary into some analogy about her driving off a legal cliff, but it doesn't quite fit. Anyway, there's some people in the commentariat that really get under my skin. And Vicky, while not very well known, has taken to the cable airwaves to spout her vile scrapings. Last night's victim, aside from the viewers, was Chris Matthews of
Hardball:
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. As we‘ve discussed, Judy Miller testified again in front of the grand jury and we‘re expecting Karl Rove to return soon.
So what‘s it like to be inside a grand jury investigation?
We turn to two people who have been there. Former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing, and Sol Wisenberg, who was a deputy independent counsel under Ken Starr—famous name.
Victoria, let me ask you, just if you can look through a glass darkly and try to tell us what do you think is going on with this effort by the special prosecutor bringing back Karl Rove or letting him come back for more testimony, going after Judy Miller again for more testimony before the grand jury?
What is he working toward as you watch him?
VICTORIA TOENSING, FMR. DEP. ASST. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Chris, at one point maybe about a month ago I would have said he‘s a lawyer who is dotting every I, crossing every T, he‘s just being thorough and he‘s telling the press, you wanted an investigation, I‘ll show you an investigation so that no one can say that I skipped any little beat in this thing.
But I think recently, I have seen evidence that he has lost it. He has gone over the edge.
This is one of the first signs that the GOP political machine is out to discredit the prosecutor in the Plame leak case. I saw this coming, but many on the Right have held back. Her implication is that Patrick Fitzgerald is either on a wild goose chase, or he's lost his mind.
TOENSING: Look, go back in time and just think about this a little bit. When Bob Novak wrote his column it could just have easily been framed as he, Bob Novak was exposing nepotism. But it didn‘t happen that way because the press didn‘t like President Bush and framed it all for poor Joe Wilson. If a wife gets a husband an assignment and he doesn‘t have any experience in WMD and he doesn‘t have any kind of senior experience in the country, Novak thought he was exposing nepotism.
This is where the writer, yours truly, loses
his mind because this woman is not only very misleading, she's full of horseshit. Let's see, his experience might encompass not just Niger, but the entire African continent. Here's a
brief review of his public service, all very honorable:
Wilson served as U.S. ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe under President George H. W. Bush and helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He was hailed as "truly inspiring" and "courageous" by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than one hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein's threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. As a result, in 1990, he also became the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein (Wilson, 2003).
Here she says that if there was nepotism, it's all fine and dandy to go breaking the law and ruining our intelligence operations:
TOENSING: So when somebody says his wife picked him, that would be fair game to get out. Nobody—Novak never ...
And what do we have here, Toonces?
TOENSING: Chris, you know what was happening with reporters at that time. And you weren‘t one of them because I‘m not—that‘s not what you do, but the written press was going around saying, why Wilson? Why Wilson? And they were calling all over. There were probably a dozen reporters around here saying, why would they pick that idiot because he wasn‘t well thought of, and we all know that, and if it wasn‘t for ...
An idiot. She wasn't done, she said it again:
TOENSING: But can‘t you see the vice president—being in the vice president‘s office, and call over to the CIA why did you pick this idiot, as they learned that he was?
MATTHEWS: Right.
This is where I get a little hot under the collar. Channeling Dick Cheney, she blithely calls a former ambassador of the U.S., literally the last man out of Bahgdad before the first Gulf War, an idiot. Adding insult to injury, Tweety Bird plays along by sputtering in the affirmative. He's not done either. It doesn't show up well in the transcripts, but Tweety admits to getting lead around by the nose, apparently under Toonces' spell:
MATTHEWS: It‘s fun to fight with you because you sometimes beat me like just—anyway, thank you.
No, how about Fuck You Chris, you mental midget. Toensing's present claim to fame on the talking head shows is that she helped write the Intelligence Identities Act. That's all well and good, except she thinks it only applies to Republican detractors. Whenever people she and her husband throw money at come into the crosshairs, it's plainly obvious the law doesn't apply.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Vicky is lower than snail shit. Maybe that comes with the territory when you're a two-bit legal shill that has Reagan Justice Department credentials on your resume, but when we all get to see it, there's no way to get away from the stench.
Inside the Beltway
This is a really great
post by Digby, go visit his blog
Hullabaloo often:
Don't Look At Me
Read this very interesting Hardball transcript of a discussion between Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell as they dissect the body of public evidence we have about Fitzgerald's investigation. They speculate grandly about what Fitzgerald's up to --- and you can see that there is some serious trepidation about Fitz coming in and trashing the place by expecting Republicans to uphold the law.
But there is one tiny bit of information that they both fail to mention in their wide ranging discussion of all things Fitzgerald: the fact that both of them were subpoenaed in the case! And neither of these fine reporters have actually, you know, reported what that was about.
I especially love questions like this: "Yes, I think we are looking at something. What do you think, Jim? What do you know, actually?"
What do you know Chris? You're allegedly a reporter. You're the guy who talks incessantly about manly men and how they behave. Tell us your impressions of Patrick Fitzgerald. Presumably you've met him. What was he like? What did he ask you? What did you tell him? Can you not say anything because your lawyer had advised you not to? If so, why?
This story is the weirdest kabuki dance I've ever seen. I thought it was absurd when the news anchors held the exit poll results but winked and nodded all day about the outcome. (That's become so bizarre after the last two elections, however, that their winks and nods will be meaningless in any close election.) But this is ridiculous. We have big time reporters in the Washington press corps who know a lot more about what is going on than they are saying. A number of them have been interviewed by the Justice department or testified. They are part of the story. And yet they pretend that they are "objective" reporters who have no personal knowledge of events and don't even feel the need to issue a disclaimer saying that they had been interviewed or they testified and can't talk about it.
I have been hard on Judith Miller for not writing anything, but I'm beginning to really believe that she is in legal jeopardy. (That doen't excuse the NY Times, of course, for their failures.) For the life of me, I can't understand any journalistic ethics that would hold that it is ok for Chris matthews and Andrea Mitchell to discuss the ins and outs of a highly detailed story, speculate about the prosecutor and who he's talking to, without having to say that they are personally involved in the case. But then I'm just an amoral, psuedonymous blogger from nowhere who can't be trusted.
I won't even mention the BMOC (big man on channel) Tim Russert, who is clearly not only involved in the case, he is at the very center of it. (The Anonymous Liberal nicely connects those dots, here.) I can find no evidence that Russert has ever admitted or been asked on the air that he had anything to do with the case at all. Apparently this strange DC journalistic omerta precludes people from mentioning that fact even while they are being grilled by Russert on their own knowledge of the case.
After reading this laughable pile of offal by Richard Cohen today (who, as usual, writes precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time)I'm more convinced than ever that something very sick has happened to our politics. Andrea Mitchell said on Hardball last night: "Chris, we should point out that there is a difference between playing political hardball, which people in Washington play and people in this White House play, and anything that approaches a crime." This idea that character assassination has become so normalized that even the outing of a CIA agent for political purposes is considered business as usual is outrageous and it explains a lot about what has gone wrong with our government.
The subjects of this investigation are the most powerful people on this planet. The case involves not just politics as usual but a concerted effort to conceal information about the rationale leading up to this misbegotten war. When the administration was confronted by critics, they could have laid out the reasons why Wilson was incorrect. Instead, they chose to forcefully discredit him with a ridiculous nepotism charge and in the course of that, whether purposefully of out of carelessness, they revealed a CIA agent's cover.
This was not just politics, it was a cover up using strong arm tactics. We may not have known definitively in the summer of 2003 that after all the administration's so-called proof that there were no WMD in Iraq, but we sure as hell do now. Whether they technically committed a crime under the Victoria Toensing statute, or whether they perjured themselves or obstructed justice before the grand jury to cover their political crimes, it should be prosecuted. Richard Cohen and Andrea Mitchell may think this is trivial, but I doubt that most people in this country will find it so. They understand the difference between consensual blowjobs, character assassination and national security even if the beltway doesn't.
This is at its essence about a toxic political culture. The press has abdicated its reponsibility to hold the powerful accountable. A highly centralized Republican political machine observes no limits. The opposition party is purposefully rendered impotent and irrelevant. The checks and balances are no longer in place.
The only institution that has the ability to cut through the spin, the lies, the strong-arm tactics is the justice system. Politics have become criminalized to be sure --- by the political criminals and their friendly helpmates in the press. The law is all we've got left. God help us.
Enough said...
