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It’s easy to
see why the parallels between the divisive war in Iraq and Vietnam also forged
a path to political scandal, this new one increasingly reminiscent of
Watergate: what did he know and when did he know it? We expect that the lessons Cheney, Rumsfeld et al learned under Nixon/Ford and
Reagan/Bush1 will prevent most of the incriminations from that seismic event in
modern US history – that’s why they’ve been so secretive from the beginning of
this administration – but water can erode rock and corruption takes its toil as
a cancer to the body politic. For those of
you outside the Pacific Northwest, the
Oregonian has a moderately conservative editorial board. This may be
the first but won’t be the last editorial calling for this action. Congress and
the GOP Governors have to be very uptight about what Plamegate does to 2006 and
2008, which is why some conservatives will heartily second the motion. Note the second recommendation at the
end here. Stay tuned. KwC Where the game of politics ends
President
Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, is implicated in a real security breach and
should be forced from his job The Oregonian Editorial,
Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Karl Rove may sleep a little better now that President Bush
says that lawbreaking in the Valerie Plame leak -- not just the leak itself --
will be the standard for firing anyone in the White House who disclosed Plame's
role as a CIA agent. We're not sure anyone else should. Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff, leaked the Plame-CIA information, says Time
magazine's Matthew Cooper. But, as pretty much everyone now knows, they would
have had to leak it to Osama bin Laden, sign an al-Qaida pledge card and accept
a personal check in order to actually break the law in question. Maybe the safest bet is that Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter who was jailed
for refusing to disclose her sources on this topic, will be the only person to
see the inside of a jail cell because of it. And she didn't even write a story.
But even if what Rove and Libby did is not a crime, it is an
exceptionally bad and cynical habit in George W. Bush's inner circle, and now
would be a good time to break it. If you'll recall, Plame the CIA agent also is the wife of
former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, whom the CIA sent to Niger in 2002 to
find out whether Saddam Hussein was buying enriched uranium to use for weapons
of mass destruction. Wilson didn't find much and said so in his report to the
CIA. It was a report that the White House obviously ignored when it built its
case to go to war in Iraq. But when Wilson wrote an essay for a New York Times opinion page in 2003, the
White House took notice. Wilson accused the White House of orchestrating a
campaign to discredit him. After the op-ed piece appeared, it was disclosed
that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in an undercover job and that her
connections led to Wilson getting the Niger assignment. For his part, Rove said through an attorney that he didn't
specifically disclose Plame's name. This is the thinnest of reeds, though, if
Cooper's account is correct and Rove identified Wilson's wife as a CIA agent. We don't know whether all of this was White House
retaliation, a warning to others that disagreeing with the president has career
implications or simply a matter of good ol' Karl helping out a couple of folks
in the press room. But it's
pretty clear that, from Ann Richards to Joe Wilson to John Kerry, hardball is
too soft a term for the kind of politics the president's people like to play.
And it's pretty clear that, whatever you call the game, Rove is the team
captain. Frank Rich, a liberal columnist for The New York Times,
suggested in a piece reprinted on our Commentary page today that Rove is out
anyway. It is just a matter of time before the politics run their course and
the president's close political adviser departs. That would be a fine outcome and a proper one considering
the level of White House cynicism here. But it would be better if the president
did the right thing and fired Rove now. Similarly, Cheney
should fire Libby.
After all, there is a point where the game of politics ends
and real life begins. We'd suggest that the point probably comes well before a
real-life reporter gets thrown in jail and a real-life secret agent's identity
gets revealed by the minions of her commander in chief. http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1121767636263540.xml&coll=7 |
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