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More heartburn for the GOP, or is that chest
pain? Vice President Cheney’s role probed in
the CIA leak investigation becomes front page headlines: “The prosecutor has assembled evidence
that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the
unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.
In the course of the investigation, Fitzgerald has been exposed to the
intense, behind-the-scenes fight between Cheney's office and the CIA over
prewar intelligence and the vice president's central role in compiling and then
defending the intelligence used to justify the war. Miller, in a first-person
account Sunday in the Times, recalled that Libby complained in a June 23, 2003,
meeting in his office that the CIA was engaged in "selective leaking"
and a "hedging strategy" that would make the agency look equally
prescient whether or not weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Before the war, he traveled to CIA headquarters for briefings, an
unusual move that some critics interpreted as an effort to pressure
intelligence officials into supporting his view of the evidence. After the war,
when critics started questioning whether the White House relied on faulty
information to justify war, Cheney and Libby were central to the effort to
defend the intelligence and discredit the naysayers in Congress and elsewhere. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701888.html Many not sleeping well these days. The special prosecutor, Fitzgerald, will
announce his findings in Washington, as early as Wednesday, if rumor has it
right, but likely this week. If
Rove and/or Libby are indicted, the plan is they will resign immediately but
Cheney being at least publicly linked to this now brings Plamegate closer to
Watergate status. Remember,
Fitzgerald got 2 judges to give him wide latitude owing to the “gravity of the
case”. It’s suspected now that he
has a White House Deep Throat…and then there is the black hole of the Abramoff
investigation, making Watergate look small and contained. Meanwhile, the
marital spat between the ‘conservative samurai’ and the religious overlords of
the House of Bush has not been patched over the Miers nomination. Yesterday four Texas judges brought to
Washington spoke on her behalf, two of them sharing that they were confident from
their long association with her she would overturn Roe v Wade if confirmed. After her meeting with Sen. Specter,
chairman of the Judicial committee, he issued a statement that her position on the
2 cases that were the bases for Roe v Wade
showed her ‘respect for privacy’. She
issued a statement late in the day that NO ONE knew her opinion on that issue. Specter then allowed that he might have
misunderstood her, but one of the two judges who made the contrary assertion, Hecht,
has been her long time companion. So the prospects for reconciliation are quite
murky, especially with economic tea leaves so troubled. I opine that if you’ve
been a lifelong tabula rasa
others see what they want in you, and you are always “misunderstood”. The GOP
witnessed other fissures Monday. Bruce Bartlett, a Reagan-Bush era conservative
samurai, was fired from the Dallas think tank from which he pontificated a
decade on economic issues, after turning in his manuscript to his boss, titled “The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed
the Reagan Legacy." Bartlett’s column today, The Last
Straw details a laundry list of complaints about the this administration,
similar to what George Will wrote a few days ago, in K Street Conservatism.
Who’s sorry now? Bartlett http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/brucebartlett/2005/10/18/171730.html Will http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9629463/site/newsweek/ What to look for: If Fitzgerald
brings indictments, expect the rightwing media to discredit him. If he’s ever had a goof in his life, it
will be used against him. If he
doesn’t, expect the words “exoneration” to be played heavily, as Cheney did Nov.
5, 2004, declaring a ‘mandate’, hoping that the bleeding from Bush’s below-40
approval numbers will be staunched. Other than that, I’m not making a prediction yet, but the
Bush administration seems to have a damaged guidance system, lost its anchor,
and is expelling lots of ballast. Even Mr. self-righteous in self-denial Tom DeLay
can’t continue to portray the victim, not with his reputation. It’s late in the
game to do it, but Bush should bring in fresh troops for the rest of his term,
get rid of those who are exhausted from the permanent campaigning and those stinking
of scandal. He might have avoided some of these just-desserts if he’d done that
already, but with the open rebellion in the GOP now, every move he makes will
be scrutinized, not lionized. The smirk and swagger are gone. Why does this
President tolerate loyalists who have hurt his administration? I think we know
the answer: because he himself is an actor, a bluffer. In his life experiences
he learned that perception matters most, not authenticity, sustained effort or genuine
accountability. Losing Rove,
specifically, now that he’s dispatched his cadre of trusted advisors to other
posts in the administration, would collapse the inner sanctum. Bush defenders
are already blaming his CoS Andrew Card for his current problems, even his wife
for her endorsement of a female nominee and sexism about the furor over the Miers’
nomination (Laura and Harriet are both SMU grads who met there), but there are other
signs Bush is ‘giving up’ the conservative hero charade now that his Teflon protection
has expired. And they’ve
started investigating the Iraq vote, finding more yes votes in some areas than
registered voters. Sound familiar? kwc |
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