with some great commentary, too. Wish I could include the whole thing...go read it for yourself and make a copy of the whole thing!
http://www.juancole.com/Rove should Resign: President Bush and the Wilson Case
It has for some time struck me that despite all the phony talk about "compassionate conservatism," the Bush team has just plain mean tendencies. The giddy pleasure Bush took in executions used to disgust even fellow Republicans, and it briefly emerged as an issue in the presidential debates in fall of 2000. Then in response to home made bombs in Iraq making hamburger of our brave men and women under arms, Bush said "Bring it on!" (He wanted more mayhem wreaked on our troops?) This streak of sadism has come into public view with the issue of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife. Wilson, a former Foreign Service Officer who served his country with distinction in difficult postings, including Iraq, was asked by the CIA to go to Niger in spring of 2002 to check out the plausibility of the allegation that Iraq was buying uranium.
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Wilson's account was extremely damaging to them and deprived them of plausible deniability. Without a public account from Wilson of his mission, Bush administration officials could pretend, as Paul Wolfowitz had, that the intelligence was just murky. But if a retired FSO could put the matter to rest with a brief excursion, and if International Atomic Energy Commission official Muhammad el-Baradei could see the forged Niger documents for what they were immediately, then the intelligence was not murky at all. It was crystal clear. There was a fraud going on.( )Since the Iraq War was a get-up job based entirely on fraudulent or shaky intelligence that was further slanted in their public presentation of it by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Bush, there must be many US government employees who could tell tales on the administration's dishonesty and incompetence. The White House officials who outed Ms. Plame were telling them that the full weight of the US government would come down on them like a ton of bricks if they dared do any such thing.
What I would say is that Karl Rove should be made to resign if he said the words attributed to him, "Joe Wilson's wife is fair game." He was condoning the breaking of US law and the endangering of US intelligence personnel and assets, especially in the field of Ms. Plame's specialty, the tracking of Weapons of Mass Destruction.And that is the greatest irony of all. Ms. Plame, who really was working to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, has been ruined by persons who only pretended to do so for political gain, and whose invasion of Iraq did nothing to make the US one whit safer.
Meanwhile, Joe Wilson is a genuine hero, who has spoken truth to power and refused to be intimidated. Anyone in the US government who has any admiration for him and any gumption at all, and who cares about our country, should emulate his example if they have further evidence for deliberate Bush administration discounting of solid intelligence in favor of their stock cover story on Iraq. Make it public. Now.
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