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seemed to be out there floundering around in public all by himself--for instance, getting caught on camera eating cake while Americans were dying of starvation and dehydration and a big chunk of the country was getting blown off the map. Where are his handlers?--was my thought.
Then, afterward, Rove comes out with this newsturd about having had kidney stones and being in the hospital during Katrina. I guess other people noticed, too. Where was he? How could he let Bush blunder so badly, so blatantly?
Another thing: Bush is a dummy--and a basket case--and probably didn't even know that FEMA had been gutted. He trusts his handlers to set up his phony successes, and cover for him when things don't go well (for instance, in the 2004 election campaign, and the Iraq war). So, when the shit hit the fan in NO, he really did not have a clue what was going on, and found himself WITHOUT COVER--everybody AWOL, most critically, Rove.
Why?
I got to thinking about Treasongate lurking in the background of Katrina, and, putting 2 and 4 together, I figure Rove went on strike during Katrina--withdrew his services from Bush Jr. until he got some kind of protection (promise of a presidential pardon?) from Treasongate. Where did I pick up that, some time back, Rove threw a fit, because HE had been hung out to dry on Treasongate (by Libby, i.e., Cheney)? (I know I read this, but I can't remember where). I think they were using Rove's reputation for political revenge and punishment as a cover story for the outing of Plame--that he was punishing Wilson for his political dissent--and that outing Plame was all HIS idea. A believable story, that he would break a federal law, in a fit of pique, to get back at someone.
But untrue, I think--and that's how the split developed in the WH. This was a far more serious matter than punishment of a critic of the war, destruction of a CIA agent's career, and the breaking of a federal law--all of which Rove had been (probably quite willingly) drawn into as chief war propagandist.
I was thinking, during Katrina, that the split was between the indictable and the unindictable, and/or between pro-Cheney vs. pro-Bush. (When Daddy Bush and Clinton came out and stood behind Bush Jr.--a really weird event in the midst of Katrina--I was thinking that it was a Cheney coup that was being threatened, and it may yet have been--I'll get to that in a moment.) But Rove vs. Libby also makes sense--since it appears that Libby was setting Rove up to take the fall.
I read a Wilson interview--I think it was Raw Story--in which Wilson said he'd called Condi Rice to get the regime to back off on the Niger yellowcake story (after that allegation got put back in Bush's State of the Union), and Condi told him, through intermediaries, that she wasn't interested in his information, but, if he was so concerned about the matter, why didn't he publish it? (That's nearly word for word what Wilson said.)
Sure sounds like she was baiting him--AND, that they knew full well his article was coming. It was not a surprise. Why, then, did they risk the entire administration to get Plame outed THE NEXT WEEK? (--week of July 6-14, 2003).
This Condi statement (why don't you publish it?) also gives the lie to Rove doing anything in a fit of pique--and it also suggests that WILSON was being set up--that they WANTED him to go public, to be used as an excuse to "get" the CIA, to disable its entire WMD monitoring capability, and discredit the agency as, oh, politically motivated, and/or as being wrong, as having bad intel on Iraq nukes.
Let me back up. I think what this entire scandal is about is a Bush Cartel plot to PLANT nukes (or other WMDs) in Iraq. The WMDs were to be "found" by Judith Miller (all set up in Iraq to "find" them; embedded with the U.S. troops who were searching for WMDs after the invasion-- an embed contract signed by Donald Rumsfeld himself--and, from the Bush Cartel's point of view, well deserving of such a "scoop").
Can you imagine the political cache this would have given to Bush and Blair? (They'd be in Iran by now.)
With the public all primed to expect a find of WMDs in Iraq, do you think this Cartel was just sitting around HOPING that Judith Miller would find some? Not likely. (There were several credible-sounding reports of covert U.S. arms shipments into Iraq, in March 2003--in Pakistani and Iranian press--one by an Iraq Governing Council member in Basra, and another by a Pentagon whistleblower, who had gotten reports of a covert arms shipment onto Iraqi soil that met with "friendly fire.")
The plot to plant WMDs was foiled, obviously. And this may have been the reason for the death of the Brits chief weapons expert David Kelly (four days after Plame was outed by Novak). This may also have been the reason for the SECOND Plame outing, on July 22, 2003--the outing of the entire Brewster Jennings operation (also by Novak)--an item that analysts of this affair tend to ignore. It was this second outing, of BJ, that led me to suspect that the Bushites were in a panic when they outed Plame. Why out BJ--if the point was merely to punish Wilson? It compounds the risk of treason charges. It appears to me that they were risking everything--contacting at least SIX reporters, circulating the Plame memo on AF-1, putting many top Bushites at maximum risk of treason charges--not to punish Wilson but to disable the CIA WMD weapons monitoring capability, and shut it down, AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
I think what may have happened here is that they had intended to CONFIRM the Niger yellowcake allegation with a phony "find" of yellowcake in Iraq--and no protestations of the CIA or anyone else, about the obviously forged documents, would be able to overcome the FACT of yellowcake IN Iraq (given the lapdogism of the U.S. news media). But they were found out, maybe by David Kelly. And four days AFTER his death--after his office and computers were searched--they outed the Brewster Jennings operation (the entire CIA weapons monitoring program--an outing that put numerous covert agents at grave risk).
I think what is striking about the Plame outing is the stupid, risky and precipitous way that it was done. There are MANY ways that the Bush Cartel can punish people, inside and outside of government, and many, many ways to plant news items untraceably. They do it all the time. This was a hasty, panicky, botched job, with, it seems, barely time to invent and coordinate cover stories.
Here's the time line:
May 22, 2003: After the invasion (which he had supported), Kelly starts whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about the Brits' "sexed up" Iraq intel (espec. the nuke allegations).
July 6, 2003: Wilson publishes his article.
July 7, 2003: The Blairites ferret Kelly out, interrogate him at a "safe house," and report to Tony Blair that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things." Not HAD said. COULD say. (Hutton report.) (My surmise: Blair calls AF-1 that day, and warns them.)
July 14, 2003: In a flurry of panicked phone calls, the Bushites find their news patsy Novak and get Plame outed.
July 18, 2003: Kelly is found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.
July 22, 2003: Brewster Jennings outed (also by Novak).
(Note: In between, on July 21, 2003, Judith Miller writes Kelly's obit for the NYT, and fails to disclose her close connections to Kelly. They had written a book together. And it was to Miller that Kelly had written his last email, warning of "the many dark actors playing games." I suspect her of having outed Kelly to his bosses, and also of putting words in his mouth, in his obit, criticizing U.S. troops for not looking hard enough for WMDs in Iraq. This does not fit his state of mind at the time--that of whistleblower. But it does serve HER interests.)
Cheney: I think he wanted the CIA weapons monitoring capability disabled--for personal war profiteering purposes--and that there was a long term plan toward this end,involving the Niger forgeries. I think Wilson was used opportunistically toward these ends, but that David Kelly was a wild card in this situation. His knowledge of the plot to plant nukes (or other WMDs) in Iraq was UNEXPECTED.
Wilson article (7/6/03) expected. David Kelly knowledge (7/7/03) UNEXPECTED. Thus the panic to out Plame and BJ, within a two-week time frame, uncarefully, putting all the perps at great risk.
Fast-forward to Katrina: Cheney has the goods on Bush Jr., probably in many different ways. But given the one that a grand jury is investigating, the key issue may be, did Bush Jr. set eyes on the Plame memo on AF-1? Or some similar complicity (possibly deliberately set up). Cheney goes into hiding during Katrina, and doesn't come out until Halliburton gets the first billion dollar contract, and until after Bush Jr. has gone to NO to try to strong-arm Gov. Blanco to get total federal/WH control of LA and martial law. What I suspect is that Cheney was blackmailing Bush Jr. at this point. (That's why Daddy Bush and Clinton came out and stood behind Bush Jr.)
The method used on Gov. Blanco was really raw--trying to extort control of the state with her people dying of hunger and neglect, by withholding and obstructing aid (of which there is a mountain of evidence). It smells of desperation, and also of ineptness (of Bush on his own). Also, it's not the sort of thing presidents do IN PERSON. They send emissaries. Where were Bush's emissaries? He went in person to Blanco and did this, sweating bullets, I think--because it was the price of his own immunity from Treasongate. That's my guess. (Cheney to Bush Jr.: "Give me LA, or I rat on you, punk.")
Whether or not Cheney would deign to negotiate a presidential pardon (since he IS the president), I'm not sure. Possibly that was part of the bargain. (--maybe that's where Daddy Bush and Clinton came in.)
With the Iraq war in disrepute, the Gulf coast is the new cash cow for Halliburton, Bechtel and the whole gang--their last opportunity to loot the federal treasury. That was Cheney's price. (--and possibly a presidential pardon was a foregone conclusion in his case, arranged long ago, maybe signed by Bush Jr. at the beginning, with the list of indictable crimes left blank, to be filled in.)
Meanwhile, Rove gets over his "kidney stones" and the Rove P.R. machine gears back up, and starts trying to repair some of the severe damage to Bush's reputation (that occurred with Bush Jr. out there on his own). Rove has his pardon. He also got put in charge of the booty in the Gulf coast. (Peace treaty between Cheney/Libby and Bush/Rove?)
The putrid stink in the Gulf coast is not the bloated bodies of the poor and the black.
I don't know what part of the tail of this raging tiger Patrick Fitzgerald has hold of. Some significant part of it, for sure. Things may have turned around on Libby, so that he's the fall guy now. I doubt if we'll see Cheney in an orange suit.
And it's no wonder that Judith Miller wanted her testimony "limited"--if my scenario here is more or less what really happened. She may have even been privy to the plot to plant WMDs in Iraq (she was sure disappointed when none were "found".) Her other negotiating point was, according to her, absolute, personal assurance from her source, Libby, that he was releasing her to testify against him (probably that he used her to launder Valerie Plame's identity to other reporters), and was not being coerced. Listening to her, yesterday, I was thinking that she knows that Libby is now the fall guy, owes him, and wanted to be assured that he won't fall too hard (or that he, too, has negotiated his pardon).
The more important story--from the point of view of the American public and the future of our democracy--may be the part that she will not be asked about (due to agreed upon "limits" to her testimony): WHY all this happened. The REAL REASON that they outed Plame and BJ.
..not to suppress dissent, but to suppress the crime of moving dangerous weapons, covertly, into Iraq, to hoodwink the American people and the world about their bloody, illegal war.
They slaughtered 100,000 innocent people (according to the British doctors' report) in the initial bombing alone--under the flag of WMDs. And they almost got away with it--but for two people whom we don't know much about: David Kelly, and either Valerie Plame or someone in her CIA covert network of eyes and ears upon WMDs around the world, whose name we will never know, and who is probably now dead (as a result of the outing).
If my scenario is generally correct, it is these relatively unknown or unknowable people whom we have to thank for the opportunity we have been given to stop a Mideast holocaust and to restore democracy in the U.S. If Bush/Blair had "found" their planted WMDs in Iraq--and no one had been able to expose that fakery--we might, even now, be experiencing Carl Sagan's "the cold and the dark," that is, the destruction of our planet's atmosphere that even a limited use of nuclear weapons will bring about. (Planted nukes in Iraq might have quickly led to planted nukes in Iran and/or Syria, with the possibility of the Bushites or Israel preemptively nuking them, or of nuke accidents in the covert handling of the weapons.)
One thing we do know about David Kelly is that he thought the whole controversy surrounding him would blow over in a week (had he promised his bosses that he wouldn't reveal the worst?), and he was looking forward to his daughter's wedding and returning to Iraq. We know this because he wrote it to Judith Miller (--in emails that were later released by his family, not by her).
We now have the chance to clean up our election system (Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' I say!), and get a decent, lawful government again. I hope we don't settle for only that (--we need a BIG BROOM!), but it would be a relief just to have sane people in the WH and mere corporate business corruption. (Is that what the global corporate predators are counting on? Yikes.)
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