http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/12/BL2005071200330.htmlTo some on the left, Rove is the epitome of all they despise about the administration. He is Bush's brain, pulling the strings from behind the scenes, injecting politics into every conceivable decision. Rove further infuriated his critics a couple of weeks ago when he seemed to use the 9/11 tragedy to score political points, saying Republicans wanted to wage war and liberals wanted to offer the terrorists therapy.
Add the fact that this controversy is about the runup to the Iraq war and an apparent White House effort to discredit a prominent Bush critic, Joe Wilson, and you have an incendiary mixture. (It was Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, who once declared that "fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.") And this dovetails nicely with the conviction that the press did a lousy job on WMD before the war and has been too soft on Karl & Co. ever since.
But politically, this is a bombshell. Rove, who has insisted he did not leak Plame's name, had something to do with this effort, even if he didn't "name" her. ( The defense: It all depends on the meaning of the word "leak?") He was attempting to undercut Wilson when he told Cooper that wifey had helped set up Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger (where Wilson didn't find the facts the administration wanted on Saddam seeking uranium) and that the uranium business could still be true (it wasn't). And didn't the White House promise to fire anyone involved in the leak?
- SNIP - On yesterday's press conference:
"The 32-minute pummeling was perhaps the worst McClellan received since he got the job two years ago. His eyes were red and tired. He wiggled his foot nervously behind the lectern and robotically refused to answer no fewer than 35 questions about Rove and the outing of the CIA's Valerie Plame. Twenty-two times McClellan repeated that an 'ongoing' investigation prevented him from explaining the gap between his past statements and the facts."