Washington Post - "Frog March Time for Rove?"

[paparush]

Frog-Marching Time for Rove?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 12, 2005; 7:57 AM

The liberal blogosphere is aflame with animosity toward Karl Rove, now that he's been sucked deeper into the Plame probe.

Some folks out there think he should just be thrown in the jail cell next to Judy Miller's, no indictment or trial necessary.


To 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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/12/BL2005071200330.html

[XemaSab]

1. Ribbit!

n/t

[Pirate Smile]

2. A decent short summary by Howie.

"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?

What does Rove do now? Give a couple of interviews and explain his role? Or remain in the background while his lawyer issues carefully parsed statements?

The newspapers all jump on the White House in stonewall mode, beginning with the New York Times : ....."

[Uncle Joe]

3. Feels like Alice in Wonderland

"All you really need to consider is this: If you were a government employee with a nagging conscience, if you had secret records that would expose corruption or lies at the highest levels, if your job was on the line and you needed to find a journalist whose promises you could trust with your life -- who would you call today: Matt Cooper and Time magazine, or Judith Miller and The New York Times?"

Do the above comments seem backward to you "if you had secret records that would expose corruption or lies at the highest levels" what if instead the journalist was complicit with the corruption and lies at the highest levels of government? Maybe the corporate owned media should try asking that question instead, of course they will not as it may not reflect very favorably on them to say the least.