BuzzFlash interview:James Moore-Texas Journalist specialist on Karl Rove

[ElsewheresDaughter]

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19352

<snip>
"He (Rove) has done this kind of thing in the past. As a for instance, Rove worked with an FBI agent to launch an investigation into every Democratic officeholder in the state of Texas. None of them did anything wrong but they were all harmed by the news coverage of the probe. During the course of the investigations, reporters were constantly getting calls from Rove telling them about subpoenas that were being issued well before they had even been sent out by the FBI. There is a pattern of scurrilous behavior behind all of his political moves where he uses surrogates, cutouts, and other types of third party operatives to implement his plans and he keeps several layers of plausible deniability between himself and what he is doing. The ugly whisper campaign in South Carolina against John McCain, which questioned his mental health and suggested that he had a mixed race child out of wedlock, was classic Rove. He had done the same thing against Ann Richards, starting rumors about her sexual orientation based upon appointments she was making to state boards and commissions.

BuzzFlash: How do you think Rove could rationalize starting a war based on asserting that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (which he didn't), while he neutralized a CIA operative whose job was to protect the United States by tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction and their illicit sales? He also exposed her "front company" in the process and possibly endangered her life.

Moore: Rove, most people don’t realize, is partly pathological. He believes many of the lies he tells. In that regard, his world is a construct where, even if there is no a priori evidence that Saddam was connected to 911, Karl can easily convince himself there was a link. Whatever he does, regardless of how unethical, is always justified as being necessary for a greater political good. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are citizens Karl decided needed to be sacrificed for the benefit of the larger American population. The case against Saddam and WMD was trumped up because it was simple and readily accessible for most Americans and was something they would believe. Telling the truth and making an intelligent political case for action in Iraq or a US presence in the Mid East was too complicated. The lie was an expeditious tool needed to accomplish a political end and was, in Rove’s mind, a much lesser sin than letting Saddam continue in power, even though he was not the greatest terrorist threat facing America. "

more