Who's Blaming Whom; Where the fingers are pointing in the Bush administration meltdown

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2162775?nav=tap3

Who's Blaming Whom
Where the fingers are pointing in the Bush administration meltdown.
By Paul Gottschling and Dahlia Lithwick


As clichés go, "It's not the crime, it's the coverup" is a pretty useful one. And it's particularly apt in the train wreck that is the Bush administration's U.S. attorney purge. Sure, the underlying act that's alleged—firing only those U.S. attorneys who didn't measure up as "loyal Bushies"—was a bad one. But what seems to have undone the once-leviathan Bush administration is the fact that everyone's lying about it. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty apparently admitted both too little and too much in one brief briefing. And those admissions have triggered the kind of scrambling and finger-pointing we've never seen from this administration.

Had McNulty not claimed before the Senate on Feb. 6 that six of the fired U.S. attorneys had been let go for "performance-related" issues, he would not have infuriated those lawyers into defending their performance. And had he not had one dumb moment of pure honesty—admitting that a seventh was fired just to make room for a former Rove aide—he might not have illuminated more than the White House cared to reveal. And without these assertions (bear in mind that Harriet Miers advised him to deny, deny, deny), McNulty might not have implicated his colleagues at the Justice Department and the White House and turned them into liars and finger-pointers as well.

It's not easy to keep track of who in the Bush administration did what and whose lies contradict whose. A chart helps. So here's a roundup of some of what we now know.

The trigger: McNulty's claim that the firings were a routine personnel matter based on the ousted prosecutors' "performance."

http://www.slate.com/id/2162775?nav=tap3
Go to the link to connect these dots...

[BOSSHOG]

1. Its incredibly telling

that when one member of this crime family tells the truth, things turn to shit for them. Hard to imagine this happening to all these fine, upstanding christian leaders of the party of integrity.

[tridim]

2. That's the fatal flaw in their grand plan

The counted on everyone staying 100% loyal.

I'd like to know why they felt safe counting on that, because in the real world nobody ever stays 100% loyal no matter what the circumstances. It HAS to be blackmail.

[underpants]

3. See I knew my very own conspiracy theory would catch on

I don't mean that in an accusatory way I really do think that what became the elite of the elite in the think tanks recruited gays at Harvard (mostly) and Yale-some other Ivy League type schools- back in the late 60's and early 70's. These were social darwinists who held tightly the belief that these were clearly superiorly bred gene pools that had distinguished themselves from the pack of immigrants of the early part of the century. They needed capable bodies and the fact that these men were gay meant that they would forever be loyal as their ultimate fear of being outed could be held over their heads. The rest, as they say, is just wearing a suit and hanging the diploma.

Cheney
Bolton
Roberts
Alito
Norquist
Drier (not Harvard)
etc.


This is my one and only conspiracy theory...that and the one about how they killed Pat Tillman before he could get back to the States and hand Kerry an unfixable landslide.

[hootinholler]

6. Interesting

It has that certain um, plausibility to it too. You may just be on to something there.

-Hoot

[The Count]

4. Instead, I see Newt on Charlie Rose talking of Clinton's "being distracted"

Somehow, it's still about Clinton!

[DemReadingDU]

5. Thank you, great chart!