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Danny |
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This
is not new. It’s been
going on for several months now- -since July.
And it’s not going away. A
felony has been committed by someone in the White House and no one has
owned up. Why are you not surprised?
Just this week John Ashcroft, our beloved Attorney General, and
sometime lounge pianist (See: Letterman, David, Late
Show With), said that “progress was being made” in the
investigation into the leak of an undercover agent’s name to a
Republican house-organ columnist who printed the woman’s name in his
column (not knowing it was a secret, he claims). As
you may or may not recall- -oops! There’s that California word again-
-last July 6 Joseph C Wilson the 4th wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New
York Times about his trip to Niger to look for the uranium they were
supposed to have on hand to sell to Saddam Hussein.
This was all supposed to be a part of the justification for the
War On Iraq. Of course, Mr.
Wilson, a one-time ambassador to Niger, wrote about what he found-,
which was nothing. This
trip was to verify that famous line in this past year’s State of The
Union address about Saddam getting weapons grade uranium from Africa-
-pause, and then say it with a breathy voice “from Africa”. And that,
you may remember, was one of the main justifications for sending our
kids into harm’s way. The
Evil One has Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
We must git’im. Well of course we all know now that no such things were found, at least they haven’t been yet, and what Mr Wilson said was that the part of the story he knew about first hand was untrue. Mr Wilson went so far as to say The War might not have actually been justifiable if the known existing conditions had been forthcoming to the Congress and the American people by the Bush White House. Mr Wilson was thought to need a good reprimand for not playing along with the Bushies. And
what better way to shut him up, and with it his criticism of the way
things were done, than to expose his wife, a covert CIA agent working
out in the cold sometimes just like Bond, James Bond.
That would also keep anyone else from coming forward to criticize
the White House. The
only problem is it is very
against the law to blow the cover off one of our own good-guy
operatives, and put the agent in peril of her life, not to mention her
family and associates (yes, they have two kids- -twins aged three).
Plus now she is virtually useless to carry on her previous work.
Mr
Ashcroft now says “I am directing and will do everything within my
power to make sure that this investigation is professional, thorough,
prompt and complete”. It
sounds as if he is describing his dry cleaner- -you know the one that
cleans the drapes he hangs over the nude statues in the Justice
Department. According
to an Associated Press story by Curt Anderson, Ashcroft told reporters
“This is a matter of great concern to me.
Leaks are a serious matter.”
And then he left the room to take one. This
top-secret information was leaked by someone in the White House and no
one seems to know who, or at least no one is fessing up.
It’s a felony. Do
you blame them? Probably
the hope is that maybe it will just stay off the front pages until after
the 2004 election and then it won’t matter if someone has to take a
fall. It’s dragged on for
over three months now, but it is not going away.
Remember, Watergate was a third-rate burglary for a long time
before the full story was known, leading all the way back to the Oval
Office. Iran-Contra was run
out of the White House basement. They
all do it. How dumb do they
think we are? Georgie
Bush stretched the evidence about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear arsenal in
order to justify a new kind of war.
Polls now show that support is collapsing for The War and the
price tag that goes with it, and Mr Wilson fueled the flap that the
White House cared more about selling its case for war than ensuring that
the case was right in the first place.
And now the all-too-familiar Washington game of scapegoating,
backstabbing and name-calling has begun.
Wanna play? “I
know you are but what am I?” Shades
of Pee Wee Herman. G
W has been quoted in TIME as
saying, “I want to tell you something- -leaks of classified
information are a bad thing.” I
can hear Elmer Fudd: “Oh, Wealwee?” Obviously
Georgie didn’t make the call that went out to six reporters- -only one
printed the name, but would Karl Rove be above directing such a thing? Hmmm… So how is Ashcroft going to investigate Rove’s office? After all, the two have a long established relationship. When Ashcroft used to run for Senate he hired Rove’s Texas firm for direct mail services. News reports say Ashcroft paid Rove $746,000 for his services. Now how are you going to factor that out if you want to get a fair and balanced- -whoops- -can I use that phrase?- -look at Mr Rove’s activities. Where’s
Bob Woodward now when we need him again?
We
really could use a good investigative Roving Reporter.
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