The thing is, according to The Progress Report, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said it was a "ridiculous suggestion" that Rove was "involved in leaking classified information." Clearly, it was NOT ridiculous.
WE have to ask, when Bush promoted Rove to deputy chief of staff, did Bush know that Rove had made the calls and told the reporters about Joe Wilson's wife (so what that he didn't use her name. It wasn't necessary.) There are two possibilities. First, Bush knew, in which case, he has been covering up for Rove and failed the nation in allowing Rove to stay in office. The alternative consideration is that Rove denied his guilt. This makes him a liar. Even if he uses his equivocative evasions to explain his lie, it is clear that by reasonable standards, he lied to the president. Since it is likely that the fanatic Bush loyalists will all be willing to hop on their swords to protect the president, we can assume that the story will be that Rove didn't tell Bush. That means that Rove will have to confess that he lied to the president. We may never know if Bush and others knew.
But there may be a simple solution. Have Karl Rove take a lie detector test. Under the law, he's not required to do so, but this is not about little technicalities. This is about the honesty and credibility of the chief advisor to the president. If Karl Rove is as innocent as he says he is, he shouldn't have a problem submitting to a polygraph test. And, since George W. Bush is so confident that his first advisor is honest, he shouldn't object to Rove undergoing the exam.
Did you call the reporters with the intention of outing Valerie Plame?
If he is innocent, the answer should be no.
If the answer is no, then he should be willing to answer this question:
If you did not intend to "out" Valerie Plame, what was your intention?
While we have him hooked up to the polygraph, it would be nice to ask these questions:
Did President Bush know you were making the calls?
Did President Bush encourage you to make the calls.
Who else knew you were going to make the calls.
Who else has known that you made the calls?
The first announcement of the Time's Cooper e-mail was almost two weeks ago. Did President Bush discuss this with you at that time?
If Bush did discuss it then, then he should have said or done something then. There's no excuse for silence any more on this. Loyalty for an ally becomes treachery when the facts are clear that the ally betrayed the nation.
This is such a nice simple way to clear up this whole mess. Answers to these basic questions could clear Bush and Cheney out of the Whitehouse and could easily get some of the top right wingers out of the senate.
There's one hitch""the right wing echo chamber. Right wing billionaires and extremists have invested billions of dollars into the most powerful political weapon ever developed and they are using it full blast to neutralize the real story that Rove is a despicable traitor who sold out an undercover agent for the sake of petty revenge, and that Bush was probably in on it. Instead, they are using distraction techniques, counterattacking Joe Wilson, suggesting poor Karl Rove was just trying to talk a reporter out of covering Wilson's bad information about the yellowcake uranium from Niger.
On Fox, they emphasize that at Newsweek only one reporter mentioned Rove. So what? There were reporters at other publications. They parrot the pathetic talking point that Rove never mentioned Valerie Plame's name. So what? Rove referred to Joe Wilson's wife. Same thing.
I love it. The more they evade and delay, the longer they hold off facing this head-on, the worse they look. Maybe they can't face it head on because it's such a can of worms, the whole administration is involved. Can you say "President Frist?"
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