Rovegate-let's pull the thread!

Opinion

Rovegate-let's pull the thread!

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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July 23, 2005-Okay, so America's leading journalists, from Time
Magazine, Newsweek, and The New York Times, to the most distinguished
writers on the Internet, tell us Rove did it. Outed an undercover CIA
operative, Valerie Plame, because her husband, former ambassador and
Africa expert Joseph Wilson, the man picked by the CIA to investigate
the Italian intelligence's original reports (passed on to England and
America) had returned from his African mission and said the reports
were "bogus." Thanks for the straight talk, Joe.

But Joe, the man George HW Bush had called a hero for his service as
charge d'affairs in Baghdad before the first Gulf War, the respected
friend of past Republican and Democratic presidents, had said more:
that the administration had "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the
Iraqi threat. In fact, after Bush proclaimed the disinformation in a
State of the Union Address, the White House admitted the nuke claim
should not have even been made. In fact, the original source papers
were eventually deemed "forged" by the head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei.

So Wilson was right, yes, absolutely unequivocally right, Karl and
America. Yet we rushed into Iraq and blew up the country? We took our
eyes off the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan and opened up a
second front for our already short numbers of troops, to leave them
short in both conflicts, under-equipped, with no post-victory plan to
stabilize Iraq. We ignored our major allies' admonitions, France,
Germany, Japan, Russia, and the UN, and went ahead with our unilateral
war, the same Richard Clarke had told us Bush wanted from day one of
his administration, pre-9/11.

What's more, the question remains, why hasn't President Bush fired Rove
for outing Wilson's wife and ending her career as a CIA operative and
endangering the lives of those who worked for her-and for smearing
the name of her hero husband, Joe Wilson? Why? Bush said three times so
far that whoever leaked the information in the White House would be
fired.

Could it be that if we pull the Rove thread we find that it connects to
the thread of mastermind Cheney, originally designing and spreading the
WMD fear and paranoia? The Cheney thread connects to the hem of
Condolezza Rice, echoing that mushroom clouds of destruction would soon
be appearing if we didn't go to war immediately. That connects to the
thread of the well-tailored suits of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Colin Powell
& Company, the bobble-dolls nodding their heads to it all, yes, we had
to fight immediately, even sooner, here are the graphs, charts, right
now, go, give your lives, take more!

But don't blame the CIA on this one. The CIA told them up front the
intelligence was faulty, and got blamed afterward by Bush, who claimed
it gave the administration false information. Damned if you do, damned
if you don't.

But if we do pull the thread long enough, we will unravel an organized
conspiracy to take America to war, illegally, unconstitutionally. Keep
pulling the thread and we see the emperor has no clothes, no defense.
The commander in chief gave a nod to this all. Yes, like his Republican
precursor, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was the hand, the force behind
Watergate, the burglars, the Plumbers, and the refusals to testify to
the Senate, to give up the tapes, the recorded plans to corrupt
America's government. So too it is Bush, albeit with his ventriloquist
Cheney, who is behind Rovegate, the thread to the grand plan to
globalize the world through perpetual war for oil and the power it
brings.

Is it any wonder Nixon ducked impeachment and resigned from the
presidency? The prospect of getting booted into a jail cell didn't look
good to the paranoid, alcoholic Nixon. I wonder how it looks to George
W. Bush, ex-boozer and cokehead, or to *** Cheney and their fellow
conspirators. What's more, Rovegate is far worse than Watergate, far
worse. Rovegate, the conspiracy to take America to war illegally, has
caused the death of nearly 1,800 American fighting men and women,
caused upwards of 12,000 casualties, and the deaths of more than
100,000 Iraqis. In fact next to Rovegate, Watergate is a mere stone
dropped in a pond, a plop in the roiling cauldron of history. But the
consequences of Rovegate can blow that cauldron apart.

Yet, what is the response? The Republicans are all out front
cheerleading for Rove as a whistle-blower. What or whose whistle is he
blowing? Someone tell me. He outed Plame. Part A of the federal law
says "a government official with access to classified information about
covert personnel who intentionally exposes an operative, knowing that
the US 'is taking affirmative measures to conceal' the operative's
identity, can face up to 10 years in prison or a $50,000 fine or both."

I'll spare you parts B and C because Rove fits Part A to a tee, as in
thread. The question is will Prosecutor Fitzgerald have the courage to
pull the thread? Remember what happened to his fellow Irishman, John
O'Neill, the super-straight FBI investigator, who had been blocked at
every turn tracking down leads on Osama bin Laden because he might
discover connects from Afghanistan to CIA digs. O'Neill was stopped
cold from investigating the Cole bombing. And put off other leads by
Louis Freeh and Thomas Picard, two club members who made sure important
reports from FBI agents vanished.

O'Neill, who had resigned from the FBI and counter-terrorism efforts
after 30 years of service, had ironically become head of security for
World Trade Center, where he died on Sept. 11. 2001.

And will the public demand that Fitzgerald pull the thread? Will
America finally unravel this web of death and deception, the shame of
the millennium, the same that goes back to 9/11 with even more shocking
revelations. Does the rhetoric disturb my conservative friends or my
liberal friends? Does the sight of those bodies, at WTC or abroad,
disturb them? Does a world at war disturb anyone, a crumbling economy,
a staggering debt, the looting of health, pension and welfare funds,
Social Security, state budgets?

Does anything haunt these weavers of Rovegate? Will someone help George
pull the thread, and maybe seek a bailout deal, like Tricky ***. Will
someone see what pulling the thread to Rovegate really is, an end to
the end-times we've been living, a goodbye to the Antichrist at the
helm, a return to a moral and normal life.

Does any one miss that high ground? I do. Does Matthew Cooper,
obviously frightened, and contradicting himself writing in "What I told
the Grand Jury," in Time, 7/25/2005 . . .

"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me or tell me she was a cover?
No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the
first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been
responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the
'agency' on "WMD"? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon,
was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime?
Beats me. At this point, I'm as curious as anyone else to see what
Patrick Fitzgerald has."

Does his furtive e-mail to his boss tell you . . .

"Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins
before he want on vacation. . . . his big warning. . . . don't get too
far out on Wilson. . . . says that the DCIA didn't authorize the trip
and that Cheney didn't authorize the trip. it was, KR said, wilson's
wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues, who authorized
the trip. not only the genesis of the trip is flawed ans[d] suspect but
so is the Niger. . . . some of this is going to be dclassified in the
coming days, KR said. don't get too far out in front, he warned. then
he bolted. . . . will include in next file. . . . ."

Right, Karl. You knew it was the deputy chief of the CIA's
Counterproliferation Division, Valerie's boss, who authorized the trip.
But the check is in the mail, Karl, $60 million I believe, for
presidential consulting. They'll fix the rest in the mix. And, well,
we'll try to keep the shackles comfortable as you frog-walk out the
door to prison, the man who outed a CIA operative. Good luck.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York with a low
tolerance for government obscenity. Reach him at gvmaz@xxxxxxxxxxxx




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