Dear Whoever The Hell Comes Up With These Things: . . . It takes an act of wanton dumbassitude to assert, after the case has been investigated for two years, that maybe Plame wasn't really covert, and they'll get around any day now to figuring that out. Call me an excessive believer in the powers of investigative deduction, but I'm pretty sure that before spending two years of investigation, the CIA figured out whether or not Plame was actually covert.
Yes, this is the intellectual movement that is going to take down the mainstream media with their hard-hitting news analysis. These are the New Pundits, the FactCheckers, the Socket Rientists of Journalism. From the militia members stocking up for the nuclear apocalypse to be caused by Y2K, to the network-busting power of small animated gifs, to the monkey howls of Hillary! Hiiiiiillaryyyyyyy! that accompany the slightest dull thud in the political landscape, these are the members of 'Bush's Base'. Lord help us all, we're going to die.
Emphasis mine.
We're heard lots of Plame talking points over the last two years, haven't we - she wasn't really covert, nobody knew who she really was, she was nobody really, nothing was actually leaked, no law was really broken, the law sets such a high standard that no one could ever be actually guilty of breaking it, maybe it was Powell's fault, maybe it was Fleisher's fault, it was the reporters who told Rove and Libby that she was CIA, when Rove and Libby talked to reporters it was about welfare reform not uranium from Africa, that guy Wilson is just a publicity hound, that prosecutor is a nutcase, that guy Wilson is a nutcase, that prosecotor is just a publicity hound -- all gradually falling by the wayside as events proved them just too ridiculous for anyone to keep trying to promote.
The republicans are trying out two new talking points now.
First is that society shouldn't "criminalize politics" -- which implies that the whole thins is somehow really just a part of the usual political game that Washingtonians play, not something anyone should find illegal or take offense at, Democrats argued that nobody cared when Clinton had that affair so wouldn't it be hypocritical to care about this, oh my word can't anyone take a joke around here? Of course, this talking point won't stand for very long. There are just too many Americans who will insist on thinking that this is NOT like having a consentual affair, that outing a covert CIA agent is actually a criminal act, and how dare anyone pretend that such behaviour is OK just because you dislike her husband, what's wrong with you people anyway.
The other new talking point now is the "Rove lied to Bush" story. This may be Bush's last line of defense, the last refuge of a scoundrel.
This fairy tale describes how Bush ASKED his good buddy Karl about the Plame leak yes indeedy he DID, but then that tricky ole Rove lied -- yes, he LIED, and so our pore ole George got tricked by ole buddy Turdblossom.
Now this self-serving piece of twaddle strikes me as about as credible as the "slam-dunk" anecdote. You remember, the Woodward anecdote that in December of 2002 -- long after all the mushroom cloud remarks and the 'fixing the intellegence around the policy' memo -- that Bush supposedly asked then-CIA-director Tenant if he was really really really sure that Saddam had WMD and Tenant said it was a slam dunk. So therefore Bush believers could be comforted that their guy had TRIED to find out the truth about the WMD, he REALLY TRIED, but his staff done him wrong, and it was all Tenant's fault. This "Rove lied to Bush" line strikes me as just another fairy story about how Bush's staff done him wrong AGAIN!
So Bush's only fault, really, was that he loved, not wisely, but too well -- or something like that.
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