- Finally, we've achieved some air time with the MSM!
And in spite of their seriously belated journalistic curiosity, The New
York Times' Frank Rich appears to be the first one to regain his conscience!
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- In his Sunday July 24th column, "Eight Days in July," Rich finally makes the three-point
connection: the Downing Street Memo, the Valerie Plame-Karl Rove fiasco,
and the Bush regime's control of information by manufacturing needed news
to serve as a public distraction.
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- Remember when noxious/obnoxious gas bag Rush Limbaugh
helped launch the analogy of the "Wag the Dog" distraction launched
by Bill Clinton to take the public's focus off him and Monica? Limbaugh
really enjoyed pointing out, using Rich's term, the "nakedness"
of this ploy, in his more-than-obvious effort to deceive by bombing some
desert and an aspirin factory. Of course, the shoe's on the other foot,
but Limbaugh now has his foot in his mouth! And so does Bush's official
gum flapper, Mighty Mouth McClellan. The press has reminded him of his
denials two years ago involving Rove and Cheney's people.
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- Rich correctly capitalizes on the blatant Bush maneuver
[Wag the Judge?] to quickly focus public attention on his hastily-decided
Supreme nominee, Judge John Roberts. Rich points out, "When a conspiracy
is unraveling, and it's every liar and his lawyer for themselves, the story
takes on a momentum of its own. When the conspiracy is, at its heart,
about the White House's twisting of the intelligence used to sell the American
people a war - and its desperate efforts to cover up that flimflam once
the W.M.D. cupboard proved bare and the war went south - the story will
not end until the war really is in its 'last throes.'" Rich even
throws in the words of "The Grimace" himself, Dick Cheney.
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- Rich continues: "Only 36 hours after the John Roberts
unveiling, the Washington Post nudged him aside to second position on its
front page. Leading the paper instead was a scoop concerning a State Department
memo circulated the week before the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife, the
C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame, in literally the loftiest reaches of the
Bush administration - on Air Force One. The memo, The Post reported, marked the paragraph containing
information about Ms. Plame with an S for secret. So much for the cover
story that no one knew that her identity was covert."
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- Not only does Rich catch up with the real world and its
news, but he also places much-needed emphasis on Bush's "S" indicator
- the assumption is that the "S" next to the paragraph on Plame
stands for "secret." Here's the Washington Post's interpretation
from their July 21st article, "Plame Identity Marked As Secret,"
by Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei: "A classified State Department
memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information
about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret,
a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should
have been aware the information was classified, according to current and
former government officials."
-
- But as both the Post and the Times point out, this is
concrete, in-the-hands evidence that one) the Bush regime was targeting
its enemies, and two) it was obstructing justice and abusing its power
via a cover-up attempt. Those "16 words" have come back to bite
both Bush and his chief propagangster, Limbaugh. Bush and Rush - perfect
together!
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- Here's the key point in the Post article: "The paragraph
identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was
clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret'
level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers
whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.
Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained
secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached
to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources
said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for
a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official
if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret."
-
- Really, can there be any doubt? Now all we need to get
the MSM to look into is the AIPAC spy scandal, the White House pedophile
ring, and the growing mountain of evidence concerning the 9-11 attacks;
at least these for starters.
-
- And remember the others that made it on the Bush list:
O'Neill, Clarke, Powell, and now possibly Rich.
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- Theodore E. Lang
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- 7/25/05
- © THEODORE E. LANG 7/25/05 All rights reserved
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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