Karl Rove has been described in the media as Bush's master strategist and power broker who brought about President Bush's thumping of John Kerry in last year's Presidential elections.
This is not quite accurate.
Bush ran the campaign, not Rove. There is no denying that Rove added a great deal to the campaign, but it was ultimately Bush's decisions that led to the victory.
For several years, the Democrats have used Rove's (Democratic Party-created) reputation to distract attention away from Bush's own abilities as a master planner and campaigner; something that the Congressional Democrats and their liberal allies in the media are loathe to even admit.
In their eyes, Bush is an idiot.
Now they want Rove out of the way. Rove managed to get their dander up when he made a (widely reported) comment about liberal and conservative reactions to 9/11. He didn't even mention the Democrats by name, but they went bonkers when they heard his comments.
He said "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives," he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war." He also said that that groups linked to the Democratic Party (moveon.org) made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.
Now the Democrats are looking to silence a grating voice in the form of a possible Rove leak of a CIA operative's name to the media. Democrats haven't stopped screaming since the story broke. Here's the real deal on that situation:
The CIA employee was not under cover. She was not overseas when her name was leaked to the media. She was not in danger of being captured by enemy forces. She was not spying on anyone. She was not gathering information on Chinese or Russian nuclear weapons. She was not blowing up Iran's nuclear reactor. She was not gathering intelligence on Hamas or Ansar-al-Islam, nor was she rescuing hostages in Baghdad. She WAS manning her desk at CIA headquarters and answering the phone and drinking coffee and analyzing information. When the CIA was contacted about her being mentioned in a report, they did not request her name be withheld in the story. Why?
Because she was a normal CIA employee doing her duty to her country.
So if she was not a super-secret agent, and the CIA didn't ask to have the story killed or altered, she does not qualify as being the sort of CIA person/agent that the law intended to protect.
In other words, no crime was committed. So it doesn't matter if Rove screwed up or intentionally leaked the information to discredit someone. This is pure political hay that Rove's enemies are making. Get over it!
2 comments:
The Bush supporters continue to try to draw connections between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. There is absolutely none. (And since the Bush team was interested in invading Iraq before 9/11, Rove has used his genius to create leaks and otherwise suppress dissent). Rove and Bush also have done a brilliant job of manipulating the media to convince the mentally lazy American voters that there was a connection.
Bush is somewhat of an idiot.
Rove may or may not have broken the law regarding leaking the identity of the agent. But what he did do was unethical, and Bush said that he would fire whoever did it. Bush is a hypocrite. Period.
Some of what you say is true enough, but you've fallen into the trap of believing in Rove's reputation that his opponents have attributed to him.
There's an interesting web site from the Center for Cooperative Research that you should take a look at. In particular, take a look at the 9/11-December 2001 section in the lower left hand column. The site is at www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
Again, as I said in my original post, 9/11 was an enabler for the Bush Administration to launch a war against Iraq. It made an invasion possible just by happening, regardless of whether or not there were links between Saddam, 9/11 and al-Qaeda.
The important thing to remember here is that Congress passed legislation three days after 9/11 calling on the Administration to use all means necessary to prevent another terrorist strike on the United States. Bush had a Congressional permission slip to use the military in other nations.
9/11 made the invasion possible. That's all that I was trying to say.
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