Monday, September 29, 2003

The Empire Strikes Back...Badly

Well, I have to admit, I'm impressed. It's not every day that you see a group of people display arrogance and desperation...simultaneously.

Arrogance:
McClellan said White House officials were not trying to determine on their own what had happened or who was involved. "Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that."
Desperation:
In particular, McClellan said it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Karl Rove, Bush's top political operative, was involved, as once alleged by Wilson. "He wasn't involved," McClellan said of Rove. "The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."
I hope that it goes without saying that if the latter statement is accurate, it means that Bush knows who exposed Valerie Plame.

Meanwhile, the right wing of the blogosphere is going apesh*t. Several neocon apologists are coming up with the most pathetic excuses for their masters, from "s/he asked for it" (now there's a classic) to blaming others for the leak...after the leak was leaked (WTF?) to "why would they bother?" Another National Review article (The National Review appears to be the NuCon mouthpiece) claims that it's no big deal, because everyone who's anyone in Washington already knew about Valerie Wilson nee Plame. So there, nyah.

If I had enough time to riposte every NuCon screed, I'd be a happy (and rather wealthy) man. Suffice to say that I don't feel any particular need to argue these points, as they all take massive detours around the real issue: which two top White House officials outed an undercover CIA operative?

This, by the way, is according to another senior administration official.

If this is the best Act Two the New American Empire can come up with, Act Three is going to be awfully one sided.

(/) Roland X
Awww, and I was hoping for a big Dean/Bush lightsaber duel in October of '04... ;^)

Addendum: Morgan's excellent list of articles on the Plame scandal will likely fall behind fast now that the mainstream media is (finally) on the case, but it's an excellent primer for the first two months of the story's development.

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