Accompanying the White House spin, of course, is the predictable chorus from his media apologists: Pay no mind, move along, folks. The Plame matter is a mere "partisan" affair that will evaporate when the smoke clears.I am not usually given to simply pointing my readers at other blogs, but this entry is particularly insightful and effective in unspinning the Rovian talking points. It's also chock full of links to relevant data.
If Republicans have proven incredibly incompetent at running the country, they at least have continued to display a knack for ruthless hardball politics and manipulation of the media. That the media more often than not seem all too happy to oblige is another matter.
Facts are to spin like garlic to vampires: effective, but only in well-coordinated bunches. Anyone interested in seeing justice done in the Plame matter -- which is to say, anyone interested in the integrity of national security and the rule of law -- will have to counter the spin of Bush apologists with some talking points of their own.
Perhaps the best is this one explaining just why this betrayal is so serious:
Larry Johnson - a former CIA and State Department official who was a 1985 classmate of Plame's in the CIA's case officer-training program at Camp Peary, Va., known as "the Farm" - predicted that when the CIA's internal damage assessment is finished, "at the end of the day, (the harm) will be huge and some people potentially may have lost their lives."Larry Johnson, incidentally, is a Republican who appeared on PBS' NewsHour to condemn Ms. Plame's outing.
"This is not just another leak. This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent's identity," said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who's now a prosecutor in Royal Oak, Mich., and who also did CIA training with Plame.
It's no surprise that Bush's numbers are falling. The surprise is that they're still as high as they are.
(/) Roland X
If reporters do their job, though, Dubya's in trouble...
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