It's About More Than Karl Rove

It should be obvious to anyone who has been following the story: Karl Rove, the architect of the John McCain slam-down in the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina and the "Ann Richards is a lesbian" rumours of the 1994 Texas gubenatorial race, trashed former ambassador Joe Wilson and outed his CIA operative wife. But for the life of me I don't understand why the media isn't taking this story to the next logical (and more important) step: That by overreacting to Mr. Wilson's 2003 NY Times op-ed piece debunking the administration's reasoning for going to war with Iraq, the Bush-Rove team have fueled the fires of speculation, long burning on the left, that they sent American's sons and daughters to fight a war on the wings of lie.

In his Sunday NY Times column, Frank Rich nails it:

"This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative..."

An argument I had made with friends and family in early 2003 - Bush's Iraq war was misguided and would take the eyes off the real prize. It turns out that Wilson was right. No WMD's have been found, no nuclear weapons uncovered. Again, Mr. Rich:

"Once we were locked into the war, and no WMD's could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the 'Never mind!' with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on Saturday Night Live. The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost 'in the bowels' of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke."

So, Karl Rove may or may not lose his job. The man has no decency so he won't quit. It will be up to Bush to fire him but I would amazed if Dubya got rid of his political architect.

The real question is whether or not the media will "follow the uranium" and take the President to task on the lies he presented to the American people. Lies of the worst kind. Lies that have sent nearly 1,800 American soldiers to their graves. What was that Bob Dole campaign line from the 1996 presidential contest? Oh yeah..."Where is the outrage?"

In this American's eyes the whole stinking mess calls for the impeachment and conviction of both the President and Vice-President, followed by a war-crimes tribunal for both. For this reason (for many reasons actually, but for the lies especially) it is an easy call: George W. Bush and his minions are the worst presidential administration in the history of the United States.

RELATED STORIES:
A time line of the scandal from the Washington Post.

In his Sunday commentary, Face the Nation moderator Bob Scheiffer slammed Mr. Bush. The video can be seen here.

Joe Wilson on Karl Rove, from Friday's Today Show.

On Sunday morning RNC chairman Ken Mehlman was quite Nixon-esque in his defense of Karl Rove on Meet the Press.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin's excellent commentary on the attack of the free press by the federal government.