:) Bush's promise
Protecting Rove, plundering credibility
Last update: July 20, 2005
In January 2003, President Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power because he was about to acquire nuclear weapons. When that justification for invading Iraq was discredited, the president changed his tune. Saddam Hussein had to be removed because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" of the chemical and biological kind. When the invasion showed that claim to have been bunk, the president changed his tune again. The Iraq invasion was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. There's been as much democracy in Baghdad in the past two years as there was in the streets of Sarajevo in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the president's ever-adaptable self-deceptions, Iraqis are free, grateful and democratically minded.
Facts, it appears, are no hindrance to Bush's method. If the facts contradict his intentions, he either cooks the facts for a better fit or he rewrites history. He's at it again regarding Karl Rove, his trusted political adviser and arguably the most powerful man in the White House behind President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Rove is at the center of the latest swirl of deceptions springing from the White House. It is now clear that Rove did confirm to a Time magazine reporter that the CIA envoy who discredited the president's Iraqi nukes contention was married to a CIA agent. It is against the law to knowingly reveal a CIA agent's identity. (Rove had a strong motive to do so. The president had been embarrassed by the envoy's debunking. Rove was retaliating by attempting to undermine the envoy's credibility.) Whether Rove committed a crime is not clear. So far it appears that he did not, at least according to the independent prosecutor handling the case. But he had a generous hand in leaking the agent's identity.
What's also clear is the Bush administration's response to the leak when it was first made public through conservative columnist Robert Novak's syndicated column, which outed the agent's name, Valerie Plame, in late 2003 (and ruined her undercover career). "There's just too many leaks," the president said on Sept. 30, 2003. "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."
Nine months later reporters asked Bush whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, whether or not laws were broken. Bush's answer was a categorical "Yes." Bush's spokesman was no less categorical in routine White House news conferences.
Then came the Time magazine reporter's revelation that Rove was, indeed, one of two sources for his information about the CIA agent, as was I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The administration spent the last week circling the wagons, deflecting or ducking questions and blaming the media for the mess until the president on Monday reverted back to a trusted strategy to defend his trusted aid: He rewrote history. Yes, he'd still fire anyone involved in leaking the CIA agent's name -- but only those "who committed a crime."
In other words, it is OK for anyone in the Bush administration to be unethical, to be manipulative, to be deceptive, to be retributive, and of course to leak irresponsibly and ruin a government operative's career -- so long as laws aren't broken. But as Elaine Kaplan, who from 1998 to 2003 headed a federal agency that investigates federal employees' misconduct, told The New York Times: "Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don't have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That's not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime."
Except when President Bush decides to pull rank, raise the bar of misconduct, and further lower his credibility.
Bush's promise
Protecting Rove, plundering credibility
Last update: July 20, 2005
In January 2003, President Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power because he was about to acquire nuclear weapons. When that justification for invading Iraq was discredited, the president changed his tune. Saddam Hussein had to be removed because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" of the chemical and biological kind. When the invasion showed that claim to have been bunk, the president changed his tune again. The Iraq invasion was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. There's been as much democracy in Baghdad in the past two years as there was in the streets of Sarajevo in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the president's ever-adaptable self-deceptions, Iraqis are free, grateful and democratically minded.
Facts, it appears, are no hindrance to Bush's method. If the facts contradict his intentions, he either cooks the facts for a better fit or he rewrites history. He's at it again regarding Karl Rove, his trusted political adviser and arguably the most powerful man in the White House behind President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Rove is at the center of the latest swirl of deceptions springing from the White House. It is now clear that Rove did confirm to a Time magazine reporter that the CIA envoy who discredited the president's Iraqi nukes contention was married to a CIA agent. It is against the law to knowingly reveal a CIA agent's identity. (Rove had a strong motive to do so. The president had been embarrassed by the envoy's debunking. Rove was retaliating by attempting to undermine the envoy's credibility.) Whether Rove committed a crime is not clear. So far it appears that he did not, at least according to the independent prosecutor handling the case. But he had a generous hand in leaking the agent's identity.
What's also clear is the Bush administration's response to the leak when it was first made public through conservative columnist Robert Novak's syndicated column, which outed the agent's name, Valerie Plame, in late 2003 (and ruined her undercover career). "There's just too many leaks," the president said on Sept. 30, 2003. "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."
Nine months later reporters asked Bush whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, whether or not laws were broken. Bush's answer was a categorical "Yes." Bush's spokesman was no less categorical in routine White House news conferences.
Then came the Time magazine reporter's revelation that Rove was, indeed, one of two sources for his information about the CIA agent, as was I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The administration spent the last week circling the wagons, deflecting or ducking questions and blaming the media for the mess until the president on Monday reverted back to a trusted strategy to defend his trusted aid: He rewrote history. Yes, he'd still fire anyone involved in leaking the CIA agent's name -- but only those "who committed a crime."
In other words, it is OK for anyone in the Bush administration to be unethical, to be manipulative, to be deceptive, to be retributive, and of course to leak irresponsibly and ruin a government operative's career -- so long as laws aren't broken. But as Elaine Kaplan, who from 1998 to 2003 headed a federal agency that investigates federal employees' misconduct, told The New York Times: "Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don't have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That's not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime."
Except when President Bush decides to pull rank, raise the bar of misconduct, and further lower his credibility.
Bush's promise
Protecting Rove, plundering credibility
Last update: July 20, 2005
In January 2003, President Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power because he was about to acquire nuclear weapons. When that justification for invading Iraq was discredited, the president changed his tune. Saddam Hussein had to be removed because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" of the chemical and biological kind. When the invasion showed that claim to have been bunk, the president changed his tune again. The Iraq invasion was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. There's been as much democracy in Baghdad in the past two years as there was in the streets of Sarajevo in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the president's ever-adaptable self-deceptions, Iraqis are free, grateful and democratically minded.
Facts, it appears, are no hindrance to Bush's method. If the facts contradict his intentions, he either cooks the facts for a better fit or he rewrites history. He's at it again regarding Karl Rove, his trusted political adviser and arguably the most powerful man in the White House behind President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Rove is at the center of the latest swirl of deceptions springing from the White House. It is now clear that Rove did confirm to a Time magazine reporter that the CIA envoy who discredited the president's Iraqi nukes contention was married to a CIA agent. It is against the law to knowingly reveal a CIA agent's identity. (Rove had a strong motive to do so. The president had been embarrassed by the envoy's debunking. Rove was retaliating by attempting to undermine the envoy's credibility.) Whether Rove committed a crime is not clear. So far it appears that he did not, at least according to the independent prosecutor handling the case. But he had a generous hand in leaking the agent's identity.
What's also clear is the Bush administration's response to the leak when it was first made public through conservative columnist Robert Novak's syndicated column, which outed the agent's name, Valerie Plame, in late 2003 (and ruined her undercover career). "There's just too many leaks," the president said on Sept. 30, 2003. "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."
Nine months later reporters asked Bush whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, whether or not laws were broken. Bush's answer was a categorical "Yes." Bush's spokesman was no less categorical in routine White House news conferences.
Then came the Time magazine reporter's revelation that Rove was, indeed, one of two sources for his information about the CIA agent, as was I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The administration spent the last week circling the wagons, deflecting or ducking questions and blaming the media for the mess until the president on Monday reverted back to a trusted strategy to defend his trusted aid: He rewrote history. Yes, he'd still fire anyone involved in leaking the CIA agent's name -- but only those "who committed a crime."
In other words, it is OK for anyone in the Bush administration to be unethical, to be manipulative, to be deceptive, to be retributive, and of course to leak irresponsibly and ruin a government operative's career -- so long as laws aren't broken. But as Elaine Kaplan, who from 1998 to 2003 headed a federal agency that investigates federal employees' misconduct, told The New York Times: "Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don't have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That's not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime."
Except when President Bush decides to pull rank, raise the bar of misconduct, and further lower his credibility.
Bush's promise
Protecting Rove, plundering credibility
Last update: July 20, 2005
In January 2003, President Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power because he was about to acquire nuclear weapons. When that justification for invading Iraq was discredited, the president changed his tune. Saddam Hussein had to be removed because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" of the chemical and biological kind. When the invasion showed that claim to have been bunk, the president changed his tune again. The Iraq invasion was necessary to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. There's been as much democracy in Baghdad in the past two years as there was in the streets of Sarajevo in the 1990s. Nevertheless, in the president's ever-adaptable self-deceptions, Iraqis are free, grateful and democratically minded.
Facts, it appears, are no hindrance to Bush's method. If the facts contradict his intentions, he either cooks the facts for a better fit or he rewrites history. He's at it again regarding Karl Rove, his trusted political adviser and arguably the most powerful man in the White House behind President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Rove is at the center of the latest swirl of deceptions springing from the White House. It is now clear that Rove did confirm to a Time magazine reporter that the CIA envoy who discredited the president's Iraqi nukes contention was married to a CIA agent. It is against the law to knowingly reveal a CIA agent's identity. (Rove had a strong motive to do so. The president had been embarrassed by the envoy's debunking. Rove was retaliating by attempting to undermine the envoy's credibility.) Whether Rove committed a crime is not clear. So far it appears that he did not, at least according to the independent prosecutor handling the case. But he had a generous hand in leaking the agent's identity.
What's also clear is the Bush administration's response to the leak when it was first made public through conservative columnist Robert Novak's syndicated column, which outed the agent's name, Valerie Plame, in late 2003 (and ruined her undercover career). "There's just too many leaks," the president said on Sept. 30, 2003. "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."
Nine months later reporters asked Bush whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, whether or not laws were broken. Bush's answer was a categorical "Yes." Bush's spokesman was no less categorical in routine White House news conferences.
Then came the Time magazine reporter's revelation that Rove was, indeed, one of two sources for his information about the CIA agent, as was I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The administration spent the last week circling the wagons, deflecting or ducking questions and blaming the media for the mess until the president on Monday reverted back to a trusted strategy to defend his trusted aid: He rewrote history. Yes, he'd still fire anyone involved in leaking the CIA agent's name -- but only those "who committed a crime."
In other words, it is OK for anyone in the Bush administration to be unethical, to be manipulative, to be deceptive, to be retributive, and of course to leak irresponsibly and ruin a government operative's career -- so long as laws aren't broken. But as Elaine Kaplan, who from 1998 to 2003 headed a federal agency that investigates federal employees' misconduct, told The New York Times: "Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don't have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That's not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime."
Except when President Bush decides to pull rank, raise the bar of misconduct, and further lower his credibility.
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