Basket Case
by digby
Good work by the firedoglake brigade and Matt Stoller. There’s more to come.
Needling is a tried and true political tactic. I recommend that people needle Republicans relentlessly for their blind support of every crackpot scheme that George W. Bush has set forth for the last five years. Tie them to that dramatically unpopular piece of work so tight they can’t breathe. They deserve it.
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Blind Man’s Bluff
by digby
Bush and Rumsfeld take questions from the press:
Q Sir, after you’ve studied today the military capabilities of the United States and looking ahead to future threats, one thing that has to factor in is the growing number of U.S. allies, Russia, Germany, Bahrain, now Canada, who say that if you go to war with Iran, you’re going to go alone. Does the American military have the capability to prosecute this war alone?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, if you’re asking — are you asking about Iran? The subject didn’t come up in this meeting. But, having said that, we take all threats seriously and we will continue to consult with our friends and allies. I know there is this kind of intense speculation that seems to be going on, a kind of a — I don’t know how you would describe it. It’s kind of a churning —
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Frenzy.
THE PRESIDENT: Frenzy is how the Secretary would describe it. But the subject didn’t come up. We will obviously continue to consult with our friends and allies. Your question makes certain assumptions that may or may not be true. But we will continue to talk with our — with the people concerned about peace and how to secure the peace, and those are needed consultations. Not only will we consult with friends and allies, we’ll consult with members of Congress. Yes, Terry.
[…]
Q He has said that he is drawing up war plans to provide you with credible options. Now, should the American people conclude from that that you’re reaching some critical point, that a decision is imminent?
THE PRESIDENT: … one of the jobs that the Secretary of Defense has tasked to members of his general staff is to prepare for all contingencies, whether it be in the particular country that you seem to be riveted on, or any other country, for that matter. We face a — the world is not stable. The world changes. There are — this terrorist network is global in nature and they may strike anywhere. And, therefore, we’ve got to be prepared to use our military and all the other assets at our disposal in a way to keep the peace.
Would you like to comment on that?
SECRETARY RUMSFELD: I would. As the President indicated, one of the things we discussed here today was the contingency planning guidance that he signed. I then meet with all of the combatant commanders for every area of responsibility across the globe. I do it on a regular basis. We go over all the conceivable contingencies that could occur. … That’s my job. That’s their job, is to see that we have the ability to protect the American people and deal effectively on behalf of our friends and our allies and our deployed forces. So it is their task to work with me and ultimately with the President as the chain of command goes from the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, to me, to the combatant commanders. And they’re doing exactly what I’ve asked them to do and what the President has asked me to do.
Ooops. I made a typo. This press conference was from August of 2002 and the country in question was Iraq. We suspected then and now know for a fact that Bush had already set in motion his inexorable plan of attack when he made these remarks. Now Bush expects the world to take him at his word again when he says that he isn’t planning to launch an attack against Iran. Unfortunately, he no longer has any credibility so when he says these things, the default position of most people is to assume he’s lying, and that includes the leadership of Iran.
Kevin Drum addresses this and rightly takes to task the thick literalists who say it’s ridiculous to worry about this Iran thing because “of course he has contingency plans.” With Bush’s history, that is entirely beside the point. He says:
…what’s important isn’t the existence of the contingency plans. Rather, it’s the fairly obvious fact that the Bush administration is publicizing them as part of a very public PR campaign in favor of a strike against Iran. The problem is that even if this is a bluff, it’s one that has a profound effect on both Iran and the American public. As James Fallows says:
By giving public warnings, the United States and Israel “create ‘excess demand’ for military action,” as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices.
In other words, if the PR campaign is too successful, then Bush will have boxed himself in. Eventually he’ll feel obligated to bomb Iran solely because he’s now under pressure to make good on his threats and doesn’t want to look like he’s backing down. World Wars have started over less.
His “PR campaign” unfortunately may very well be successful (as it was the last time.) This is deja vu all over again. But Bush no longer has the option of bluffing even if he wants to. He tossed that in the toilet along with America’s integrity and reputation back in the summer and fall of 2002. After the Iraq debacle, bellicose saber rattling has the perverse effect of bringing about the event it’s designed to avert.
There can be no doubt that Iran believes we are planning a strike and there is every reason to fear that Bush’s threats will push them to make decisions that will force the US into the corner that Fallows predicts. The only question is, as Sy Hersh reports, whether the military will go along this time.
After five years of disasterous foreign policy, the Bush administration has left this country with almost none of the tools it used to have to shape world events. He pushed arrogant military unilateralism for years and now he’s stuck with it as his only option. We are weaker as a world power, we have no moral authority and nobody trusts this government’s intentions. The US now exists in a universe of vastly reduced maneuverability because of what he’s done and not just because of our stretched military. Our credibility is in shreds.
Kevin says that World Wars have started over less than this and that’s absolutely true. Bush may have pushed this country to the point where the only option it has is military force because nobody believes a word our government says. This may be the scariest moment we’ve faced since 9/11.
Update: Just to scare everybody witless even more on a Tuesday morning, Josh Marshall writes:
It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces — hawks in the administration’s Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president’s chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?
Not me. These people are like cornered animals desperate to recapture that bullhorn moment and redeem their failed ideology. It’s a very, very dangerous combo.
Oh and is everyone aware that Dick Cheney’s daughter is “freedom agenda co-ordinator” and “democracy czar” in charge of the Iran propaganda group at the State Department? She is. I knew that would make you feel better.
Did I hear something about Cheney accusing Joe and Valerie Wilson of nepotism? I didn’t think so.
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What IS It About Republicans And Their Dogs?
by tristero
Santorum. Woof! Goldstein. Woof! And now, an unhealthy dog obsession from a fellow that knows a helluva lot about barking up the wrong tree:
Billionaire right-wing godfather Richard Mellon Scaife — who famously funded an investigation of Bill Clinton’s sex life that resulted in a presidential impeachment — is having female troubles of his own.
Police responded to a call last week when Scaife’s estranged and apparently enraged second wife, Margaret (Ritchie) Scaife, arrived at his estate in Pittsburgh. She allegedly assaulted his housekeeper, his security chief and his cancer-ridden secretary while a cook fended off her violent attempt to take the family dog.
“He’s in a trauma. He was almost choked to death when she was grasping the leash,” the 73-year-old Scaife, who almost never gives interviews, complained to Lowdown’s Nicole Pesce yesterday. “She claims that the dog belonged to her because the dog is in her name on the registration papers. But she gave the dog to me nine years ago. So he’s my dog.”
There is no truth to any rumors that the estranged Mrs. Scaife was trying to rescue the pooch from unspeakable abuses. Yet.
Hitchens Encounters A Pink Elephant
by tristero
Christopher Hitchens seems to be arguing with hallucinations. In a recent Slate article, Hitchens makes the claim that, contra-Joe Wilson, Iraq indeed did seek to buy uranium from Niger.
However, unless I am misreading Wilson’s original op-ed, Wilson never disputed that, for the simple reason he never discussed what he learned about Iraq’s seeking behavior. What he said, and quite clearly, was regardless of what Iraq may have been seeking, such a transaction was extremely unlikely, given the amount of oversight and the politics of the countries involved in the Niger uranium mining. That is, Iraq may have sought yellowcake, but they did so in vain.
In fact Wilson’s mission was not to learn whether Iraq was seeking uranium. Instead, according to Wilson, his mission was in response to a report which described “a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake.” From his time sipping mint tea in Niger, Wilson learned this report was mistaken; no such sale could have taken place (in fact, Wilson says, the “memorandum of agreement” appeared, from press reports, to be a crude forgery ).
True, in re-reading the op-ed, Wilson does seem to go somewhat further than this simple assertion (which may be part of the reason for Bob Someby’s numerous howls at Wilson). Without saying so directly, he seems to imply that it was so utterly unlikely for Iraq to have succeeded in seeking yellowcake from Niger that by simply including the 16 words in such an important speech as SOTU, Bush grossly and irresponsibly exaggerated how far Iraq had gotten with whatever inquiries Iraq may have made. That implication is what made Wilson’s op-ed so alarming to the White House.
Nevertheless, Wilson does not dispute that Iraq was seeking yellowcake, only the seriousness with which those inquiries can be taken. (To be clear to our cognitively challenged rightwing pals: Wilson knew Iraq was serious; the question is whether there was a serious possibility they could ever succeed. He concluded there wasn’t.)
Assuming I haven’t misread Wilson, his focus is on whether a deal went down and if so, then Hitchens is debunking a pink elephant. Furthermore, if Wilson is right about the contents of the initial report that sent him to Niger in the first place, then Hitchens is dead wrong in asserting that “It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached.” Apparently, someone did.
Translations From Republican Into English
by tristero
““Wild speculation” is defined as “I’m gonna nuke Iran. Try and stop me.”
“Preposterous” means “Of course it’s true.”
Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was “preposterous” to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn’t accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin’s trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.
Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002…
While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin’s defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime…
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
Odd and Ends
by digby
Ugh, what a day. No blogging for my poor neglected Hullabaloo until tomorrow, but I have a wee contribution to firedoglake’s otherwise great series on the bigotsphere, if you care to check it out.
And here’s a truly fabulous review of Crashing the Gate with an overview of the blogopshere in the New York Review of Books. People are gettin’ it.
For those of you who missed Jack Cafferty’s bid to beat Lou Dobbs for “the angriest middle aged white male on the planet” award today here’s the transcript:
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Wolf. Once again, the streets of our country were taken over today by people who don’t belong here.
In the wake of Congress failing to pass immigration legislation last week, America’s cities once again were clogged with protesters today. Taxpayers who have surrendered highways, parks, sidewalks and a lot of television news time on all these cable news networks to mobs of illegal aliens are not happy about it.
With every concession by the Bush administration, and the ever- growing demands of Mexican president Vicente Fox, America’s illegal aliens are becoming ever bolder. March through our streets and demand your rights. Excuse me? You have no rights here, and that includes the right to tie up our towns and cities and block our streets. At some point this could all turn very violent as Americans become fed up with the failure of their government to address the most pressing domestic issue of our time.
Here’s the question: What effect will the immigration protests have?
E-mail your thoughts to caffertyfile@CNN.com or go to CNN.com/caffertyfile — Wolf.
BLITZER: A lot of these demonstrators, you know, Jack, are legal. And many of them are citizens of the United States. They’re not all illegal immigrants, the people protesting.
CAFFERTY: How do you know?
BLITZER: Because I as out on the streets. I saw.
CAFFERTY: Well, where’s the immigration service? Why don’t they pull the buses up and start asking these people to show their green cards? And the ones that don’t have them, put them on the buses and send them home.
BLITZER: There’s a — well, that’s an expensive proposition, as you know — 12 million — 12 million of them.
CAFFERTY: As opposed to the cost we’re enduring by having 12 million of these people running around the country.
BLITZER: Jack, much more coming up. We have a debate. Lou Dobbs is standing by as well.
Isn’t that awesome? Assuming the “taxpayers” don’t rise up to defend their streets against you, all you protestors who aren’t carrying green cards would get a ride “home” — kind of the way they deported anyone who “looked” Mexican during “Operation Wetback,” one of the earlier incarnations of anti-Latino immigration fever that erupts with depressing and predictable regularity in this country. Over and over again we bounce between tolerance and intolerance of the migration pattern that’s been here forever.
I have a sneaking little suspicion that CNN is finding this nativist ranting by both Lou and Jack on Dubai and immigration an appealing way out of the partisan cage. It’s a ratings grabber if not good journalism.
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The Future Of The United States Part Two
by tristero
Read it all. Here’s an excerpt:
In the event that the woman’s illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government’s doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.
That’s right, in El Salvador, a woman’s uterus can be seized as evidence of a crime. Not figuratively. Literally. And if the fetus is deemed viable? The woman stands to get 30 to 50 years.
Welcome to the future of America.
But I Said I Was Sorry
by digby
Francis Fukuyama writes a WATB essay in today’s LA Times about how mean everybody is being to him now that he’s changed his mind about Iraq. He names Charles Krauthamer as being a mean rightie for saying he’s “an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause — and a coward to boot,” but fails to name any of the mean lefties. He just claims we say stuff like he has “blood on his hands” for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that his “apology” won’t be accepted. Now that’s mean.
He goes on to decry the awful polarization of our politics and wrings his tiny hankie about how counterproductive it all is. (I don’t recall Francis taking a stand against partisan blowjob impeachments but perhaps he was too busy documenting the end of history to notice.)
But what I really like is this paragraph in which Fukuyama illustrates how both parties are equally to blame:
This kind of polarization affects a range of other complex issues as well: You can’t be a good Republican if you think there may be something to global warming, or a good Democrat if you support school choice or private Social Security accounts. Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality — even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.
Did you notice what I noticed? The example he cites has the Republican being called a “bad” Republican if he refuses to deny reality. The Democrat is called “bad” for disagreeing with the long standing policy positions of the Party. Can we all see the difference between those two things? I knew that you could.
Get ready to hear a lot of this whining now that the Republicans may be at the end of their looting spree. They made their money, got their judges, their tax cuts and their wars. Now it’s time to put the past behind us and make nice nice. We’re supposed to end to all this nastiness and forgive and forget. For the good of the country, of course.
I have written this before, and I’m sure everyone is tired of reading it, but the Republicans must be held accountable for their actions or they will come back like the undead and do this again. We failed as a country to properly discipline this corrupt rogue faction when they tried this executive power grab in the 70’s and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and others came back to try it again. We need to drive a figurative stake through the heart of this pernicious philosophy.
Fukuyama plaintively admits:
…I believe that the neoconservative movement, with which I was associated, has become indelibly associated with a failed policy, and that unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy. I changed my mind as part of a necessary adjustment to reality.
That’s nice. But I don’t think we should take a chance that this nonsense will raise its ugly head in another 30 years. These people have proven they can’t be trusted to tell the truth or follow the laws. We need to make sure they get the message this time.
Oh, and by the way. If you don’t think this resurgence of victimized whining has a purpose, think again. I heard Karl Rove speaking to the Republican Lawyers Association on Friday (via C-Span) and he was going on and on and on about how the Democrats are cheating in elections. He cited “case” after “case” in which Democrats are disenfranchising Republicans all over the country. It’s shocking: the voter fraud, the throwing out of Republicans absentee ballots, the partisan vote count manipulation. He’s very worried about the integrity of our elections and thinks Republicans will be at a permanent disadvantage is something isn’t done. I kid you not. Get ready for the cries of disenfranchised Christians. It’s coming.
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Hiatt Held Hostage?
by digby
Jane gives Fred Hiatt a righteous fisking for his surreal editorial in the Washington Post today and I am appalled at her insensitivity.
Has it occurred to any of these critics that Hiatt may have been taken hostage by Bushian insurgents? The discordant almost drunken tone can only lead one to the conclusion that this editorial was coerced. It wanders so far from the facts that you have to figure that some sort of dark forces were at work in producing such an bizarre and disconcerting cataloging of lies and misapprehensions. Indeed, you would almost think that Hiatt went out of his way to signal that he was writing this editorial under duress — kind of like that POW who blinked morse code in that North Vietnamese propaganda film. He had to know that discerning readers would guess that he couldn’t be serious considering that the very day it was published his own paper was reporting the facts entirely differently. He’s actually quite fiendishly clever.
Still, although Hiatt’s abduction and strongarmed editorial may be patently obvious to you and I, like many members of the leftist fever swamp, Josh Marshall also unfairly takes the Post editorial board at face value without even granting that they might have been forced by their Republican captors to write what they wrote:
For whatever reason, the Post has chosen to throw in its lot with the flurry of mendacious rhetoric and the white-washed investigations, all of which amount to a grand pen and paper and word game truss barely holding together the body of official lies that is still barely governing the capital.
They’ve made their deal with power. They should justify it on those grounds rather than choosing to mislead their readers.
Sure. Jump to that conclusion with nothing to go on except the facts. Can’t he see that this ludicrous editorial can only be the result of a villianous threat of violence?
I understand that some readers are complaining to the Post directly. One hates to so to see the unwashed public take their betters to task like that. I certainly hope that they start deleting comments right away. These people have no sense of decorum. Let’s hope Howie Kurtz and Deborah Howell can teach these barbarians a little something about showing a little sensitivity to those brave souls who go out to Pennsylvania Avenue to get the good news —- and never come back.
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Libby’s Can Of Worms
by digby
So William Kristol has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Fitzgerald is on a partisan witch hunt because if Libby told the Grand Jury that Cheney instructed him to selectively leak the NIE to Judy Miller that means the rest of his testimony must have been true. Video from Crooks and Liars, transcript via Think Progress:
KRISTOL: In fact, we don’t know she was a covert operative, and Patrick Fitzgerald won’t even claim that. Patrick Fitzgerald isn’t investigating the actual source of the leak of Mrs. Wilson’s name, which was the Bob Novak column. We still don’t know who told Robert Novak, apparently Scooter Libby didn’t. You know, the leak story is absurd, but I now think the whole prosecution is absurd. And I have hesitated to say this, because I have friends who respect Fitzgerald, but I now think it’s a politically motivated attempt to wound the Bush administration. Why did Fitzgerald release — I mean, the theory of Fitzgerald’s perjury case against Libby, which is the only crime that’s alleged here, perjury and related crimes…obstruction of justice through perjury, really, for misleading the FBI or the grand jury. The theory of that case is Libby didn’t tell the truth, he didn’t say that Cheney had told him to do this, he blamed it on reporters, because he wanted to protect the Vice President or the President. Now it turns out that Libby, in testifying to the grand jury, carefully explained that he was authorized to go ahead and discuss the National Intelligence Estimate by the Vice President and the President.
Even Brit Hume recognizes that this misses the point:
HUME: But not Valerie Plame, necessarily.
Exactly. Libby was not charged with perjury for things he didn’t lie about. I would think that would be perfectly obvious. Kristol realizes that at this point, so he starts to spin like a dervish:
KRISTOL: But not Valerie Plame, which was tangential, and which came up toward the end, apparently, of the conversation with Judy Miller. It was never central in those two or three weeks. It seems to me that Fitzgerald’s case is crumbling. He’s refusing to close his investigation of Karl Rove and other people. If you read his 39-page rebuttal to Libby, he focuses now on Cheney. He is now out to discredit the Bush administration. He has bought the argument that there is something improper about the Bush administration responding to Joe Wilson’s charges, and that’s the real meaning of what’s happened these last few days, which is very dangerous for the Bush administration. They now have a special prosecutor out not to convict Scooter Libby, but out to discredit the administration.
That’s nonsense, but it signals that we are finally going to get the pushback we’ve been expecting. This thing is escalating, Bush himself has been implicated, and this is their final fallback position.
For those of you who (like me) get a headache when you read things like Kristol’s spin, let me explain in simple terms what it appears Fitz was actually doing. There’s no proof he’s focusing on Cheney, but Cheney has become important in this discovery process because of Libby’s blanket requests for documents:
Kristol should probably look a little closer to his own circle if he thinks someone is trying to harm the administration with this investigation. After all, none of this would have come out if Libby hadn’t first lied, and now requested that Fitzgerald allow him to rummage willy nilly through government files under the specious claim that it would help him prove that he forgot the unforgettable.
He and his lawyers know very well that his massive document “context” request would likely result in Fitzgerald presenting the court with his evidence that Bush had declassified the document. You can’t blame him. He’s making Fitzgerald lay out some of his case for his own purposes. But let’s not blame the prosecutor for that. Libby’s doing what’s necessary to save his own skin. And Fitzgerald is using what he has to squeeze others who are in his sights. They both are playing an inside and an outside game.
But make no mistake. This is Libby’s doing all the way (and I suspect that certain high level white house officials are rueing the day they ever met him.) He and Rove lied, crudely and stupidly, undoubtedly under the impression that they could not be caught because the reporters would never testify against him. Rove was a little slipperier and it remains to be seen if he’s been caught. But Libby lost that gamble and now he may take the administration down with him. Fitzgerald is only the instrument of Bush’s problems; Libby is the cause.
I think perhaps Kristol is getting Fitz confused with partisan hack Ken Starr, the man who leaked volumes of disparaging information about Bill Clinton to the press during the Lewinsky investigation. He and his prosecutors actually cooperated secretly with a political lynch mob to try to get the president to resign in disgrace. You can understand why Kristol would get the wrong idea. He, like most conservatives, erroneously believes that all prosecutors are obligated by God to be partisan Republicans. He feels disappointed and betrayed that Fitzgerald is playing it straight so he’s lashing out. Poor baby.
Update: It’s interesting that Fitz says he won’t be calling Rove as a witness and refuses to allow Libby to see the documentation on him. After all, when you’re talking about context of the “concerted effort” to smear Wilson you would certainly be interested in seeing the Grand Jury testimony in which Rove reportedly says this (from Murray Waas way back in March of 2004):
President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
Rove seems to have given detailed testimony about the “concerted effort. Why ever do you suppose Fitzgerald isn’t planning to call him as a witness?
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