Why are the big media finally
now frontpaging the Plame scandal and the machinations of Bush and Cheney in the run-up to the Iraq War? In part, the authority of special prosecutor Fitzgerald, with the Justice Department apparatus behind him, has emboldened them. But I will argue briefly here that
it is the Pentagon, or a significant faction within it, that is strenuously pushing this story to wound or bring down Bush.
This is the conclusion I draw from reading Seymour Hersh's must read New Yorker article, "The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?"
UPDATE 10:48PDT -- Just posted and saw this important diary by adigal quickly shot to the top of the recom list. The diarist asks, validating, I think, my thesis in this diary:
Why are these people leaking this [info on Bush's Iran bombing plans]?? This is pretty serious stuff to leak. I am fearful that some in our government see this as the only way to stop this insanity from occuring...
(There's more...)
Washington Post slams Administration
The most straightforward and damning case against Bush and Cheney's role in the Plame scandal has just been made by the Washington Post, synthesizing the charges implicit within the newly released documents by Fitzgerald as a result of the Libby investigation. (See A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic, by Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, 4/9/06.)
Fitzgerald's findings document a White House conspiracy against Wilson, and breaking of the law to do it... that spells criminal conspiracy and/or obstruction of justice charges. I expect indictments soon, but Fitzgerald may not deliberately target Bush (i.e., as unindicted co-conspirator). Cheney, it seems so. But Bush will be very wounded.
The Wilson case has ALWAYS been about the lying to go to war with Iraq. I think it's not an accident that the timing comes at the point where the Administration is seriously thinking of bombing Iran, as Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article on this states.
Pentagon Palace Coup?
The Pentagon is in revolt against the crazy policy of Bush. They want to get their guys out of Iraq before they are massacred by a sea of full-scale civil war. Think Blackhawk Down, but on a massively larger scale. Rep. Murtha has already been speaking for a significant anti-Iraq war element within the Pentagon.
A key quote from the Washington Post article shows it was the Pentagon that really drove the investigation into the Niger story. When Bush/Cheney pulled their fake uranium story, the Pentagon freaked. The commander-in-chief was tinkering with vital military-security information for their own political purposes.
The quote:
[CIA chief] Tenet interceded to keep the [false Iraq uranium] claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.
Pentagon sources were also named in a recent story by Larisa Alexandrovna in Raw Story. Such sources were confirming a story that Rove had given information to Fitzgerald confirming that the Vice President
According to one source close to the case, Rove is providing information on deleted emails, erased hard drives and other types of obstruction by staff and other officials in the Vice President's office. Pentagon sources close to Rove confirmed this account.
Then there was the following Knight-Ridder article last November, Ex-intelligence officials want Rove's security clearance suspended
WASHINGTON - Sixteen former CIA and military intelligence officials on Tuesday urged President Bush to suspend his top political adviser Karl Rove's security clearance following revelations that he played a role in outing CIA officer Valerie Plame.
"We are asking that you immediately suspend the clearances of all White House personnel who spoke to reporters about (Plame's) affiliation with the CIA. They have mishandled classified information and no longer deserve the level of trust required to have access to this nation's secrets," the former officials, some of whom were covert operatives, wrote Bush....
Those who signed Tuesday's letter were former CIA case officers Robert Baer, Vincent Cannistraro, Philip Giraldi, Melissa Boyle Mahle, Jim Marcinkowski, John McCavitt, David Rupp and Bill Wagner; former CIA analysts Brent Cavan, Melvin Goodman, Mike Grimaldi, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern; retired Army Col. A. Dale Ackels; former Defense Intelligence Agency official W. Patrick Lang; and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.
I could be wrong, but I think the scandal has seriously worsened for Bush and Cheney. It's hard to believe Fitzgerald would release as much information as much as he did, and make certain judgments, unless there were indictments being sought, and coming down soon.
If there is a coalition of Pentagon generals and Justice Department lawyers that see Bush and Cheney for the danger they are, I hope they succeed in their political operation to stop them before they bomb Iran and set off possibly World War III. Bush's plans are insane. I think they want to hamper him, to stop him. They have a lot of power.
Exposing Bush weakens Bush. He and his Administration may be saber-rattling not just Iran, but in their decrepitude, the American people.
I think of what's happening as a palace coup.