Dr. MacGuffin (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iraq War)

This whole Rove thing is a pattern, and one I feel is pretty obvious that anyone with a pulse has begun to notice. The orchestrated campaign of lie, smear, attack, denial, smear again, denial, change the subject, demand apology from those who catch you lying, stonewall, stonewall, stonewall, etc is so apparent now that watching it actually has made me cringe out of embarrassment for how low and pathetic the Bushittes and their arms of propaganda (Fox, RNC, NYPost, etc) seem. For example, Meet the Press was funnier this week than say, Reno 911 (which is hilarious) because of RNC Chairman Ken Melman's delirium taking center stage. ' Those accusing Karl Rove owe him an apology...' What??!?!??! He exposed a covert agent and lied about it for over 2 years and then was caught in the lie about how he grossly abused his power for political retribution. If he actually murdered Valerie Plame, and was caught after lying about it for two years, I bet the RNC would still demand an apology. They are grasping, and man it is fun to watch.
When O.J. says he's gonna find the 'real killer' it seems more genuine.

But, that being said, it really is just another sideshow to the much bigger picture (why was Joe Wilson in Niger?) and that's what Frank Rich nails in his column this week. I have been so disgusted about the possibility of games being played with disregard to national security in the Plame case, I have lost focus on just how much our national security is at risk because of this war and the lies and manipulated intelligence that brought us there. This whole thing isn't about leaks- its about a lies as a means to an end of going to war and criminal activity to attack those that catch you lying. Rich rightly points out why the White House and the press seem to have done complete 180s this week: "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 who posed for Vanity Fair."

Rich comments on the press side of things, which has been breathtaking to watch. For example, Fox can no longer be considered infotainment- they were never news- as they have come out as clearly as I have ever seen them as pure propagandists and I defy anyone reading this to show otherwise. (The whole column is here and as always, use propagandasandwich@yahoo.com for the login and redsox for the password if you are not signed up.)

Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.
...

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.
(Emphasis mine)