"”PlameGate” Is Hardly a Summer Squall"

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON - While to people living outside the Washington ”Beltway,” the current affair over the disclosure by top White House officials of the identity of a covert intelligence officer may seem somewhat esoteric, the stakes could not be higher.

It is not just that Karl Rove, Pres. George W. Bush's top political adviser, and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, may have violated a 1982 law to protect U.S. spies and could face criminal indictments, at least for perjury or obstruction of justice.

The case may also prove to be one more string -- albeit a very central one -- that, if pulled with sufficient determination, could well unravel a very tangled ball of yarn, and one that would confirm recent revelations in the British press -- the so-called Downing Street memo -- that the Bush administration was ”fixing the facts” about the alleged threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in order to grease the rails to war.

It may also expose how a close-knit group of neo-conservatives and Republican activists both inside and outside the administration also waged war against professionals in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department in the run-up to war precisely because, as experts, they repeatedly came up with new ”facts” that contradicted the propaganda of both the White House and its backers. Facts that somehow either had to be ”fixed” or discredited.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0719-02.htm

[ewagner]

1. Need to ask a question

for everyone to discuss here.....

This feeling has been knawing away at me for the past week or so and I think, from some of the posts I've read that others are feeling this too and it's simmering just below the surface.

Suppose Fitzgerald uncovered the whole ball of wax: A conspiracy of neocons, business interests, "other" foreign governments to invade Iraq and plunder their resources, milk the US treasury for every red cent it could under the guise of "reconstruction of Iraq" and to give life to the neocon wet dream of changing the balance of power in the Middle East? In other words, what if our worst nightmares were true?

It would be an event of "biblical proportions". It would be the greatest scandal in world history. It would fundamentally change everything we, as American Citizens, held sacred about our country. It would reverberate thoughout our society, politially, morally, civicly and economically. I would liken it to discovering alien life in that it would challenge everything we know.

So here's the question:

Would Fitzgerald let it come to that or would he bury it?

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I don't think it will reach biblical proportions, and I would like to

think that Fitz will go for it. The quesion is, will he be allowed to do so?

They are already assassinating his character; what's to keep them from killing him off physcially too?

[Toots]

3. More likely the Republican Congress would just ignore the findings

Congress would have to be the place to begin any action and I doubt the Republican owned Congress (Delay) would do a single damn thing. If Congress did not act there would be nothing we could do about it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. The question is how much of the public cares. If enough of us are royally

pissed off we can make life miserable for the people in congress.

But if more of us are locked into "this is typical gov't crap" or people are still worshipping at the altar of **, then I don't think we can make the stink we would need.