Elizabeth de la Vega: How to Make the White House Come Clean About Plame Conspiracy

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http://www.alternet.org/story/48615/

How to Make the White House Come Clean About Plame Conspiracy

By Elizabeth de la Vega, Tomdispatch.com. Posted March 1, 2007.

Libby's trial has raised more questions than it has answered. It's time for a full-scale congressional hearing to hold the Bush administration accountable.


Last week, apparently belatedly realizing the obvious -- that the attack on former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame was a White House family affair -- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called for the administration to come clean. Bush and Cheney owe "the American people a candid explanation" of their conduct with regard to the leaking of Plame's identity as a CIA agent, Kristof insisted.

If, after observing this administration for over six years, Nicholas Kristof thinks that the President and Vice President are going to suddenly be overcome by conscience and tell all because he has put his foot down, then Nicholas Kristof is downright adorable.

The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was merely a snapshot view of this administration in daily action; but incomplete as it was, it nevertheless starkly revealed what many had known all along: that the most powerful officials in the United States government -- including, but not limited to, the Vice President, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, the Deputy Secretary of State, the President's Press Secretary, the President's Chief of Staff, and, yes, the President himself -- had responded to the barrage of criticism being aimed at their fictitious case for war in the spring and summer of 2003 by focusing their sights on a man and woman who had devoted their lives to public service.

Such people -- those who will use the highest offices of the United States government to protect themselves and their prospects for reelection by whatever means they deem necessary, regardless of the damage they leave in their wake -- are not going to confess to anything ... ever.

Indeed, in answer to questions from a reporter about this very issue on February 14, President Bush explained helpfully, "I'm not going to talk about any of it." We will surely all expire if we hold our collective breath waiting for the President to change his mind about this (or anything else, for that matter). Fortunately, we do not need to hear what Bush and Cheney have to say about "it" right now.

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[bleever]

1. And we couldn't ask for better people than Conyers and Waxman

to demand accountability.

K&R.