Former Presidential spokesliar, oops, I mean spokesman , Scott McClellan, reminded us this week that the fish rots from the head. McClellan drops the truth bombshell that implicates George Bush and Dick Cheney in the sordid outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. CNN reports that:
Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson’s name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, had not been involved. . .
There was one problem. It was not true,” McClellan writes in his new book, “What Happened,” which is to be released in April. “I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff and the president himself.”
We knew about Rove and Libby. But now we can add the names of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Andy Card to the list of people who helped create the lie, i.e., that no one at the White House was involved in leaking the name of Valerie. We no longer have to wonder if any damage was done. We have the revelations in Valerie’s book, Fair Game, describing in detail her job as the operations chief for the Iraq Task Force and her mission of tracking down and eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
If outing a CIA intelligence officer collecting intelligence on our enemy during a time of war is not treason, then what is? George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby to help buy his silence. Why? McClellan’s revelation blows the cover on that sham. Bush was involved. Of course we will now witness the spectacle of Republicans, who delighted in castigating Bill Clinton for his confusion about the meaning of sex, themselves doing verbal gymnastics as they search for what the meaning of “involved”. Horseshit! This is an impeachable offense. George Bush not only helped obstruct justice, but continues to obstruct justice. The President is no longer an idle bystander. He is a participant in a cover up. He knew that Rove, Libby, Card, and Cheney were involved in leaking Valerie’s name. Yet the coward, the man who failed to complete his Reserve duty, went AWOL on his staff. He sent Scott McClellan out to lie to the press.
We already knew that Bush was neither honorable nor a man or his word. Despite his vow to remove anyone involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame Wilson, he kept Card, Rove and Libby safe in the White House until Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald blew the whistle. And even then, Bush refused to do the right thing. He acted immorally and illegally. Why should Scooter come clean when he knows his co-conspirator will get him off? And he did.
Now the ball is in the court of the Congress. Will the Democrats find their spine and enforce the law? I doubt it. They want the perks of power without being willing to bear the burden of upholding justice and and enforcing the law. Will the Republicans voice outrage at this betrayal? Not likely. Men of the character of Howard Baker, who called out Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, no longer lead that party.
George Bush may be genial, but now we know he is scum. Facilitating the cover up of the crime of outing a CIA operative in a time of war puts blood on his hands. It is that simple.
UPDATE: Bloomberg News’ reports that:
McClellan doesn’t suggest that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak, said Peter Osnos, founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan’s memoir next year.”He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,” Osnos said in a telephone interview. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.”
So Bush is a Moron? He’s not some janitor with an opinion. He’s ostensibly the Commander-in-Chief. And this begs more questions. Who did the President ask for information about this matter? Cheney? Card? Who lied to the President? Notably, no one lost their job even though the President supposedly belatedly discovered that he wasn’t given the straight poop? God save us from these deviants.
