a damning aspect of the leak probe

[Cocoa]

Will people notice Bush's strange lack of interest in the result of this investigation? Given the seriousness of the crime, which undisputedly happened, shouldn't he give a shit?

His spokesman said Bush wants to get to the bottom of it, but anyone with a functioning brain can see that't the last thing he wants.

Here's the latest blatant evidence of that:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30842-2003Dec25_2.html

<snip>

White House officials profess to be unconcerned about the outcome of the investigation. Some administration officials said they believe charges will eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005. A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up."


Still, the White House is eager for the findings to emerge soon, or wait until after the November election. "The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election," the Republican said. "If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want it to become an issue in the election."

more...

[FreakinDJ]

1. Bush is not scared at all

He has so successfully manipulated the media and people he is conducting fair and unbiased investigations into 911 and the Enron collapse what would make him think he can't do the same again.

[PaDUer]

3. True n/t

[Cocoa]

4. but shouldn't he be more than not scared?

Shouldn't he actually want to solve this case. Just a little?

[Chutaiko]

5. CIA ties?

Shrub Sr. was the director of the CIA for a number of years. He still keeps in close contact with them and professes their necessity/security at every chance.

Why doesn't Shrub Jr. seem to show his fathers consideration cor the CIA and their "top secret" operatives.

[Cocoa]

6. there's a quote from Poppy about this

the DNC had an ad a while ago showing Poppy calling this kind of thing the worst kind of treason, or something like that.

And yet, it happens in Shrub's administration, and doesn't seem to care, other than how it affects his election.

[NewJeffCT]

12. True

They could find out Laura Bush or Dick Cheney personally outed Valerie Plame and the media would make Bush out to be a hero for agreeing to slap them on the wrist.

[Cocoa]

15. lol

I just got an image of Pickles getting frog-marched out of the WH. :-)

[drb]

2. Translation:

They've already got some lower level flunky set up to take the fall. He will receive umpty zillion dollars in secret payoff from the BFEE, and be pardoned by the CHief IMPerialist.

[DrBB]

Scooter Libby goes down, Cheney decides health and family

...prevent him from running in 2004, leaving the door open for some window-dressing pudding-brain like Condi or Colin to bring Kompassionate Konservatism back into focus on the ticket.

I think Scooter's the cut-out. He made the call, and Fitzgerald may well be able to nail him on it, but no one will ever be able to prove it was on higher orders.

[Fleshdancer]

9. I think Rice will be placed on the ticket

If the 9/11 investigation doesn't blow up in her face, I bet Rice will be chosen for VP after the election...maybe 2006 if Bush wins this next General.

They expect George to win in '04 and they expect Hillary Clinton to run in '08. What better way to try to splinter both the African-American AND Woman vote than to pin Rice against Clinton?

[Fleshdancer]

7. The CIA is constantly getting screwed by this WH

They tried to warn the WH about 9/11 and then was blamed along with the FBI when it happened. Didn't the WH first try to blame the CIA when the fake uranium in Africa story opened? Now the WH admits to not caring about the outing an undercover agent?

I use to think the CIA was something you didn't want to mess with. Now I think they're nothing more than an incompetent punching bag of a bureaucracy. I guess I read too many Clancy and Ludlum novels.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. He absolutely should care, and it is damning that he does not

It isn't just who leaked the name of the CIA agent, but they entire way in which the matter of the lies surrounding the Iraq invasion has been handled. In no case is Bush concerned about the fact that somebody lied to him. That of course, assumes he didn't know the truth and wanted people to "lie" to him, the American people and the world at large.

From my article on DU's home page in July:

For some time, many on the Left have been using a working hypothesis about the invasion of Iraq. This morning's accusations and denials by Dr. Rice present no reason to abandon it. Indeed, there is every reason to embrace it tighter.

The hypothesis is elaborate, and may be stated as follows:

• The war against Iraq and the occupation of that nation is colonial;
• The purpose of the war and occupation is:
  • To take control of Iraq natural resources and place them in the hands of multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career;
  • To assure that the business of reconstructing the infrastructure of a post-Saddam Iraq would go to multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career;
  • To impose the neo-liberal economic paradigm on Iraq in order to open markets for multinational corporations based in the US which paid the bills for Mr. Bush's political career and with which native Iraqi businesses cannot compete;
  • To initiate the implementation of a grand colonial design put forward in the last decade by a group of rightwing ideologues under the name Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
• The war had nothing to with fighting terrorism, disarming a rogue state of weapons of mass destruction, enforcing UN resolutions or liberating anyone from a brutal dictator.
• Everyone in the Bush administration knew very well they could not sell the war to the American people or to the world for the real reasons.
• In order to sell the war, they alternately claimed the war to be about fighting terrorism, disarming a rogue state of weapons of mass destruction, enforcing UN resolutions and liberating the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator;
• Since those weren't the real reasons for the war, but merely pretexts for public relations purposes, the veracity of facts used to support them were not as important as the impact they had on the public.

. . . (A)ccording to this hypothesis, the fight against terrorism, the actual existence of Saddam's unconventional weapons, the sanctity of the UN charter and Security Council resolutions and Saddam's brutal tyranny are all red herrings, at least as far as the administration is concerned. They were used as selling points for what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card called "The Product" and nothing else. The members of the administration, including Mr. Bush, didn't care whether these reasons were true or not as long as people could be made to believe they were. As long as they didn't care about the veracity of the claims, why should they have been concerned about the authenticity of material used to support those claims?

This working hypothesis still works for me.

[Cocoa]

10. one thing for sure

the official version isn't true. If someone believes the official version, they have a mental condition, because it makes no sense.

[DrBB]

11. Cocoa's excellent point

I know some people get this, but it's worth dwelling on for a sec.

People talk about how the Bushes lie, and they do, but in a way it's even worse when they don't. Like Mark Crispin Miller points out, a lot of the time they say exactly what they're doing, just nobody somehow takes them at their word. "Hey, I won the trifecta" being only one of the most glaring examples; others--like Bush I accidentally reading from the stage directions and revealing what a heartless robot he truly was ("Message: 'I care'")--being more subtle or convoluted.

So here's another instance of that, kinda.

I mean, Cocoa's exactly right: this amounts to an admission of culpability, but somehow it just glides right on by. The pose, the ostensible attitude the Chimp has professed, is that he is Deeply Concerned (furrow brow here). And by every neutral, objective measure he should be: someone in his office has outed a national intelligence asset during a time of "war": heads should have rolled, people should have resigned. Instead, they're doing their aura-of-inevitibility thing, "this can't touch us; we are unconcerned." But that's exactly the WRONG response from someone who was actually innocent. In any HONEST administration, they would be actively hunting the person out. They would be acting like the problem was the leak, f'r cripesake, not the investigation thereof.

Yet somehow they have adjusted public expectations so much that this kind of thing can just sit there in the open, a blatant indicator of their culpability, and the attitude is just, "Well, they think they're going to come out of this unscathed, politically; end of story." As if they were somehow entitled to act like mobsters, rather than the government of a democratic country. As if we are all supposed to simply just buy into the idea that of course it's their right to do whatever they want as long as they don't get caught, and to cover things up and make 'em go away when they do. As if that's the fucking NORM.

It is this kind of thing that truly makes you feel like you're living in Bizarro World and--what's a thousand times worse--starting to forget what the real world was like.

Thanks for the moment of sanity, Cocoa.

on edit: yes, well, clearly some other people were wanting to home in on this too, while I was composing my response. Yay team!

[Cocoa]

14. many, many other examples

pretty much every time Bush speaks.

When Blair was in the U.S., a British reporter asked Bush whether the Gitmo detainees would get adequate justice, and Bush answered "we know these are bad people."

The reporter asked the only sane follow up question to that unbelievable answer, he asked "don't you think that just underscores the concern people have about justice being done."

But like I said, that's just one example, the outrages just keep coming and coming and no "respectable" commentator says anything.

[grasswire]

13. no reporter has asked him the $$$$ question

....and it is this: "Do you know who gave the covert identity of the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson to Robert Novak?"

When/if a reporter asks that, we might get somewhere. (And I've written to several WH correspondents to suggest the question.)