Arthur Silber - July 12, 2005

OEDIPUS, CALL YOUR FATHER (WITH AN ASSIST FROM TOM LEHRER)

July 12th, 2005

Larry Johnson:

The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans’ talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.

For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak’s column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.

NEXT STOP FOR THE WAR EXPRESS

July 12th, 2005

The signs become clearer—it’s Iran:

Iran could be behind the suicide attack at a shopping mall in Israel that killed at least four and injured dozens, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said.

“I wouldn’t want to suggest that I know about the attack today, but clearly that’s been one of the stated and continuous purposes of Iran, to harm Israel,” said Rumsfeld, speaking at a press conference with his Italian counterpart Antonio Martino.

WHY THE QUESTION?

July 12th, 2005

I’m somewhat surprised that Eric Alterman asks this question, apparently in all seriousness:

Just one question about Karl Rove: Where is the conservative outrage? After all, the man outed an undercover CIA agent, blew numerous operations, cost the country millions of dollars and quite possibly endangered national security and could conceivably have cost lives. (For all we know, he did.) And he did it all for pure political advantage. There was a reason that law was passed. And it was to prevent people from doing stuff like this. Whether what Rove did was within the law strikes me as beside the point. What is the president doing keeping a man in his job who treats the national security of the nation and the lives of its dedicated public servants as pawns in his political chess-match? And what are CNN and The Washington Post doing keeping his cowardly accomplice? Isn’t that the kind of thing about which patriotic conservatives profess to care? Or are we liberals and those folks at the CIA who demanded this investigation—because it surely would have died without them—the only true patriots anymore?

GEORGE W. BUSH, TRAITOR — PART II
July 12th, 2005

I hope everyone who voted for Bush in the last election is deeply happy to have indisputable confirmation that a loathsome and vile traitor is President of the United States. In terms of his repudiation of the fundamental principles underlying this nation, we have known this for some time. That matter concerned gay marriage and the despicable Federal Marriage Amendment. As a result, many people who are now deeply upset by Bush’s behavior didn’t get that exercised earlier. So what if queers can’t get married?