Friday, August 05, 2005

Rove can't escape Democracy Now

Mikaela says:
Great interview yesterday on Democracy Now with former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (of Valerie Plame fame) and a reporter who exposed more of Rove's foibles.

JOSEPH WILSON: Judy Miller is in jail for civil contempt of court. And for me, what that means is that somebody sitting very close to the President of the United States, who despite the President's very direct order that he or she cooperate fully with the Justice Department, has decided not to step forward, but to be a coward and hide behind Judy Miller's willingness to protect the confidentiality of the sources rather than step forward and accept responsibility for what he or she said to her, said to Judy. That's why she is in jail, because somebody in the White House is disobeying the President of the United States and is too much a coward to step forward and accept responsibility for what he or she said.

On the recess appointment of John Bolton to the U.N.:

JOSEPH WILSON: I think it was unfortunate that Mr. Bolton was appointed in a recess appointment. I don't think that gives him a lot of credibility either at the United Nations or within U.S. government circles. Dick Holbrook was offered a recess appointment in the Clinton administration and refused it, saying that he needed to have the support of the Congress in order to be able to do his job up there. I think, more fundamentally, it's pretty clear to me that the ethical standards demanded of senior public servants by this administration are very low indeed. The fact that Mr. Rove, who is now documented to have been a liar and to have been the source of a treasonous leak is still on the payroll and Mr. Libby is still on the payroll and Mr. Bolton is up at the United Nations really, I think, is a breach of the President's bond to the American people that his -- he was good for his word and that he was honest and he was a straight shooter.

Murray Waas has reported on a specific strategic effort by the White House to sell the Iraq war to Congress, the media, the American people: a working group called the White House Iraq Group, known by its acronym, WHIG, which Scooter Libby headed up with help from Karl Rove. When Joseph Wilson wrote his NY Times Op-Ed outing the White House lies from their campaign, they developed strategies to take Wilson down. His wife was the silver bullet.

MURRAY WAAS: [T]here was a very concerted campaign. It wasn't just casual conversations, or officials like Rove were talking to reporters about other things, and this issue just came up, that they actually had meetings and strategies and so forth about it.
...


JUAN GONZALEZ: The role of the press in this whole issue, because clearly, because of the attempts of the White House to leak the information on Valerie Plame to a whole number of folks in the press, this is a story that many reporters in Washington know more about than they're actually reporting.

MURRAY WAAS: That's correct. Our hands are tied.