| kathleen 2005-08-26, 5:55 pm |
| Great Pix:
http://www.bloggernews.net/showstor...s/UP0000493.txt
Plamegate: Karl Rove, Dick Durbin, And The Politics Of Treason
Editorial by Balletshooz
It has recently been discovered that White House Chief of Staff Karl
Rove was almost certainly one of the persons in the Bush administration
who leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to the
media. Such a leak of an undercover operative is a felony and a serious
national security breach.
Alphaliberal.comIt is likely that the leaking of the name was
retribution against Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had
publicly discredited one of the Bush administration's trumped-up
rationales for invading Iraq in the run-up to the war.
Cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall in an op-ed piece compared Karl
Rove's action to treason. While it is certain that Rove's action
undermined national security and the war on terror by disrupting the
covert Brewster Jennings CIA operation, it is unlikely that Karl Rove
"technically" committed treason. Instead, this is an escalation of a
verbal uncivil-war at the fringes of each party.
On the right, chickenhawks who avoided military service at all costs,
like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Sean Hannity, and Bill
O'Reilly, claim to speak for the troops by saying criticizing Bush's
lack of a plan in Iraq equates to hating the troops. This assumption is
faulty, since most Americans oppose the foreign policy of the Bush
administration, yet almost no one has actually blamed the troops for
this. Moreover, we have seen one veterans group after another, as well
as the families of service members, come out and denounce Bush's lack
of a plan for Iraq. Charges of "hating the troops" coming from cowardly
chickenhawks, whose main contributions to the Iraq war are cheerleading
and a ribbon bumper-sticker on their gas-guzzling SUVs, are laughable
at best.
Those in the war party, however, proceeding with a false assumption,
claim disagreement with the Bush administration undermines the war on
terror, subjects the troops to risk, and hence is treason. Bill
O'Reilly went so far as to call for the arrest of some of Air America
Radio's hosts for speech that was critical of the Iraq war and has
called "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan a traitor on live television.
Absurd, over the top commentary such as this is hurtful to society at
best and potentially slanderous. Senator Dick Durbin lamented on the
floor of the Senate that an FBI report describing the torture ordered
by the Bush administration, could have been describing Nazis, had he
not known this was ordered by current American leaders. He was
immediately attacked as being a traitor by the radical right.
Most agree that Senator Durbin used an extreme analogy, but the right
tarred him by falsely claiming he had called the troops Nazis, and
hence was a traitor. Durbin exacerbated the situation by crying on the
Senate floor and apologizing that his words were misinterpreted. This
was a mistake because the right-wing almost certainly lied about their
conclusions as to what they thought Durbin meant.
Any reasonable person would have known he was not calling the troops
Nazi's. For Durbin to apologize for people's interpretation of his
statements, when they were lying about what they thought he meant to
say, is preposterous. Dick Durbin should have went to the Senate floor
and defended his statements against the lies that were being put forth
by the Republican Party, because definitely Durbin meant what he said
and a majority of Americans agree with him.
Alphaliberal.comThe ironic part of this back and forth saga is that the
person currently at the center of the storm, Karl Rove, had just
recently launched a verbal lob and made a provably false statement,
essentially calling a plurality of Americans traitors and sympathizers
with Osama Bin Laden, who wanted to "give him therapy".
Now that Karl Rove has been implicated in a crime that has undermined
national security, the left has jumped all over Karl Rove as being a
potential traitor. This is an appropriate strategy, since it is merely
a return of the same over-the-top rhetoric that was directed at them.
The true irony of this saga is that in Karl Rove's case, there is at
least an argument to make, that the outing of an undercover CIA
operative, which clearly compromised the war on terror, amounted to
treason.
This Weblog is cross-posted at Blogger News Network.
Balletshooz blogs at Alpha Liberal.
http://www.bloggernews.net/showstor...s/UP0000493.txt
This story was modified 8/22/2005 3:31:16 PM:Fixed a few typos.
|