Thursday, July 21, 2005

A WHIGgate update. OK, so maybe this article doesn't use the WHIGgate tag, but it tells the same story of the Downing Street Memo in action.

"Rove-Plame Scandal Leads To Greater White House Horrors?", by Bernard Weiner - Democratic Underground, 19 July 2005:
[...]
It would appear that this scandal goes way beyond Karl Rove and who said what to whom when about Ms. Plame. It certainly is true, though, that turning over that slimy Rove-Plame rock was the way into the larger issues upon which Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his grand jury apparently are focusing.
(Ain't it almost always so in Washington? The cover-up is always a greater problem for the perpetrators than the original crime, for inevitably even seamier scandals are unearthed one by one; see the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, et al. The moral lesson - admit your mistake early, bear the immediate hit, and move on unencumbered - rarely seems to "take" among politicians, of whatever party.)
What's being covered up in the Plame/Rove case seems to revolve around the Bush Administration's orchestrated propaganda campaign to justify its invasion of Iraq...
[...]
The WHIG [White House Iraq Group] played the public like masters, thanks in no doubt to their stooges and ideological supporters in the mainstream media, who joined in the fool-the-public campaign in major, influential ways. Those who chose not to play the deception game, such as Ambassador Wilson, they decided, would be made to pay the price for their perfidy - and the trash-Joe-Wilson campaign continues until this day. [...]
Read this whole Bernard Weiner article. Maybe I have a vested interest in the WHIGgate term, because I don't see any references to it predating my posting from last Tuesday, but I really don't care what this story ends up being called (though it needs to be something short and snappy) as long as it's clear that it is a story, and that the story only begins with Karl Rove, so I think that "Plamegate" or "Rovegate" suggests a short story with a clear ending when Rove is frogmarched from the West Wing. "Whig-gate" or "Iraq-gate" or "War-gate" suggest a much longer story with a much wider frame.
Those of us who are interested in telling this story of how the second US--Iraq war was sold on false pretenses need to understand (as much as possible without much help from the MSM) how the Downing Street Memo, the White House Iraq Group, and the smearing of Joe Wilson by WHIGs Libby and Rove are all part of the exact same narrative. Because, as WHIG founder Andrew Card confessed to the New York Times, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.", we may not get attention for this big story of the Downing Street Memo In Action until the fall, or later, but we need to be ready when the media spotlight finally turns that way. In their case they didn't start selling their New Improved Iraq War until they could wrap themselves in 9/11 before the UN and cause maximum damage in the 2002 midterms. In our case, we need to use these dog days of summer to get these facts straight in our own minds because there are going to be concerted efforts on the other side to declare this story over every time there's one removal of an overzealous leaker from the Administration or one sealed grand jury report filed. This story doesn't end until the buck stops in Bush's Oval Office and Cheney's Secret Bunker.
To be continued . . .
True Blue Liberal

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great article!

As far as a name for this affair, "Plamegate", as suggested by Editor&Publisher, appears to have won. Check Technorati here
http://www.technorati.com/search/plamegate
Jack