The Hand is Quicker than the Eye.
So, Scooter Libby is on trial. Whoopdee doo. If crimes against taste were prosecutable, he would surely be on trial for writing stories about forcing young girls to be raped by bears. That's a nasty bit of work. But the current trial is just another bit of executive sleight of hand.
I am so sick of "Plamegate." Of course, it was VERY wrong of Novak and Libby and whoever else to have leaked Valerie Plame's name. It jeopardized her work and potentially her safety.
But IT'S NOT THE REAL SCANDAL.
Why are we calling this Plamegate and not Nigergate or Documentgate (on a side note, at some point in history, people are going to think that Nixon's career ended because of some scandal involving water)?
Libby is just the scapegoat, a fine bit of misdirection so that no one asks the important questions about intelligence being manufactured in order to justify miltary action.
I happened to be in London right after David Kelly committed suicide, and the press was all over it because, I think, of the phrase "sex up the dossier." Now, the British press isn't any better than ours, so maybe we need to start talking about the Niger documents getting "sexed-up." Maybe then we can refocus our attention on the real scandal.
It occurs to me that my very first blog post was on this very issues. Ah, memories.
Update: I was speaking to a very smart friend of mine about this matter, and she pointed out that it's like the "scandal" in The Constant Gardener, where the characters are all very busy tracking down memos and secrets and the big scandal is some corrupt scheme at a pharmaceutical company. "Yeah," she quipped, "that's the scandal about AIDS in Africa." Now, I like John le Carre, and he was just trying to write a suspenser, but for people to take it as a big political meesage is again to deflect attention from what we all know to be the case: getting AZT to people costs less that a dollar per person a day. This is a world wide threat. And we're still not taking decisive (and relatively cheap) action. But cloaking it all in intrigue lets us isolate the problem and continue not to face the reality of the situation.
And that's all I have to say about the Libby trial.
I am so sick of "Plamegate." Of course, it was VERY wrong of Novak and Libby and whoever else to have leaked Valerie Plame's name. It jeopardized her work and potentially her safety.
But IT'S NOT THE REAL SCANDAL.
Why are we calling this Plamegate and not Nigergate or Documentgate (on a side note, at some point in history, people are going to think that Nixon's career ended because of some scandal involving water)?
Libby is just the scapegoat, a fine bit of misdirection so that no one asks the important questions about intelligence being manufactured in order to justify miltary action.
I happened to be in London right after David Kelly committed suicide, and the press was all over it because, I think, of the phrase "sex up the dossier." Now, the British press isn't any better than ours, so maybe we need to start talking about the Niger documents getting "sexed-up." Maybe then we can refocus our attention on the real scandal.
It occurs to me that my very first blog post was on this very issues. Ah, memories.
Update: I was speaking to a very smart friend of mine about this matter, and she pointed out that it's like the "scandal" in The Constant Gardener, where the characters are all very busy tracking down memos and secrets and the big scandal is some corrupt scheme at a pharmaceutical company. "Yeah," she quipped, "that's the scandal about AIDS in Africa." Now, I like John le Carre, and he was just trying to write a suspenser, but for people to take it as a big political meesage is again to deflect attention from what we all know to be the case: getting AZT to people costs less that a dollar per person a day. This is a world wide threat. And we're still not taking decisive (and relatively cheap) action. But cloaking it all in intrigue lets us isolate the problem and continue not to face the reality of the situation.
And that's all I have to say about the Libby trial.
posted by Feemus at
6:20 AM
2 Comments:
"Novak and Libby and whoever else to have leaked Valerie Plame's name."
Feemus, we know who "whoever" was. It was Armitage, not Libby.
You know this.
I know it wasn't the answer you wanted, but no matter how much you want Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to have committed this crime, that won't alter the reality.
By
Anonymous, at 7:01 AM
Oh Dwight. I know how you feel about Karl--I would never accuse him of anything.
By
Feemus, at 6:14 AM
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