Rove Dancing on DSM Grave? (BBA XIV)
Kenneth, sitting in his comfy chair, had his laptop in his lap, reading blogs to see what was on everyone's minds. Frank, similarly arrayed, was reading e-mail or downloading dirty pictures, or both. The companionable silence of shared but independent absorption had settled over them some time ago.
"Do you think Rove did it on purpose?" Ken mumbled.
"Undoubtedly," Frank answered without looking up. "Did what?"
"Well, several things, but I'm thinking about the Plame Affair: revealing Plame as a CIA agent — while carefully not saying her actual name, of course — and then letting himself be revealed as the source."
"Oh, sure. Rove doesn't usually do overtly stupid shit by accident."
"But what's his motivation?"
Frank didn't even stop to think. "For naming Plame, it was the usual childish retribution: revenge for the perceived slight of an opponent's telling the truth about something, in this case the non-case of the Nigerian uranium."
"Okay, that's really pretty simple," Ken allowed, "but what about this business of letting himself be fingered. Clearly the administration must not be expecting any real fallout."
"Of course there'll be no fallout," Frank snorted. "Since when has the White House's 'taking responsibility' for anything actually had discernable effects? Rumsfeld takes 'full responsibility' all the time, and he's still got a job."
"So you don't think they'll fire Rove?"
"Oh they might if doing so appeared expedient, but why would that change anything anyway? There would still be no consequences. They could fire Rove and all the fire could die down and he could still operate the Bush dummy and no one would notice the difference."
"Still , it stirs up a lot of dust, which should at least make for itchy eyes."
"Oh, it might be irritating, but this administration is very good at keeping the dust stirred up. It's central to their Policy of Impunity: the press may be a lap dog, but even the blogs forget the most heinous infractions after awhile, largely because there are so many heinous infractions that it's hard to keep up with them. They keep on doing this stuff and so far all they've had to do is wait for any consequent fuss to die down, which is always has. This revelation about Rove has certainly served its purpose."
"Oh!" Kenneth actually turned to look at Frank. "There's a purpose to fingering Rove?"
"Well, by design or happenstance, it has distracted everyone from the business of the Downing Street Memos, hasn't it?"
"Gosh, I guess it has pushed that story into the background."
"I take it as an indication of how worried the administration is about the DSM revelations, that Rove would run into the spotlight and dance a tarantella to distract everyone from keeping the pressure on about investigating impeachable offences. I figure that whole thing where he provoked liberals by saying that they didn't understand 9/11 was just his way of standing on the diving board and yelling 'Mommy! Mommy! Look at ME!' before beginning his dance. "
"Rove dancing a tarantella on a diving board?" Ken turned back to his blog reading. "Not a terribly pleasant image, is it?"
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, aimed at increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the Big Brass Alliance (or BBA) and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]