FAUX NEWS in the Echo Chamber

John Gibson of FOX NEWS is not only echoing the White House’s talking points about Karl Rove, he has gone all out and predicted the probable outcome of the whole Rove situation.

“I say give Karl Rove a medal, even if Bush has to fire him.”
“Why? Because Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And if nobody else has the cojones to do it, I’m glad Rove did – if he did do it, and he still says he didn’t”

Got that? If Rove did it he is a hero to be awarded with a medal. If Rove didn’t do it he is innocent. The message: Rove is our hero no matter what he does.

Oh and why does Gibson think Plame should have been outed? Remember that “outing” a CIA Operative is a federal crime. But Gibson and FOX (and the White House by implication) think Plame should have been illegally “outed” because Plame “recommended [Joe Wilson] for the job of going to Niger to discover is Saddam was trying to buy nuke bomb materials.” And Gibson points out, “Wilson was opposed to the war in Iraq, opposed to Bush policy, and pointedly and loudly said so.”

So according to Gibson and FOX a crime needed to be commited against a secret CIA operative because she recommended her husband for a task that should have only been given to someone who approved of the plan to invade Iraq, supported Bush policy, and publicly supported the President and his invasion policies.

In other words, the truth of the Niger uranium situation could only be discovered by another Neo-Con moving in lock step with the White House policy of preemptive war.
When the “truth” can only be found by fanatical party members, then perhaps what the party repeatedly declares to be the “truth” is really something else.

In the profoundly circular rhetoric that passes for “fair and balanced” news on FOX, Gibson asks, “You wouldn’t send a peacenik to see if we should go to war, if we need to go to war, now would you?”

No, of course not John. We know what you would do. Since you have already decided that we need to go to war, you would send a war-mongering brute who has already had his fill of Neo-Conservative Kool Aid to ignore the facts and reach the conclusion you had already predetermined. And then we invade a country that was no threat to America. That’s what you would do. That’s what FOX NEWS would do. And that is what you and the White House have done.

Will Karl Rove get his medal? Probably. George Tennant got his Medal of Freedom after failing us on 9/11. Condi got her promotion after ignoring memos that said “Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US”. If Karl Rove broke enough laws, I’m sure the President will honor his contributions to the Neo-Conservative Con of America and give him that medal.

GOP Afraid To criticize Rove

George W Bush called him "The Architect".
But now that it is becoming increasingly clear that Karl Rove broke the law, the Republican "leadership" is being increasingly tight lipped. Not just protecting one of their own, but perhaps afraid of what Rove and his backroom contacts can do to them.

According to Yahoo News, one of the few Republicans to speak out on the record made what might have been a Freudian slip:

"I think he should resign," said Jim Holt, a GOP state senator from Arkansas who is running for lieutenant governor. He joked, "I hope Karl Rove doesn't come gunning for me."

Liberals, Environmentalists, and other humanitarian free thinkers have been afraid of Rove and the "Administration" he Architected for years. Now the Republicans have joined us in being afraid.

Compared To What

"The President, he's got his war
Folks don't know just what it's for
Nobody gives us rhyme or reason
Have one doubt they call it treason"

--Eddie Harris & Les McCann
Trying to make it real compared to what
1970

It's Not Treason When We Do It.

KARL ROVE: WORSE THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN
Ted Rall
Mon Jul 4
In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal.
If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators?
The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.
But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.
Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter's notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame's CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson's publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time's cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak.
One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush's 2000 coup d'état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom.
Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job.
If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.
Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media.
"[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.
How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.
Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.