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Tuesday, December 06, 2005Instapundit is among many writing about the flying fur in the latest CIA kerfuffle. Or, rather, non-kerfuffle: Since the Bush White House isn't on the hot seat in this one, no one cares about the most recently outed operative.Looking at all the nonsense, I'm reminded of the Buckley quip (I paraphrase): "It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation: Everyone except the target was killed." The tricky bit in the Plame case, of course, is that while those who care know about Plame - and Libby - no one seems to know, at least that I've found - who sent a private citizen on a deep cover mission without getting the "keep your lip buttoned" documents necessary to prevent publication of the findings of that deep cover mission in a New York Times op-ed. There is one person in this whole mess who truly warrants being taken out and shot, but he or she is lost in the bureaucratic smoke. This, more than anything, has all the earmarks of the CIA/National Security Apparat liberals know and love: a group of know-it-alls conspiring to alter U.S. policies through non-democratic means. What's the difference between Ollie North and Joe Wilson's handler? As far as I can tell, they both used sloppy procedures and questionable loopholes in order to get around democratically decided U.S. policies with which they disagreed. As for the latest CIA outing, what it proves is that the media only cares about its storyline, not about the probity of disclosing the identity of operatives or making their identities discernible. But we knew that. Which is why, ultimately, the real victims in this will be those in the Mainstream Media who still pursue honest journalism as best they understand it: Newspapers and television anchors were already held in the same esteem as used car salesmen. If this keeps up, however, they'll drop below. After all, the used car salesman might sell you a lemon, but at least it truly is a car. On the other hand, what the news media peddles is proving not to be news at all, but merely an anti-Bush counterfactual reality in which a couple hundred looters in a major disaster represent anarchy rising in New Orleans but the torching of thousands of cars in Paris takes a week to become "youth unrest". In the end, then, I think that we are seeing the ultimate Rovean game. There are those who wanted the administration to push back a lot sooner. But in a peculiar way, the Bush team was wise not to push back until there was so much crap out there that the necessity of their pushing back was more evident: Had they pushed back against the Robert Scheers and Daily Kos, they would have been perceived as a touch sensitive. By waiting till the noise got loud enough in the echo chamber that the ordinarily careful bloviators thought they could join the shout-a-thon, they were able credibly to claim that the MSM had lost its mind and point to blatant idiocies, not mere nuances that, alone, seemed benign, though cumulatively they were more dangerous. The new CIA bit seems a bit outrageous. But if you're Scooter Libby's lawyer, you're taking notes and preparing a "vulgar witchhunt that entrapped my client to justify itself" defense. With the right jury, Libby will walk, not because he is innocent of perjury, but because this new case will prove that, à la Bill Clinton, he was being asked pointless questions for extra-legal reasons, as proved by the fact that no one is investigating the parties to a far more egregious leak than the one he was involved in. 
posted by gbarto at 11:08 PM |
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