If a Mob Boss Says to a Hit Man, "Kill Jim Smith’s Wife," Can He Claim He Didn’t Order the Murder...

If a Mob Boss Says to a Hit Man, "Kill Jim Smith’s Wife," Can He Claim He Didn’t Order the Murder Because He Didn’t Mention Her Name? Apparently, That’s Karl Rove’s Thinking.

We’ve warned BuzzFlash readers not to get too overjoyed about the reports of Karl Rove being nailed as one of the two people who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative specializing in tracking the illicit sales of WMD at a time that he was orchestrating the propaganda to start a war based on a nation possessing illicit WMD (which they didn’t actually possess).

It is so monstrously treasonous — such a big lie and betrayal — that it is hard to believe.

But it is, apparently, true.

However, the Bush Administration is, it appears, adopting a strategy of toughing out their treason by claiming that Karl Rove didn’t actually "name" Valerie Plame to Matt Cooper, among other "reporters." Rove did, according to "Time" e-mails, assert that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and specialized in WMD, but he, apparently, will assert that he didn’t utter the name "Valerie Plame."

Okay, so I’m a Mafia Don, and I’m upset because one of my "made men’s" wives is talking out of school and bad mouthing me around town, and sloppily saying things that could get me indicted. Nothing seems to stop her. So, I tell one of my hit men, "take care of Paoli’s wife. Make sure her tongue doesn’t talk anymore." But I don’t tell the hit man the name of Paoli’s wife. So when I am indicted for ordering the murder of Paoli’s wife, my lawyer says, "Your Honor, my client never mentioned Mrs. Paoli by name, so he can’t be guilty. It was all the hit man’s fault, because my client never told him to kill Mrs. Paoli by name."

Okay, no jury or prosecutor would buy that. All things being equal, the Mafia Don would be found guilty of murder for hire and end up with a long sentence in Sing Sing.

Yet, Karl Rove’s lawyer — the one with the checkered past himself — succeeded in getting the "hair splitting" distinction insinuated into the media that if Rove didn’t say Valerie Plame, he can’t be guilty, even if he identified her as Joe Wilson’s wife. If that’s the case, Rove should be fired for idiocy and then tried for treason.

The White House is clearly hoping that Patrick Fitzgerald will succumb to Department of Justice pressure to absolve Rove of legal wrong doing. They are buying for time, as Scott McClellan’s pathetic stonewalling indicated on Monday, July 11.

And rest assured, if Rove is not indicted, Bush is not going to fire his Svengali. Bush without Rove would be like Charlie McCarthy without Edgar Bergen. (If you are too young to understand that analogy, Edgar Bergen was Candace Bergen’s father and he was a ventriloquist. Charlie McCarthy was his dummy.)

Without Rove being indicted, he will spin his way out of the fact that he betrayed the national security of the United States — and the media will lose interest in pursuing the story. Because without a legal indictment, this reverts to being a political story — and Rove is the master at manipulating political stories, even when they involve treason.

Forget for the moment that the White House Press Corps emerged from a Rip Van Winkle snooze on July 11 and bombarded Scott McClellan with actual relevant questions. Without a legal finding that Rove has violated the law, the White House will spin their way out of this betrayal of America’s security faster than a top.

What that means, of course, is we are all more at risk in terms of our personal security, because Rove isn’t fighting a war on terrorism. He is just fighting to accumulate power at whatever cost to the national interest of the United States of America.

http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/07/edi05057.html