OK, so I’m officially sick of hearing about Karl Rove. Yes, he was caught divulging classified information to reporters for the purpose of fucking over Wilson. Yes, the woman he exposed was one of the few legitimately useful people at the CIA—those few precious souls who spend their days looking at the blackmarket for nuclear materials, rather than figuring out how to assassinate Chavez, invade Haiti, smuggle drugs, or torture information out of random Afghan farmhands which the “Northern Alliance” literally sold them—with a $10k reward for capturing members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, if you turn in five people you’ve made more in a day than most people in the richest country on the planet make in a year. “…Of course they’re denying membership in al-Qaeda, they’re caught!”
But is this what it’s come to? The heaviest charge that can be leveled against these criminals is “blowing a CIA agent’s cover”? Not lying to Congress? Not invading another country in flagrant violation of Article 52 of the U.N. Charter? Not the (multiple) no-bid contracts handed to the Vice President’s former employer, for the things the military used to do themselves (for cheaper)? Not the Vice President taking a Supreme Court Justice on a hunting trip the week before the Vice President is scheduled to appear in the Supreme Court to explain why his Energy Policy must be kept secret?
But, of course, this is how “politics” works in the U.S. You focus on the minuscule, on the insignificant, on the non-policy issues, because both parties fundamentally agree on the major policy issues. The difference between Howard Dean and George Bush on Iraq, today? Dean would put more U.S. troops there, while Bush trusts Rumsfeld’s numbers. The difference between Howard Dean and George Bush on unrestricted trade? Dean supports so-called “side agreements” to ensure environmental and worker protection—because the labor and environmental side agreements to NAFTA were soooooo effective. Yeah, no workers getting screwed here or in Mexico… Yep, no environmental problems in the Maquilladora zone, nooosireee.
As always, you don’t impeach someone for bamboozling the country into a disaster of a war based on (at best) flights of fantasy, you indict the consigliere for spilling the beans on a CIA agent to keep others quiet. You don’t impeach someone for enforcing a sanctions program that killed a million people, or for supporting warrantless raids on poor people, you impeach them for lying about having sex in a civil deposition.
James Cape 