Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Culture War
The G.O.P. hard-liners (led by Rove “protegé” Ken “Is-He-Or-Isn’t-He?” Mehlman) are all rallying to Turd Blossom’s defense.
Hey, whatever you guys want to do. But when you come out in support of another Aldrich Ames, you can be damned sure I’m going to conclude that you’re cut from the same cloth.
William R. Coughlan is one of the founders of Tohubohu Productions (so even on pictures he doesn’t direct, he can squeeze in an Executive Producer credit) and in-house video producer for The Advisory Board Company. He dabbles in screenwriting, acting, 3-D animation, and writing autobiographical comments in the third person. He is also a published illustrator, has provided schematic graphics for several HBS case studies, designed the acclaimed Protégé clay poker chip line, wrote for the (now-dormant) online literary magazine Inkblots, and acts as editor for the MotherReader weblog (which is not-so-coincidentally written by his wife). He currently resides at a secret compound in Burke, Virginia, with his wife Pam and their two daughters.
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6 Comments:
Comparing Rove to Ames is pretty poor, Bill
You’re right. Ames only betrayed his country for money.
Betraying it for petty poitical revenge is in a whole different league.
I won’t make that mistake again.
As usual, your desire for hyperbole makes for poor comparison.
Ames' revelations cost 10 people thier lives, and ruined over 100 operations.
There's no convincing evidence anything like that happened here.
So let me see if I’ve got this straight. If I calculate it well enough so that nobody actually gets killed by my exposure — say, if I only destroy a deep-cover agent’s ability to conduct current or future covert operations, endanger dozens of foreign contacts, expose a CIA front company, undo years of agency effort — then I’m not a traitor.
So exactly how many people and operations have to be killed or endangered before I cross that “traitor” line, huh?
I'm just saying that the revelation of Plame's name to Novak isn't the same as Ames selling names to the KGB (who then KILLED people with it).
What Ames did earns him serious infamy, and some quality time in a federal penitentiary with a cellmate named Bowling Ball Bag Bob.
What Rove did should get him a hefty fine, and it may well, depending on what the Justice Dept. finds as part of its inquiry. Nobody has been killed, post-Plame. No operations (that have been disclosed, caveat noted) have been cancelled post-Plame.
There's a difference here that you are capable of seeing, Bill, you're just anxious to slap labels on Rove. I don't like him either, but this is silly.
I suppose our different outlooks stem from the very caveat you mentioned. My interpretation, from what available evidence has been released, is that the exposure of Plame (and perhaps more significantly, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a front decades in the making) destroyed literally decades of work and endangered (even if it didn’t kill) literally hundreds of operatives.
As to those who may have lost their lives, we don't know. Probably not as many Americans killed, no. But the likelihood of such information ever being made public is slim to none.
You take the lack of explicit evidence and (rationally) decline to assume the worst. I take the lack of evidence as a cover-up (whether as a legitimate matter of national security or an obfuscation of justice remains to be seen). Sorry, but to date that’s been this administration’s unswerving M.O.
Karl Rove is utter scum, yes. He was scum before this exposure. He was — in all probability — guilty of any number of criminal offenses that were never exposed. But for now, we will judge him solely on the basis of this particular offense. And that offense is treason.
For which I will gladly see him having an intimate conversation with the aforementioned Bowling Ball Bag Bob.
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