| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
27 Jul 2005 04:24:17 PM |
| Object: |
Republicans Ready to Slime Fitzgerald. |
From The New York Observer, 8/1/05 edition:
http://observer.com/opinions_conason.asp
Republicans Ready to Slime Fitzgerald
By Joe Conason
Under the harsh but savvy tutelage of Karl Rove, Republicans have
repeatedly demonstrated their adherence to a venerable cliché:
In politics, as in sports and warfare, the best defense is always a
good offense--and the more offensive, the better.
It’s an effective strategy, as John Kerry and many other hapless
victims have learned, and at this point also a highly predictable one.
Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends
and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical
mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating
the White House exposure of C.I.A. operative Valerie Wilson.
Indeed, the preparations for that assault began months ago in the
editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal, which has tarred Mr.
Fitzgerald as a "loose cannon" and an "unguided missile."
Evidently Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the
Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the
special prosecutor.
This week the Senator’s press office announced his plan to hold
hearings on the Fitzgerald probe.
That means interfering with an "ongoing investigation," as the White
House press secretary might say, but such considerations won’t deter
the highly partisan Kansan.
Of course, it was Mr. Rove’s aggressively partisan style that first
sparked the scandal now threatening to ruin him, back when he and
other Bush administration officials "outed" Ms. Wilson in an attempt
to discredit her dissenting husband during the summer of 2003.
Had they not decided to leak classified information for partisan
purposes, there would be no grand jury pondering indictments today.
Such ironies won’t discourage the Rove Republicans from pursuing the
scorched-earth strategy that has served them so well, however.
Nor will those politicians and pundits pause to consider how odd their
complaints about an overreaching special prosecutor will sound,
emanating from once-fervent supporters of former independent counsel
Kenneth Starr and his Whitewater legal jihad.
From their perspective, it’s all part of the same cynical game. If Mr.
Starr was subject to sharp criticism, then Mr. Fitzgerald should be a
legitimate target, too.
They won’t remember how they once decried Mr. Starr’s critics for
"obstructing justice."
Defenders of the Bush White House have every right to whine about the
Fitzgerald probe and the habitual excess of special counsels, no
matter how lustily they once cheered the Starr inquisition.
But while they’ll ignore the obvious differences, with characteristic
hypocrisy, that doesn’t mean we have to.
The most telling contrast can be found in the matters under
investigation.
Mr. Starr spent tens of millions of dollars trying to prove wrongdoing
by the Clintons in a defunct, money-losing land development that ended
several years before they entered the White House.
Somehow the Republicans--and certain news organizations--became
convinced that those meaningless events raised questions of great
national urgency.
Mr. Fitzgerald isn’t looking into musty real-estate deals.
He is investigating the alleged misuse of classified information by
White House officials to silence a critic, and their apparent cover-up
of that potentially very serious crime.
Those obscure real-estate dealings in rural Arkansas probably didn’t
compromise national security, while the exposure of a C.I.A. official
and her corporate cover may well have done so.
There is no partisan issue here. Mr. Fitzgerald is a Republican
appointee, named by a Republican Justice Department to investigate
alleged misconduct in a Republican administration, at the urging of a
Republican President and his C.I.A. director.
Mr. Starr was a Republican, appointed by a Republican-dominated
judicial panel to investigate alleged misconduct by a Democratic
President and his aides.
Mr. Fitzgerald is not only a Republican; he is also a highly competent
prosecutor.
Mr. Starr had no experience as a prosecutor, yet he was selected to
replace another highly competent Republican prosecutor, Robert Fiske,
who was deemed insufficiently eager to indict the Clintons for
nonexistent crimes.
Mr. Fitzgerald has no known conflicts of interest in pursuing
potential crimes committed by White House aides (unless it’s a
conflict to embarrass the President who appointed him to his current
post as U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois).
When Mr. Starr was appointed, he was burdened by several conflicts
with the Clinton administration, including civil lawsuits where he had
taken the side of President Clinton’s opponents.
Finally, there’s an issue of investigative duration.
If Mr. Fitzgerald seeks to extend the term of the grand jury sitting
in Washington, which expires next October, Republicans will instantly
complain that this has all dragged on long enough and must be wrapped
up forthwith.
Actually, the special counsel has pursued the Wilson leak for well
under two years.
The Whitewater investigation continued fruitlessly for five years,
continually changing from one topic and target to another, and should
have concluded long before its theme shifted from savings-and-loan
shenanigans to sexual indiscretions.
If only they were candid, the Rove Republicans would say that was
then, this is now--and ethical consistency is strictly for losers.
_______________________________________________________
"For Bush to get rid of Rove would be like Charlie McCarthy firing
Edgar Bergen."
Forgot who said this
Harry
The Turd Blossom Gift Shop
http://www.cafepress.com/thewhitehouse/438933
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