The Final Desperate Strategy

The Bush Administration, and the Right wing ideologues who support them, have one last and desperate strategy in the face of the Valerie Plame affair. War against the CIA. Essentially, for political survival they need to set up an all-out conflict with the CIA. Why? In order to keep their ideologuees in camp. Breaking ranks is a definitely possibility for many, left without any coherent reasons left, who have been zealously defending the administration.

I don't call the strategy desperate for nothing. It won't work. It might placate and keep the wing nuts in camp for awhile, and even get a prominent defender in the Wall Street Journal, but it reeks of imminent failure. The one, last grand strategy to explain all the failures of the Bush Administration since September 11, except the economy of course.

"We weren't able to respond adequately, and on a timely basis, or to prevent the terrorist attacks on September 11, because of the CIA! Their failures! They should have had Predators in the skies shooting down commercial airliners like any competent modern intelligence agency!"

(The FBI is blameless.)

"We were forced to out Valerie Plame, a deep undercover CIA agent in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the very crux of the war on terrorism, because her liberal turncoat husband was sent by the CIA to debunk our war justifications, which later forced us to admit that the justifications were anything but, and not built upon evidence!"

(We still believe the case is good, if totally unproven.)

"We can't find the Saddam's WMD because all the places that the CIA clearly told Donald Rumsfeld there were WMD, there either wasn't, or the CIA killer predator drones didn't take out looters who spirited the WMD out to the black market and inevitably Al Qaeda as the highest and most interested bidder."

(The flypaper strategy took into account that we didn't secure suspected WMD sites in Iraq during the ground action. Brilliant!)

Again, this is a desperate strategy, to go to war against the CIA and its valuable and respected agents, and will only work on a very short-term basis, and intellectually on a very limited ideological basis, for the true followers and suffering defenders of the Right and Administration. It attempts to putty up the leaks on the ship, so that it doesn't sink while other remedies are explored. It won't last.

A clear federal crime, not to mention serious national security lapse, was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame. Not really for revenge, but to defend a version of untruth. Or lies. An ill justification (to put it friendly). A woman charged by our nation to monitor and track weapons of mass destruction, has been wantonly exposed along with all of her contacts and operations. Keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the wrong hands is the very crux and great challenge of the war against terror, as weapons technology continues to evolve smaller and more powerful. What the hell are we doing?

All of this was seemingly condoned and even gloated over by Karl Rove, the so-called mastermind behind the Right wing political apparatus. Whether he knew or not about Plame's true status, somebody should have, and put a stop to it. When it first started going public, back in the summer, at least then something should have been done about it. No action was taken.

There is only one real solution left. The perpetrators need to be discovered and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and articles of impeachment against President Bush need to be considered. Unless Bush and the administration come clean, end their war against the CIA and their valuable agents and operations, and stop the political madness which has so greatly weakened and divided us.

(A little humility can go a long way.)