The Ace of Spades

So, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed Karl Rove and his lawyer that Fitzgerald no longer considers Rove a target for prosecution under his mandate and will seek no grand jury indictment against him. It seems, further, that he has no fish to fry beyond Lewis Libby.

Libby's been the designated fall guy for some time now, as the frame--if such were necessary--was set in place upon him well before the 2004 election, though it took much longer for the lies needed to back up the Iraqi invasion to unravel than the WHIG plotters feared at the time. Then again, maybe not long enough: the Iraq war was supposed to be over before any of this would come back to haunt the Bushites, and then it wouldn't have mattered.

Nevertheless, despite the limited results of this particular fishing expedition, I wouldn't throw Scooter back, because the trial will continue to shed a little light on "Cheney's office" (at least better than none at all). The trial may yet reveal a conspiracy worthy of prosecution, but this outcome is grim news indeed. It means that Rove may once again ply his sinister talent without being harassed by legally legitimized taunts of "Traitor".

My reading of the case is that Fitzgerald found less-than-credible Rove's assertions that he forgot the call he made with Time reporter Matthew Cooper on the subject of the Nigerian uranium hoax, Ambassador Wilson's perfidious truth-telling, and the hidden fact of his wife's status as a covert CIA operative; however, Fitzgerald lacks sufficient evidence to prove that Rove didn't forget, and Rove was able to stick to his story, such as it was. Repeatedly. Besides, I'm sure Rove made so many other calls, to so many other access-based journalists; maybe Cooper's wasn't top of mind.

Alas, Fitzgerald's perjury trap was less than perfect and this brilliant liar Rove, whose lie was less transparent here than many he has perpetrated, has won once again. Hence his card value in the Bushite deck; Rove's power trumps all others because politics is everything for the Bushites.

I have heard objections to comparing the lies generated by Rove and certain other prominent Bushites to the propaganda of Goebbels and the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. It seems one can never make a historical analogy which involves Nazi Germany. Well, Rove didn't kill anyone--directly--with his lies and neither did Goebbels. It took powerful and secretive initiatives of an all-powerful executive untrammeled by adequate oversight, under the lazy watch of a confused, distracted, and acquiescent nation, for the Holocaust to occur. We are not in a comparable situation in this society in terms of the immediate results, but the power of lies to deceive the public has not diminished. Therefore the analogy, and the outrage, is appropriate.

To call this man a pathological liar is to give disease a worse name than it deserves. His motives are not as innocent as a simple bacterium, virus, or chemical imbalance.