DSM: White House uses RNC talking points to distract attention from war crimes

RNC talking points are curious. They really don't say anything worth relying on.

Skip down to the section "Details" if you don't want to read my opening remarks and want to get straight to the juicy stuff. There's alot of ugly blood, so prepare yourself.

Overview

This note outlines the core flaws with the RNC memo and shows why the RNC is doing more to muddy the waters than credibly provide leadership or demonstrate a commitment to accountability to the rule of law.

These issues could easily be remedied if there were an investigation. Indeed, Prosecutor Fitzerald continues his work. The RNC memo doesn't do anything to add new information about what the RNC plan is to remedy their approaches to leadership so that the public might have greater confidence in government.

Rather, RNC approaches to the Rove Situation shows that they are more committed to marking arguments than they are in making arguments based on sound reasoning. They might be assisted and have more credibility if their arguments were linked with facts, not a litigation strategy to defend the President against war crimes indictments.

Oh, but sometimes people have to be shown how stupid they are. And to that end, I submit to you the following discussion of the RNC talking points and hope you find it entertaining. Moreover, I hope you see that there are a number of issues which warrant further understanding.

The Congress would do well to send a note of support to Prosecutor Fitzerald and the grand jury reminding them, "Yes, we know you’re still there doing your job and we're not all going nuts like Rove who is having his shorts gouged by great white sharks.

Ah, the politics of distraction when the indictments are brushing along the Potomac. reminds me of the days when the cherry blossoms were blooming, but the Sun couldn't decide what season it was.

Potomac Fever makes the RNC believe that the cherry blossoms define the movement of the Sun. When it is in fact, the Constitution which controls all, but the Sun, season, and cherry blossom.

Enough of nature! Back to politics, law, war crimes, and the RNC fools.

Too bad the RNC missed the class in kindergarten called, "reality 101". They've been very foolish. How did they graduate? Ah, but we leave such questioned to those who have to be reminded not to run with pencils and scissors pointed up. Small minds, small realities, and large Constitutions make for easy sparring partners.

Details

Let's go down the RNC talking point line by line and show that what they are saying is "not what we know or do not know."

In other words, RNC is asserting statements as if they are facts without the full picture from the Prosecutor. The investigation continues, but RNC is acting as if it is over.

I've roughly numbered the points to correspond to the major "points" in the RNC memo. [If you want to call their ahem, "remarks" something to really bother with. But here we are.]

1. "Political attacks" -- The issue is a matter of criminal law. Leave it to the Prosecutor and wise investigators to gather facts.

2. It remains unclear whether anyone discouraged anyone; or whether there was active encouragement by others to make public certain information. We have no idea whether the actual motivation for writing/not writing was based on a "desire" to avoid false premises, or linked to something related to a larger conspiracy to dissuade public debate on substantive issues prior to invading Iraq.

3. Whether Wilson did or didn't go to Niger is not in dispute. It is absurd to suggest that the issue is "Wilson's allegation about who sent him to Niger." The real issue is whether there was evidence to justify a lawful invasion. Self-evident, there is no evidence, so it is irrelevant whether Wilson did or didn't get sent by whom; and irrelevant what argument is being posited as the basis for raising issues about Wilson. The real issue is the lack of WMD to which in 2005 we still have nothing from the White House other than "we can't comment." That is not a credible foundation for war.

4. The Senate Intelligence Committees have no credibility. They've been fed bogus information, unrealizable reports, and information that has been fixed. JTTF and DoD regularly provide information; but that information is not reliable. The Senators basically have their head up their ass and as evidenced by the failed oversight, even if you told them the truth about something, they wouldn’t respond unless RNC talking points and policy memos agreed. The issue is leadership. Moreover, the intelligence committees have bungled oversight; there are regular events that go on that they never hear about; and if there’s a problem, DoD and CIA regularly give them non-sense. DoDIG and CIAIG are not reliable -- they do destroy evidence, are stonewalled, and looked at as the enemy by DoD and CIA.

5. It remains a matter of law for the court to decide whether Rove has or has not fully complied with the investigation. It is absurd, in the absence of knowing all the information before the grand jury or on the 8-pages of redacted motions what basis there is to say that anyone has fully complied with anything. Again, the White House will not comment.

7. IT remains a matter of evidence who exactly said or didn’t' say what. If investigators have or have not asked witnesses anything [as RNC suggests], there needs to be a separate review of RNC and why they are getting access to an ongoing criminal investigation. This is a new issue. However, it remains unclear whether "requests not to discuss" are real given that the actual limitation extends only to officers of the court and grand jury members, not to witnesses. So there is no merit to the argument that there's been a "formal gag order." Clearly, the press is allowed to comment and are doing so.

8. What Cooper did or didn't say in the e-mail is subject to further discovery. For the actual intent of the e-mail has yet to be understood both in context of time, other witnesses, and other vents. At this juncture it is premature to assert with any certainty how Cooper's e-mail should definitely be interpreted in terms of a "final determination" about Rove's liability. There is much more to be known. I can assure you, a trained prosecutor has some nasty surprises to show after the opposition has taken the bait.

9. Arguments over whether or who or under what circumstances personnel were or were not sent to any location are irrelevant. The issue is WMD. There is none. Cheney pressed OSP for a changed version. To discuss Wilson’s "reason for the trip" is just a red herring: Why did Rove have the communications? We don't know, and there's more investigation.

10. Irrelevant what is or was not in a report that someone may or may not have read. The issue is the evidence on the ground; and whether there was a lawful foundation for war. All they're doing is arguing over the form of the evidence, not whether there was any lawful foundation for war. This is a red herring.

11. CIA has mixed credibility. The leadership has been politicized; but the analysis were saying there were problems with the conclusions. More discovery is needed. The CIA whitewash investigation and subsequent pony show before the intelligence committee show there's another large half of the story we're not hearing. More to follow during a DSM inquiry. We're not there yet, so it's irrelevant at this juncture what CIA leadership may or may not have said. Rove knows there's another half of the story that's being ignored.

12. It doesn't matter really why Wilson did or didn't do what he did: His conclusions were clearly communicated. How he found that out is something that can be questioned; but at the time, the issue wasn't what he was saying, but that he was disagreeing. That's not a reason to reveal a CIA agent's name, regardless her status; nor confirm that a public figure was actually an undercover agent; or that a publicly known housewife was actually engaged in espionage to protect the national security of the US from bozos, whether they be smuggling WMD or launching unlawful war. Her role was to provide facts and ensure the country's legal foundations for actions taken to ensure national security were based on reality, not fiction. Rove's efforts shows he wanted fiction; Wilson and Plame show they wanted the truth. Plus points to to Wilson and Plame. Rove is a bad boy.

14. Notice what they're saying: "Evidence is thin" . . . they're changing the point of the discussion from "is there a legal foundation for war" to "is there a reasonable basis for a conclusion." That's absurd: Wilson’s' job was to find out the credibility of the statements related to WMD; when the White House didn't get what it wanted, it then changed the debate from "any evidence for a lawful war" to "what is the evidence to ignore an answer from Wilson that we don't like". That smells of "not liking the answer." We don't know the real issues driving White House disagreement and these need to be explored with an inquiry. There could be a valid reason, but it seems odd that 3 years on since the 2002 air strikes, White House is grasping for arguments and legal foundations just as they grasp for AlQueda, information, and facts.

Scale tipping in favor of Wilson.

16. Wilson's effort were to simply find out more. CIA analysts were dissuaded to speak their mind. The only way to "resolve the issue" is to have an inquiry. The only "resolution" to the "issue" was if Wilson came back and agreed with something he knew was false. That's not Wilson's style. Scale tipping larger toward Wilson, now and Rove has no recovery.

17. Butler's report by this time is irrelevant. There had been other UN investigations; the UN inspectors had better information. What may or may not have been going on in late 1990s is interesting for history, but does little to address reality as the inspectors knew it.

18. It is irrelevant whether any Senator dismissed a finding. The issue is the evidence. There is none. It is irrelevant whether someone doesn't agree with a conclusion, when the real issue isn't whether Wilson's findings were correct, but when the leadership knows that someone is asking the right question, but the leadership doesn't want to be accountable for the real issue. All RNC is doing at this point is change the debate from war crimes to an irrelevant issue; then arguing whether Wilson's perception/position with respect to that non/irrelevant issue is correct. That's non-sense and not leadership.

18. It's irrelevant that RNC asserts that conclusions were or were not based on evidence. For the real issue is: If someone did or didn't make a conclusion based on evidence, why is RNC unable to provide evidence to justify a legal foundation for war? They have none. The only option they have is to shift the subject from the White House war crimes to the alleged accuracy/inaccuracy of someone who told them something they didn't want to hear.

19. Its irrelevant what an analysis believes is true, when that "belief" is based on fantasy and VP pressure. There are documents which show the CIA reports were changed; these can be subpoenaed and show how the conclusions were adjusted to fit into the legal arguments; and show how the facts were adjusted to meet those conclusions. In other words, they have WordPerfect document checks that Certified Fraud Examiners can look at when reviewing the analyst’s computers and do back tracing on the old version and then compare the meeting times with Cheney to show how various conclusions were changed based on the VP trips. It's all there ready for the right person to ask for the right analysts disks and hard drives. Oh, did you know that NSA can copy all this stuff and it's stored where the RNC can’t change it? Ask your friends at GCHQ how to do it. It's not hard.

20. It's irrelevant whether Wilson is or isn't tied or linked to a particular person. Wilson was asked to look at something. He did so. He found no evidence. There's no legal foundation for war; and Rove was the pit bull to see revenge. Simple as that. We now need the RNC to let the prosecutor do its job and further RMC comments show that they don't trust the justice department to independently review the matter. If that's true, then why didn’t the RNC simply move to Iraq where they can put in a more accommodating "investigator" who is more amenable to their desired result: Create a shield against accountability. Oh, wait: they already did that with those RNC-inspired contracts and cash-awards with those duffel bags; and the Ohio vote rigging. What am I thinking?