Scandal redux

Out of the mind of political genius Karl Rove comes this unique idea:

“Hey, George, all those scandals from your first administration have had a very positive effect. And, by God, it’s still working! There have been so many the media jump on the latest, thus burying the last. An electorate with the attention span of a garden slug can’t keep up with them all. That’s a good thing.”

"You're the man, Turd Blossom."

Salon.com’s archives contain a remarkable piece of journalism: summaries of the 34 scandals of the first four years of Bush’s presidency, along with their outcomes. LINK

Lewis “Scooter” Libby. CIA operative outed. Journalists paid for pro-Bush propaganda pieces. Jeff Gannon/James Guckert (remember him?). Jack Abramoff. Rep. Mark Foley and the page sex scandal. Tom DeLay. Alberto Gonzales and “Attorneygate.”

Truly hard to keep up.

And, there’s still the matter of those “16 words” – remember, the ones which allowed George and Dick and Condi to conjure images of smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds and spawned the unilateral, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq?

Here’s a follow-up from the 15 May 2007 issue of The Progress Report (LINK), Center for American Progress:

“Former CIA Director George Tenet has agreed to cooperate with a House investigation into the White House's fraudulent pre-war claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapon.

“That assertion - the infamous ‘16 words’ in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address - was a critical part of the administration's case for war.

“In a new statement, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced that Tenet will provide a deposition on the issue and testify before the committee on June 19: ‘Mr. Tenet has agreed to cooperate with the Committee's inquiry into whether the White House overstated Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa and its nuclear threat in making the case for war. Mr. Tenet has agreed to provide a deposition to the Committee prior to the hearing.’

“Under Tenet, the CIA had debunked the claims about uranium and Niger months before the 2003 State of the Union. The CIA ‘even demanded it be taken out of two previous presidential speeches.’ Tenet now says the 16 words made it into the State of the Union because he delegated the review of that speech to his deputies.

“Tenet has been far more willing to discuss the Niger claims than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Waxman has been forced to subpoena Rice to appear at the hearing along with Tenet, and thus far Rice maintains she will not comply, claiming she has already answered Waxman's questions ‘in full.’

“Also last month, the State Department refused to allow intelligence analyst Simon Dodge to be interviewed by House investigators; weeks before the 2003 State of the Union, Dodge examined the documents supposedly from Niger and determined they were ‘probably a hoax’ and ‘clearly a forgery.’"

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A few words about last night’s GOP debate follow in the next post.