1 Boring Old Man

National House of Waffles

More and more, with Bush administration pronouncements about the Iraq war, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

W. built his political identity on the idea that he was not Bill Clinton. He didn’t parse words or prevaricate. He was the Texas straight shooter.

So why is he now presiding over a completely Clintonian environment, turning the White House into a Waffle House, where truth is camouflaged by word games and responsibility is obscured by shell games?

The president and Condi Rice can shuffle the shells and blame George Tenet, but it smells of mendacity.

Mr. Clinton indulged in casuistry to hide personal weakness. The Bush team indulges in casuistry to perpetuate its image of political steel.

Dissembling over peccadillos is pathetic. Dissembling over pre-emptive strikes is pathological, given over 200 Americans dead and 1,000 wounded in Iraq, and untold numbers of dead Iraqis. Our troops are in "a shooting gallery," as Teddy Kennedy put it, and our spy agencies warn that we are on the cusp of a new round of attacks by Saddam snipers.

Why does it always come to this in Washington? The people who ascend to power on the promise of doing things differently end up making the same unforced errors their predecessors did. Out of office, the Bush crowd mocked the Clinton propensity for stonewalling; in office, they have stonewalled the 9/11 families on the events that preceded the attacks, and the American public on how — and why — they maneuvered the nation into the Iraqi war.

Their defensive crouch and obsession with secrecy are positively Nixonian. (But instead of John Dean and an aggressive media, they have Howard Dean and a cowed media.)

In a hole, the president should have done some plain speaking: "The information I gave you in the State of the Union about Iraq seeking nuclear material from Africa has been revealed to be false. I’m deeply angry and I’m going to get to the bottom of this."

But of course he couldn’t say that. He would be like Sheriff Bart in "Blazing Saddles," holding the gun to his own head and saying, "Nobody move or POTUS gets it." The Bush administration has known all along that the evidence of the imminent threat of Saddam’s weapons and the Al Qaeda connections were pumped up. They were manning the air hose.

Mr. Tenet, in his continuing effort to ingratiate himself to his bosses, agreed to take the fall, trying to minimize a year’s worth of war-causing warping of intelligence as a slip of the keyboard. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," he said, in 15 words that were clearly written for him on behalf of the president. But it won’t fly.

^{It was Ms. Rice’s responsibility to vet the intelligence facts in the president’s speech and take note of the red alert the tentative Tenet was raising. Colin Powell did when he set up camp at the C.I.A. for a week before his U.N. speech, double-checking what he considered unsubstantiated charges that the Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and other hawks wanted to sluice into his talk.}

When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence, it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this ”evidence” could not be attributed to American intelligence because the C.I.A. had already debunked it.

Ms. Rice did not throw out the line, even though the C.I.A. had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in.

And that had to be Dick Cheney’s office. Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president’s office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful.

Those notes seem to be a review of the spin already spun. Just checking to be sure all of the damage control was getting out there. But then there are [at least] two more things. My guess is that they are an Action Plan for future-spin – issues not yet taken on in public statements.

I’ve reproduced Marcy’s post here because I think really she’s onto something big, and there are lots of implications:

•  These notes, written probably before Novak’s article came out, or shortly thereafter, imply a minute to minute knowledge of their well-placed leaks in the previous week [leak week]. They knew Pincus had been called [7/12, by Fleischer] and they knew Novak’s article was coming [7/14, faxed on 7/11 by Hohlt].
• The OVP wasn’t busy with the  War in Iraq as Libby claims in his faulty memory defense. They were busy with their own war using the Press to control our opinions. Everything in here is about the Press and masterminding it: Dowd’s piece [NYT], Wilson’s oped [NYT], Pincus [Washington Post], Novak [Chicago Sun], Fleischer [Press secretary] , Sanger [NYT], Rice’s interviews and T.V. appearances [CNN][CBS], Tenet’s statement [to the Press]. They’re obsessed with the Press…
• The epicenter for the Plame Leak and other responses to Joseph Wilson’s accusations was the OVP with Lone Ranger Cheney leading the show supported by his trusted Tonto Libby. Rice and Tenet were an intimate part of their response – Fleischer too. Reporters were being played as [probably unwitting] pieces in the operation.
• We’ve all called George W. Bush a puppet at one point or another. But notice that there’s no mention of him with the SOTU, or the response to Wilson. He’s a figurehead. It’s hard to imagine FDR or JFK being so completely out of the game as George W. Bush is in this business. Decider? hah!

I hope the jurors are looking at this piece of evidence and I thank emptywheel for calling it to our attention – better than a Sudoku…