It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fitzmas

[The Donkey]

So today’s the day – the day we’ve all waited so long to see. You don’t even have to be one of us progressives to finally look forward to the possibility of the karma wheel finally turning over to crush the toes of those who have lied to the American people.


Patrick Fitzgerald – My Hero

And that’s what this whole ordeal is really all about. Sure, I think Karl Rove is a fundamentally soulless entity. He’s wrongly credited with being a political mastermind. The truth is that he’s merely willing to stoop to ethical lows beneath what many of us could even fathom. If dirty play and cheating were a game of chicken, Karl’s car would have no brakes.

Both he and Lewis “Scooter” Libby are at the heart of a legal investigation being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The grand jury has been looking into who leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative to the press. Oh, wouldn’t it be grand to see the architects of this administration’s campaigns and policies have to resign – or even perhaps go to jail??

The answer, of course, is a resounding YES. But outside of the joy we should take in justice finally being served, we can’t allow ourselves to forget the bigger picture here.

Valerie Plame (the CIA agent in question) was “outed” purely as an act of political retribution against her husband, Joseph Wilson. Wilson, a former Ambassador and Middle East expert, was sent overseas to determine the authenticity of a memo that stated Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from the country of Niger. Wilson determined that the documents were a crude forgery.

The problem was that this memo was the lynchpin for the administration’s argument to invade Iraq. Because it was a fake, there was no real established threat to the United States from Iraq. However, this didn’t slow down President Bush and the supporters of war in the White House. They continued to operate as though the document were real, as proven when President Bush used the fake information in his State of the Union address to sell the war to the American people.

Wilson was understandably outraged. Sure, elected officials have been known to lie to their constituents, but this particular lie was about to launch us into a major bloodbath for no real reason. The result? We’ve now seen 2,000 dead American soldiers, thousands more wounded, as well as tens of thousands of (mostly innocent) Iraqis. We’ve also spent hundreds of billions of dollars, lowered our standing in the world community, and created many more potential future Bin Ladens.

Let’s also not forget about Valerie Plame. She was an undercover agent who worked on issues dealing with tracking weapons of mass destruction. She and other agents like her worked for a “company” (known as Brewster Jennings & Associates) set up as a front to hide their covert activities. To her clients and neighbors, Plame was known as an energy analyst in the company. However, when it was revealed by Robert Novak that she was indeed a covert CIA operative, her cover was blown. Additionally, the covers of all of her co-workers as well as the company of Brewster Jennings and Associates was revealed as well. This action destroyed a nice chunk of our ability to research weapons of mass destruction capabilities of other countries, leaving the United States less secure.

All for a political vendetta.

That is why this investigation is important. Not because Karl Rove is a bad guy, but because the United States launched a war that had no major justification - and then tried to smear those who attempted to reveal the truth about it. This investigation has the potential to reveal a scandal larger than that of Watergate – becoming the biggest black mark on the history of this country.

Beginning today, if there is any justice, the political fabric of this country will begin to shift. People will begin to wake up and see that the administration many have trusted (and voted for) for the last five years has purposely led them astray. With any luck, the resulting events of the next several months will begin to bring this country back in the right direction.

Lady Justice is indeed blind. Let us all hope that her scales are still able to weigh evidence of guilt effectively.