Reply #27: The reality frame here is that these sort of secrets are the country's, not Bush's

[clear eye]

So he can't just make up a reason to expose them out of thin air. Plame was doing essential work that required absolute secrecy, both for its success, and to protect the lives of all on her team, including cooperating foreigners. Just because the Bush admin treats the law like Kleenex, doesn't mean the courts would.

Frankly, having heard Cheney say the mistake made by the Nixon inner circle was to keep their President "too much in the loop", I doubt that any of the illegal activities of the last eight years were at Bush's direct say so. Bush may have been convinced by Cheney--who worried about his own skin--that as President, Bush could get away with the Plame crime better than he, and if the investigation got that high Bush should claim he ordered it and bluff it out. But the problem was taken care of, like all their other illegal power grabs and attacks on the U.S. people, by Congress's refusal to move toward impeachment. Without that as a credible threat, Congressional investigators' subpoenas could simply be ignored when they got too close to the top.

In general I have a problem with Bush did this or that, or decided this or that. People don't seem to realize how deeply stupid and bewildered by governing the man is. The only part of it he understands is that people should behave around him with apparent deference and anyone who tries to get him in trouble (hold him accountable for anything) should be "taken care of". He also gets that the U.S. Treasury is very big, and thinks that he owes the power elite of Cheney's and his father's set whatever they ask for in exchange for maintaining the facade of him as President. Any larger or more abstract concept of governing is simply over his head.

The first part of these past eight years were a Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal, and the last part has been Cheney (and the program demands of the mega-corporate friends with whom he regularly consults)/Rove partnership. Rice was used to get Bush on board w/o telling him too much. When you hear Bush repeat over and over "I'm a war President", you can just picture how they manipulated him into shilling for the Iraq occupation. He just wanted to knock over Saddam, show up his Dad, declare victory, and leave to general acclaim.

If we or life doesn't get to Karl Rove, he might repeat the charade with Sarah Palin who is cut out of the same cloth as Bush.