FINALLY it appears the US press has an issue they can get their teeth into. Probably because it addresses the wolf-behind-the-curtain himself.
Watch this footage from yesterday’s press conference in which Scott McClellan zealously defends his choice not to say anything. I’ve never been prouder of the press than I am right now. It’s good to know that the administration hasn’t completely castrated the media.
McClellan: Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this more than the President of the United States.
The hell he does. If the President of the United States had one ounce of integrity, he’d have demanded Rove’s resignation by now. He promised he’d do that in October of 2003:
There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.
How the administration is “taking care of” Karl Rove is by keeping its mouth shut.
Here’s something that has occurred to me about all this: why? Why would Rove have outed an undercover CIA operative whose focus was finding Iraqui weapons of mass destruction? Unless perhaps he knew there were no such weapons in Iraq.
Could he have been concerned that Plame might have figured that out and put the kibosh on his oil liberation plans? Certainly, given her husband Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the administration, Plame must have looked like a threat. That was right about the time that everyone was humping the WMD talking points for everything they were worth. The notion that the leak was simply retaliation for Wilson’s questioning the Iraq threat seems too surface-level to be believable.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan Refuses to Speak on the Matter (Quicktime)
On July 12th, 2005 Mark in Mexico said:
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan
Keeping in mind that in this world today and, more specifically, in the United States, the issues that most concern people are (not in any particular order except for 1 and 2):
On July 12th, 2005 Rudi said:
I saw this yesterday and immediately dashed of emails to the news directors at CBS, NBC and ABC. It was wonderful to see them grow a set and actually search for info.
And Scott McClellan was being a first-class chump throughout. He’s as much of a lying asshat as anybody in the administration.
Rove needs to go - preferably to jail. At the same time, so does Bob Novak (the only member of the press I’ve actively chided upon a first-person encounter).
The theocons are certainly willing to pound the press and dodge answers. I’m glad that the press is finally calling their bluff.