Washington lies …

The more I read about the infamous Plame scandal [or should I call it the Rove/Libby/Cheney/Rumsfeld scandal?], the more annoyed I get. The Republicans are already trying to spin this as a minor affair. They are saying that it is a case of politics as usual and that indictments would cramp politics rather than punish crimes. That is plainly nonsense. The central facts of the case appear to be that a small cabal of conspirators lied and connived: they lied to Congress and they connived to ruin the reputations of anyone with enough gumption to resist. The object of their activities was to start a war for which there was no clear ‘need’, other, of course, than the neo-con aganda. Sending a country to war on the basis of fabrication and innuendo is immoral, doing it by lying to Congress surely is a crime. That’s besides the obvious crime of ‘outing’ an undercover agent [which is made worse by the nefarious motive: political advantage]. You cannot spin that away. The Republicans will have to find a way to wriggle out of this one other than simply saying it was all politics as usual, and the electorate will have to wake up so it isn’t duped again.