Aquarian Weekly 11/2/05
REALITY CHECK

A VIEW FROM THE BARRICADES Part II
A Top Republican Informant Comes Clean

The following is the remainder of highlights from an over one-hour chat with this space's most trusted Republican source, Georgetown, who was, to say the least feisty, but more in the vicinity of pissed by this point in the conversation.

James Campion: Before we leave these hearings on the Valerie Plame outing case, there is mounting evidence that this thing leads all the way to the vice president's office. Now if Cheney is implicated, in any way, do you think he should stand trial or resign?

Georgetown: Cheney is untouchable, simply because that is precisely the type of finger pointing that has gotten this administration in the drink in Iraq in the first place. Private discussions about enemies of the White House do not have to end up in the NY Times or on Robert Novak's desk. This is Libby's problem, not Cheney's.

jc: Yes, but Judith Miller has already testified to the fact that Cheney used her and the Times as his personal proving ground for war propaganda as far back as 2002. The vice president planted pro-war evidence in the Times in mid-week before a Sunday appearance on Meet The Press and then pointed to the story as proof of his argument for invasion. He did this directly and not with Scooter Libby's assistance or even knowledge to my understanding.

GT: Look, no one is denying Cheney used his connections in the press to get his agenda out there. Who doesn't do that? You're using me right now?

jc: I'm a pissant columnist for a weekly music magazine. This is the Vice President of the United States, who, by all accounts now, hijacked the presidency from a hick dunderhead and rushed this nation into war on flimsy evidence. And all the time this shit-heel is telling everyone how swimmingly this will all go. I think he predicted a month or two of clean up, didn't he?

GT: If you want to waste time trying to build a case against a vice president pushing White House policy on eager reporters you're going to sound naïve. You know how this works. It's the same reasons you and I both forgive a conniving little snake like Rove his underhanded weapons to protect the president. You know how this game works.

jc: Granted, but what about the effect of the Cheney implications on the party?

GT: Our plans for '06 include spin doctoring this mess away from the candidates. That's all that counts now. And there's no sense speculating on this case until the prosecutor comes clean anyway. Look, no one with half a brain thinks Cheney didn't leak this info on Plame to his assistants. It really begins with Cheney, but it should have also ended there.

jc: In the end, this whole thing is just a manifestation of the war propaganda machine that began three years ago. There was a sense of fantasy being conjured from the Cheney people, through Rumsfeld's camp and pumped into the Oval Office. It is well documented that there was a fight about making a case for war in the White House, was there not? I specifically cite Woodward's book that quotes Bush copiously on his indecisiveness regarding the CIA's "slam dunk" case for invasion.

GT: I've been trying to tell you this for years now. This myth about Iraq being Bush's war is nonsense. It's his in the literal sense that he is commander-in-chief and makes the final call, but I think the president, and I'm pretty sure this is the accepted reality among top level Republicans, was less a hawk than some voices in this administration, yes.

jc: I smell a Reagan sneak-out-the-back-door plan here. Bush is going to claim responsibility even though he was duped, right?

GT: I don't agree. Let's leave it at that.

jc: What is your take on this crazy shit former Colin Powell assistant, Larry Wilkerson recently said about his time at the State Department. He described the war contingent at the White House as "cowboys", Condoleezza Rice as "weak" and he said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man."

GT: I can't speak for Wilkerson. He said those things at a closed affair for the New American Foundation.

jc: This may be, but he told the group that the president repeatedly told the state department to "screw off" when they piped up against the bogus CIA intelligence, and I quote, "What I saw for four-plus years was a case I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process." The guy is on record, I saw the tape, as saying the American people should know that the State Department doesn't exist anymore.

GT: If that's Wilkerson's take, then you should take it up with Wilkerson.

jc: But my point of bringing it up to you is to get your opinion on if Wilkerson has an axe to grind or was bumped like Richard Clarke or is some kind of loose canon. Too many of these former government officials have piles of dirt on this presidency and this war.

GT: He's Powell's boy. Powell was unhappy about fronting the war effort to the UN, which the Bush Administration did not have and obviously does not have any use for. State has to eat shit for war presidents. It's as old as the hills. This doesn't mean Wilkerson doesn't have a point, whatever that is, it just means it is common griping.

jc: Look, fuck the war and the recent past, let's just say that this nation's ability to negotiate in the foreign arena has been paralyzed. Is that a fair statement?

GT: No. It is not fair, and it's only broached because it backs your argument for a Kerry Administration to wipe the slate clean for Bush's sins. It was not going to happen. Forget my affiliation with the party and know this; if this president, and not his successor, does not clean up this mess in Iraq, it will drag on for a decade or more. When Nixon was handed Viet Nam, he was handed a fixed game. Kerry would have failed miserably and then shrugged his shoulders and blamed the whole thing on Bush. But he did not run as an anti-war candidate. That was Howard Dean's trip and he was pummeled in a Democrat primary. These Democrats do not get to cry foul now. They're as guilty as Bush.

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