"But whatever Mr. Armitage did, or says he did, in no way alters what Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby did in the days that followed, nor does it change their intentions. It’s a simple concept—two people or more can commit a similar act for entirely different reasons—but evidently it has flummoxed the great minds of contemporary journalism.
In this instance, Mr. Armitage says he was merely “gossiping” with Mr. Novak, who seems to have been primed to question him about the Wilson affair.... Indeed, the only reason Mr. Armitage knew about Valerie Wilson was that he had read a negative dossier on Joe Wilson prepared at the behest of Mr. Libby."
* rudepundit:
" (Fox's )Brian Kilmeade (which is close to an anagram for "kill me dead"), talking about ABC's lying, Bush-fellating piece o' crap TV movie about the Path to 9/11. Kilmeade offered that if, as the movie purports (and the 9/11 commission report says is wrong), that Bill Clinton was distracted from getting Osama Bin Laden because of the Lewinsky nonsense, then obviously the Bush adminstration is blameless for the Katrina nightmare because it was distracted by the Plame investigation, which now, of course, for Kilmeade and the right, is discredited completely by Richard Armitage's confession of loose lips.
What the fuck? the Rude Pundit thought. Is this some new talking point? For, surely, the Fox morning tools are not capable of thinking of such a thing on the fly.
So he went to the warm embrace of Google and Nexis and started a-searchin'. So far, here's what he's come up with: the meme seems to have started with James Taranto in his Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web" column on August 28. In the middle of "people who suffered" because of the investigation (and, of course, blaming Joe Wilson for everything), Taranto chortles, "Innocent White House officials were distracted from serving the country in order to participate in the investigation, which was in full swing a year ago when Hurricane Katrina struck." Over in Right Blogsylvania, it was picked up by Cliff May at the National Review Online (motto: "We may be irrelevant, but we're loud")."
2 comments:
When is somebody going to tackle the question of Cliff May and figure out what his real role has been in all of this? I've been noodling at it on and off ever since his name first came to my attention (as the result, oddly enough, of trying to find out whatever had become of the World Anti-Communist League since the fall of the Soviet Union), but I can't say I've ever gotten a clear picture.
His Foundation for the Defense of Democracies seems to be mainly involved in the Iran regime change movement -- but somehow he keeps popping up in the Plame affair, from his September 29, 2003 NRO column, which as far as I know started the claim that Valerie Wilson's identity was commen knowledge, to picking up this new Joe-Wilson-caused-the-Katrina-failures meme.
He may be just a happy little troublemaker -- or somebody with a column he's got to fill any way he can -- but I strongly suspect a closer look would come up with something more concerted. He was, after all, director of communications for the Republican National Committee during the crucial period of 1997-2001, before that was vice-chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and seems to be tight with Michael Ledeen.
And no, I'm not volunteering to do it myself, at least not this morning, but I do want to raise awareness of his more-than-casual involvement in the GOP propaganda chain.
starroute - that's rude of you not to volunteer. I've fp'd the comment - hopefully someone will chime in. I don't know much about May at all.
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