After forfeiting a week attempting to dig up dirt on John Roberts (some are still trying; his smile is just a whit too charming, his son just a tad too cute — he must be hiding something!), bloggers are rerouting their attention to the Valerie Plame saga. And this time, they are bringing conspiracy theories with them!
Arianna Huffington at The Huffington Post suggests a detailed theory about who is the source at the root of the Valerie Plame leak. You ready for this one? The originator of the leak: Judith Miller! Huffington’s argument is surprisingly convincing: First Miller milks dubious sources to write articles asserting the threat of WMD in Iraq; next Joe Wilson writes an op-ed in the New York Times claiming that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraqi threat”; and then, according to Huffington’s theory, “Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic.” Seeking revenge, the ballistic Miller digs for dirt on Wilson, finds out about his wife’s position at the CIA, and strategically leaks the info to Scooter Libby and maybe one or two others. By this theory it makes sense that Miller never wrote a story about Plame — she leaked the information specifically so that others could write about it.
Huffington’s not saying that’s what went down, since she doesn’t know, just that it’s an option worth considering (and according to her, an option that “is being floated in the halls” of the Times building). And considering that option, she says, means changing the way newspapers (the Times included) discuss the leak story: “Any discussion of Miller’s actions in the Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal must not leave out the key role she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat.”
Thus does Huffington find herself a strange bedfellow with … Karl Rove, whose defense in this case, apparently is, “I didn’t leak to reporters; reporters leaked to me!”
Another Plame-related theory, discussed over at Suburban Guerilla, posits that the plan for a Senate committee to review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could be part of a plan to discredit Fitzgerald’s investigation and thereby grant immunity to the Bush administration officials involved in the case. (Investigators investigating investigators — wasn’t that a concoction first dreamed up by Mad magazine?)
Immunity or not, Hugh Hewitt thinks Rove will come out of PlameGate unharmed, and comments that having Rove dragged into the tangle has been “a Lord of the Flies moment for the lefty bloggers, and one can only imagine the meltdown when Rove isn’t indicted.”
But although it may seem like all the minutiae of the CIA leak tale has been chewed on and digested by hungry bloggers, a quarter of the nation must be allergic to the case. The Blue State tells us that a full 25 percent of those interviewed last week for a CNN/USA Today poll had never even heard of Karl Rove. (Bet they know who Natalee Holloway is, though!)
In other news, with the London bombings of 7/7 now three weeks behind us, bloggers are tackling the issue of Islamic terrorism with more than just pictures, anecdotes, and cross-seas condolences — now it’s time for anger, blame and revenge.
Ed at Talking Hoarsely sympathizes with the victims of the bombs, but does not think that his beloved England as a whole deserves “innocent victim” status: “Yes, there is no excuse for terror — but maybe we did deserve it (not the people struck, I hasten to add). For things like our appeasement of the IRA, our unwillngness to crack down on threats to other countries emanating from our country, for being so complacent as to regard our Islamic ‘militants’ as a matter for the leisurely measured stride of the law — even today, after the horse has bolted — and at the end of all that playing the Churchillian, even when that was a trick even Churchill could barely pull off with a clear conscience.”
Others also take the “toughen up” stance. Steve at The Black Republican stands up for the London police in the face of criticism about killing an innocent man. Steve writes: “The weenies of the world point out that they would not have made the same choice as the police and that, in choosing differently, an innocent man would have still been alive. That the man would still be alive may be true, but of course, should it have been a real terrorist — and next time it could be — the result would have been one dead terrorist, several dead weenies who decided not to shoot, and who knows how many dead London tube passengers.”
For a better understanding of what the London cops may have been thinking, Confederate Yankee gives us “a post explaining on a high level how suicide bombs work, and explaining the general philosophy of shoot-to-kill-to-save policies.” The post is complete with photographs of children wearing suicide bombing equipment, and provides this closing hypothetical: “Now imagine you are the police officer who has had his city attacked twice by suicide bombers in the past few weeks, including four times in the past 24 hours … Know that if you fire one man will die. If you don’t fire, dozens could die. Oh, and you have about one second to make your decision. Glance quickly at the dozens of fearful citizens around you … what do you do?”
Linking to Confederate Yankee’s post, Ace at Aces of Spades adds his own commentary: “You can criticize cops, but you can’t knock them for failing to be omniscient. Only one person who ever walked the earth was omniscient and all wise, and of course that person was Hillary! Rodham. She makes the sun rise and the flowers bloom. She also, in her infinite wisdom, created pantsuits, and gave this gift, Prometheus-like, to the races of man.”
That’s our favorite conspiracy theory of all — Hillary Clinton holed away in a cave, plotting to disseminate pantsuits across the globe. Scary stuff.
–Samantha Henig
Samantha Henig was a CJR Daily intern.