Jeebus. (Thanks to alert reader Luxor.)
So who's
Deep Throat, Junior, anyhow? Maybe aWol was talking in front of the servants?
Your
guess on DTJr is as good as mine. Maybe someone
aWol wanted to take a bullet for him? (Metaphorically, of course. Not like the real bullets our soldiers are taking.)
Is DTJr ... perfidious
Albion?
Gosh, when you think about, there are quite a number of people who wouldn't mind seeing the "likeable," "popular"
aWol take the fall ... And these are people on the guy's own team!
As
Drudge would say -- "developing." (Don't give Drudge any hits, though -- it's just the CBS report.)
"Unka Karl! Unka Karl! What'll I do?"
UPDATE: From
Reuters, sourcing:
A CIA spokesman declined comment on the [exclusive] CBS report, which was sourced to senior Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
"Stop staring at
those elephants, George! We've got a statement to prepare!"
UPDATE: Let's parse a little text. The
CBS story uses the passive voice, saying that the lie on Niger yellowcake "was included" in the speech, and only in the headline says "Bush knew" -- did the senior administration official say
that? Pincus's
WaPo story says only that Bush "used the charge" in the SOTUS -- not that Bush isn't responsible for his own words, of course.
AP (finally) says "was left in" (passive voice again).
UPDATE: "And up through the ground came a ' bubblin' crude." Forgeries, that is. Yellow cake. Serial exaggeration. Premature declaration of success. Lies, Texas-style...
Divertimento:
I'm assuming that aWol, if he is deemed
medically fit to do so, will need to deliver some sort of speech on all this. Therefore, for the edification of our readers (and as a form of innoculation against noxious memes) I present perhaps the classic example of Republican deceit, hypocrisy, and maudlin sentimentality. Ladies and gentleman, I give you the legendary
"Checkers Speech" from Richard M. Nixon (scroll down). Can aWol top this? Follow along at home! Give it up for aWol!
UPDATE: Dean campaign on
"Record of deception" (PDF). Dean
petition (a little unspecific, eh?).
Kucinich petition.
MoveOn
petition (more specific).
UPDATE: Above, we mentioned the curious use of the passive voice in the CBS story -- "
was included." Interestingly, Colin "Playing-both-ends-against-the-middle?" Powell's
defense of aWol's, uh, misstatement also uses the passive voice: "
a judgment was made that that was an appropriate statement for the President to make." (Thanks to
Adam in MA for the transcript reference.)
So, now it becomes a matter of very simple sentences! George: Just use the active voice! "
X included it." "
X made the judgment."
George. Please. You're our CEO President! If
X is
you, well, check
here. And if
X is
not you, well, who is it? What did
you know and when did you know it? Does the buck ever stop anywhere?
UPDATE: The
CBS money paragraph:
[T]he bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.
The
AP money paragraphs:
Officials contacted by The Associated Press declined to discuss the nature of discussions between the White House and CIA just before the speech. But they noted the CIA's own assessment before the Iraq war about Saddam Hussein's alleged efforts to make weapons of mass destruction did not give strong credence to the British report, noting skepticism by some analysts.
The officials further noted that a speech Secretary of State Collin Powell gave just a week after the president's address also did not repeat the African uranium allegations.
The
USA Today (!) money paragraphs:
Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the Bush administration Thursday against intensifying criticism of the use of bogus intelligence to help make the case for war on Iraq. But he was pressed to explain how the tainted evidence made it into President Bush's State of the Union address.
Powell followed an emerging White House strategy of suggesting that the CIA, which was shown Iraq-related portions of Bush's draft speech, could have objected to the inclusion of the uranium charge. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
UPDATE: Looks like the AP headline ("Doubt Brits"), not the CBS headline ("Bush knew"), is
taking hold on this one, at least in the papers that just print what they rip off the wire.
"Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction." (Prov. 16:18)
