Sidney Blumenthal Takes Apart the Bullshit

By Anthony Levensalor

Sunday, July 17, 2005 at 06:16 PM

Salon's Sidney Blumenthal has written THE piece on the Plame affair. The article is available here (daypass required -- well worth it).

The piece goes into a great amount of detail, and hits the talking points of the GOP on Plame and Rove one by one.

Plame could not have ordered Wilson to Africa... she simply didn't have the authority.

Plame was still undercover as a NOC when Rove outed her, making his leaking of her identity a crime.

And more importantly, the article says something the GOP spin machine can't counter: When it is all said and done, it will not be the media that decides whether or not Rove is in deep shit, it will be the special prosecutor.

If the White House continues to stand behind Rove, they are going to pay a heavy political price for it, perhaps more than having Rove around can counter. It is a simple equation, one in which you drop political operatives who cause more political harm than they can spin into political gain.

For this administration, the trouble lies in the fact that Rove is the one who makes those decisions, and runs their political games. He certainly isn't going to fire himself, although when the political pressure becomes too much I suspect he will be "retired".

And McLellan won't have anything to say about that, either, I'm sure.

~A!