Rove doesn't matter

Over the last few days I come to believe that Karl Rove doesn't matter. As much as I liked to see the despicable smear artist spend the rest of his life in a cold dirty cell he really doesn't matter. I think that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has bigger fish to fry as well. Watergate was ultimately about Richard Nixon, not the dozens of other players who were convicted and sent to jail. This latest "gate" is different however. Watergate was about the break in and it's cover up, the Plame outing is not about the Plame outing and it's cover up but something much bigger, Dick Cheney and the lies that sent us off to war. Frank Rich has come to the same conclusion and says it much better than I can in Follow the Uranium. I'm going to do some cut and paste but I suggest you go read the entire thing.

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.

I was talking to MEJ's Bill in DC on Friday night and I told him I had disagreed and opposed Administrations more often than not, both Democratic and Republican. But this is the first time in my life I have thought of an Administration as evil. Not George W. Bush himself, I really don't think he has the capacity to be good or evil; not even Karl Rove -- no -- he may be lower than the lowest pond scum, but he's not evil. Not even the delusional and misguided neocons like Wolfovitz. But I look at Dick Cheney and I see EVIL, yes evil in all caps. Iraq isn't Bush's war it's Cheney's war. Cheney is the one who is either incapable of telling the truth or finds it unnecessary.

Fitzgerald may find some people, even on Cheney's staff, who are guilty of a crime or two but he won't get to what really matters. The lies of an EVIL Vice President that took us to war and resulted in the deaths of thousands. That unfortunately may have to be left to history. It's times like this I regret that I'm and atheist because I would really like to think there is a special place in hell for the likes of Dick Cheney.