Suspicions confirmed

As if in some bizarre hurry to prove my recent point about wild conspiracy theories evolving into received GOP wisdom quite quickly, we have had two examples of this in just the last 48 hours that illustrate the case nicely (and another historical example).

First, the historical example of Michael Moore claiming in Fahrenheit 911 that of the dozens of Bin Laden family members in the US on September 11th, the vast majority were hustled out of the country on flights during the ban on international flights and most left without even being interviewed in a cursory way by authorities. When Moore first made this claim, the howls of outrage by Bush supporters were scary. How dare Moore make such a scurrilous claim? The episode is widely regarded as completely true nowadays, and was confirmed by the 9/11 commission. (thanks to zbdent).

And now, on to the more recent examples. Remember when Bob Novak revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent whose job was to track nuclear weapons in foreign countries? After that, the administration made the completely incoherent argument that Joe Wilson was obviously lying because his wife was an undercover CIA agent whose job was to track nuclear weapons in foreign countries. Therefore he definitely wouldn’t know anything. (I never have understood that argument very well).

At that point, logical people put together that someone had disclosed a state secret and endangered our intelligence networks to reveal this “damning” fact. Since Wilson’s wife’s job status was being presented by the Bushies as something that helped Bush’s argument for war, and since nobody in the administration seemed at all upset that her status had been disclosed, those of us who weren’t braindead came to the conclusion that Bush or Rove or Cheney had deliberately disclosed the information. This conclusion was treated by the conventional media as wild-eyed conspiracy theory.

Fast forward to this week. Patrick Fitzgerald reveals that Libby claims that Cheney claims that Bush declassified the contents of the NIE before he released the information to Judy Miller, bypassing the actual legal method for declassification. Does the White House deny this? No.

A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny.

You see? This is exactly what us wild-eyed conspiracy theorists suspected years ago. Bush outed a CIA agent to make sure he could rush us into war. Now that the White House is admitting it, Bushco will claim that it was the patriotic thing to do (though before the White House admitted it, anyone making that exact claim was labeled a terrorist sympathizer).

And there is another example. First Bush claimed that he was getting a warrant to wiretap anyone. When that lie was no longer operable, he admitted that he was spying BUT ONLY on international calls between Al Qaeda and American phones. Now, of course, it is not hard to speculate that this collection of criminal thieves has long been doing domestic spying without warrants on the media, on members of Congress, and on their political opponents. After all, with all of the justification they’ve been doing for all of their other crimes (“warrantless wiretapping is good for Merika!"), it would be easy for them to justify spying on, say, John Kerry. After all, Bush claims that Kerry’s election would have been bad for the War on Terra, so it’s only righteous and prudent that he should protect America by spying on his political foes. And with every drip, we are moving relentlessly towards that conclusion. The latest not-so-surprising revelation? That Alberto Gonzales “wouldn’t rule out” that this administration could decide to spy on purely domestic calls if they thought Al Qaeda was involved. Whatever. Remember, the ONLY reason the FISA court exists is to prevent abuse of government spying. This administration has been sidestepping that court for years and, QED, is abusing their power. How long until the fact that they’ve been wiretapping (and probably blackmailing) the media and Democratic politicians comes to light, followed by the earnest justification that they had to do it to protect the country from terra-ists? My guess is not long now.

Remember, if you have a bad, awful suspicion about something this criminal enterprise might be doing, that soon the GOP will be claiming that of course they are doing it, and thank god, because it's the right thing to do.