The name as uttered by conservatives, more and more of late, is being said with an intonation and facial expression similar to that reserved for “loathe.”
Karl Rove, one of the ranker species of Mustela
We have previously addressed one or two aspects to the political demeanor of Karl Rove, famous for being the top political adviser to George W. Bush. We concentrated on his weaselly willingness to pile on with Democrats, attacking and undermining conservative Republicans, rather than aiding them, or concentrating on returning fire towards Democrats as a Republican ally.
A particularly loathsome version of that type of political weasel is the upper-Mississippi variant found in and around Nahant marsh in Scott County, Iowa. All versions are most furious against conservative Republicans, preferring to ingratiate themselves, as weasels do, to the monied (parasitic) denizens of their environment. In the examples at hand, RINO’s and the Chambers of Commerce.
The weaselly approach played against conservatives by Steve Grubbs and his Victory Enterprises is to hobble candidates when they are not successful at garroting from behind. Their trumped up smears and distortions don’t always work but you can’t blame a weasel for trying, well according to the Mustela society, an apt name for the political consultant class that breaks into flop sweat at the first sign of liberals decrying conservative values. But forgive our diversion, this is about the grand Mustela, Karl Rove.
Eli Lake writes at The Daily Beast (10-16-2014):
Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD
. . . There’s one man, some Republicans say, who kept the public from learning about the chemical shells littered around Iraq. He was Bush’s most important political adviser.
Starting in 2004, some members of the George W. Bush administration and Republican lawmakers began to find evidence of discarded chemical weapons in Iraq. But when the information was brought up with the White House, senior adviser Karl Rove told them to “let these sleeping dogs lie.”
The issue of Iraq’s WMD remnants was suddenly thrust back into the fore this week, with a blockbuster New York Times report accusing the Bush administration of covering up American troops’ chemically induced wounds.
To people familiar with the issue, both inside that administration and outside, the blame for the coverup falls on one particular set of shoulders: Rove’s.
From the perspective of Rick Santorum, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania who lost his seat in 2006, some of the weapons of mass destruction President Bush promised would be in Iraq before the 2003 invasion of the country began turning up as early as 2004.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Santorum said he and his staff began receiving photographs of discarded sarin and mustard-gas shells from U.S. soldiers in 2004. Two years later, when he was up for re-election, Santorum even went public with some of this information in a press conference disclosing a Pentagon report that found 500 chemical-weapons shells had been found in Iraq.
One might think a politically vulnerable Bush White House would’ve seized on Santorum’s discovery. After all, Bush and his subordinates famously accused Iraq of having active weapons of mass destruction programs.
But at least in 2005 and 2006, the Bush White House wasn’t interested. “We don’t want to look back,” Santorum recalled Rove as saying (though Santorum stressed he was not quoting verbatim conversations he had more than eight years ago). “I will say that the gist of the comments from the president’s senior people was ‘We don’t want to look back, we want to look forward.’”
Dave Wurmser—who served at the time as a senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney on According to Wurmser, “in 2005-6, Karl Rove and his team blocked public disclosure of these (findings) and said ‘Let these sleeping dogs lie; we have lost that fight so better not to remind anyone of it.’”
Rove declined to comment for this story.
At least part of the Bush administration’s case against Saddam Hussein was based on the fact that he never properly accounted for the chemical-weapons stockpile he had built up in the 1980s. As Santorum himself said during his 2006 press conference, the Pentagon’s report at the time “proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq.”
Santorum on Thursday stood by that claim. “There was no active chemical-weapons operation in Iraq—that doesn’t mean there were no chemical weapons,” he said. “That was the point we were making. It’s clear from The New York Times’ article that the military as well as the administration didn’t want to have that conversation because they missed it.”
Rush Limbaugh commented on the Lake article extensively on Friday. His comments can be viewed here and here. Read the entire Lake commentary for more context.
We will emphasize that the reason news of the existence of the chemical weapons caches was not promulgated was not because there was not information out there. Plenty of troops talked about it back home including ones we had conversations with, officers in particular. The media ignored or covered it up because they understood the facts more supported Bush than hurt him. And of course Bush and his people were utterly incompetent at effective communication and were cowardly, regarding the media. His handlers would characteristically try to ingratiate rather than challenge. In the process it was no problem leaving their political troops behind.
Bush chopped wood at the ranch while Republicans and he were being excoriated “No WMD’s” “Bush & Republicans lie! etc., etc. And all on Rove’s advice.
Rove’s and apparently Bush’s attitude — never mind defending the Republicans that believed in you, politically fought for you, with the truth. As always, it is all about them. Bush was termed out so why fight, and was possessed of the insufferable patrician attitude of being above it all. The attitude was Let the media beat up on the war’s supporters, don’t bring out facts and possibly reverse the political fortunes. Bush’s attitude of “let history decide” is pathetic.
By the way, we found Santorum’s comments (above) regrettably feed a liberal narrative when he says “no active chemical-weapons operation in Iraq.” Hiding and storing such weapons including the manufacturing sub-assemblies is an active program – it is preservation for quick recovery and use, and quick return to manufacturing capability. All were against the Gulf War I armistice and UN resolutions. The activities comprised a WMD program and justified the removal of Saddam Hussein. R Mall
Addendum:
Streiff, writing at Red state this morning, has a pointed analysis dealing with these revelations, titled: Karl Rove suppressed WMD discoveries This excerpt is part of his conclusion:
the decision by Rove — and we must believe it was a decision agreed to by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and others– that it made sense to not vindicate one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq must rank with the most boneheaded political calculations made in American politics in at least 50 years. That decision forever damaged Bush’s legacy, it created a narrative that haunts us to this day with the use of force is contemplated, it handed Congress over to the Democrats in 2006, and it paved the way for the imbecile who was elected president in 2008.
We will add that Bush’s retirement “optics” however genuine, of doing things for the injured troops are tainted, in light of his less than warrior spirit in defending not only his political troops then, but the purposefulness of those truly courageous warriors he sent into battle and their historic legacy. Bush and Rove abandoned them for politics and bad politics at that. R Mall
PPS – Now watch that Turd Blossom double down and tell us how inconsequential chemical and biological agents and tons of yellow cake were (more reading on WMDs in these pages, here and here).
