Everything you need to fight back against the right-wing misinformation campaign.

CLAIM: White House Can’t Comment While Investigation Is Ongoing
McClellan: “While that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it.”

FACT: White House Has Repeatedly Commented During the Ongoing Investigation
McClellan had previously cited that same investigation and then gone on to answer the questions as they pertained to Rove. For example, on October 1, 2003, he said, “There’s an investigation going on … you brought up Karl’s name. Let’s be very clear. I thought — I said it was a ridiculous suggestion, I said it’s simply not true that he was involved in leaking classified information, and — nor, did he condone that kind of activity.” Similarly, on October 10, 2003, McClellan said, “I think it’s important to keep in mind that this is an ongoing investigation.” But he then added with regard to a question about Rove’s involvement, “I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.”

CLAIM: Rove Didn’t Leak The Name So He’s Not Guilty
Rove: “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name.” Rove attorney Robert Luskin said “he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.”

FACT: National Security Law Says Identifying Covert Agent Is Illegal
Rove at the very least identified Plame as “Wilson’s wife.” Under section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the disclosure of “any information identifying [a] covert agent” is illegal.

CLAIM: White House Didn’t Push The Story
Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin claims Cooper manipulated what Rove said to him “in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to report negative information about Plame.”

FACT: There Was An Organized Campaign To Push Leak Info
First, Robert Novak admitted: “I didn’t dig it out [Plame's identity], it was given to me…. They [the White House] thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” Second, Rove told Chris Matthews that Plame’s identity was “fair game.” Third, Time magazine reported the orchestrated campaign against Wilson in October 2003: “In the days after Wilson’s essay appeared, government officials began to steer reporters away from Wilson’s conclusions.” Read more

After a cabinet meeting on yesterday, President Bush was asked a question about Karl Rove:

Q Can I ask you if you have spoken with your Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove about the Valerie Plame matter? And do you think he acted improperly in talking about it with reporters?

THE PRESIDENT: Mark, I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation. I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports.

This makes absolutely no sense. Bush doesn’t need to rely on media reports. He could get this information immediately. Rove is one of his closest advisors and Bush could ask him exactly what happened.

Maybe in this case, ignorance is bliss.

Appearing on Fox this morning, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said the following in regards to his assessment of the growing leak scandal:

We’ve got Karl Rove, who is under this constant attack of political malarkey, who has probably the most documented case of his evidence of anyone in the the whole story. So quite frankly, I think the American people are seeing it for what it is right now. More than anything else it’s a political farce not a matter of national security interests. [Fox News, 7/14/05]

VERSUS

Here’s what Dick Armey said about the case back in October 2003 when we had no idea who may have been involved:

Now, there was no reason to tell the world about the ambassador’s wife. It was just a short-sighted, self-centered, simple-minded cowardly act of revenge, and who’s paying the cost? The Bush White House If they ever find [the leakers], they ought to just — they ought to just kick them out of the White House and prosecute them, because the greater the pretension, the greater the hypocrisy. [CNN, 10/19/03]

Indeed, Mr. Armey, hypocrisy is an easily understood story.

Just how desperate is the Bush administration to come up with good news? This desperate:

President Bush used recent news about the budget deficit — this year’s deficit will be “$333 billion almost $100 billion less than earlier estimates” — to “[vindicate] his stewardship of the economy and budget.” The President then took advantage of the opportunity and stated, “It’s a sign that our tax relief plan, our pro-growth policies, are working.”

Despite the President’s self-congratulatory words, economic analysts have reached a totally different conclusion. While maintaining that “the trimming of the deficit is certainly a positive development,” they repeated the fact that “consensus among economists and financial analysts, and the empirical data, are strongly consistent with the basic, common-sense notion that tax cuts do not pay for themselves.” And, after taking a big picture on the economy, the experts found that “the reduction in this year’s deficit from a very large one to a large one has little bearing on the nation’s shaky long-term fiscal foundation.”

No wonder nearly half of Americans are giving President Bush negative marks on “being honest and straightforward.”

Karl Rove, source of the leak. The phony weapons of mass destruction. The cost and duration of the war in Iraq. The over-hyped Social Security crisis. The price tag of the Medicare legislation. The list of White House deceptions grows longer with each passing day. And it’s catching up to them.

According to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 41 percent of Americans say they think President Bush is “honest and straightforward” (that’s down nine points since just January.)

At the same time, people who say they don’t think he’s honest or trustworthy rose nine points, up to 45 per cent.

You really can’t fool all the people all the time.