Scandals soon to be discounted, no doubt.
Not nearly sexy enough for Television 'News'.
By Brad Friedman on 9/4/2004, 12:51pm PT  

It's been nearly four years since Bush's invocation of "The Axis of Evil". During that time --- while we tackled (sorta) the non-threatening tinhorn dictatorship of Saddam --- the actually dangerous regimes of North Korea and Iran have been allowed to continue their atomic weapons programs virtually unabated. In regards to Iran specifically, we still have no formal policy 3 1/2 full years since they were declared part of that "Axis".

The reason for a lack of policy towards Iran seems to be explained by information emerging from the recent investigations of spying for Israeli interests at the top levels of the Defense Department and into the Vice-President's office.

It's all likely too wonky to have much of an effect on this Administration during an Election year, particularly as the damage will be controlled by skilled Republican "fixers" (see the abandoned Iran/Contra scandal for a good playbook example). And with both houses of Congress currently in GOP hands, it may be well assumed that there will be very limited policing of all these matters this year.

But it looks like the folks at the focus of the recent probes at the Pentagon may also be the same ones tied into other wonky scandals including the Valerie Plame leak investigation and the use in Bush's State of the Union address of discredited claims that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger . It's "the whole ball of wax," as one U.S. official familiar with the case described it.

That would include folks in the offices of Douglas Feith and Donald Rumsfeld and even up into Dick Cheney's office. Folks with names like Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser and Rhode.

As I say, such wonkery is perhaps too much for Americans to wrap their brains around this year, especially with the predictable lack of help they'll get from the useless Mainstream Media. It's possible too, in my estimation, that confining and then dumping all of these scandals onto a single group of "bad apples" (sound familiar?) would be a convenient way to jettison all of these damaging scandals in one fell swoop should it get too hot in Bush Country between now and November.

Either way, it's worth keeping an eye on...

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