As readers of this column know well, the Georgites are highly secretive people. Well, I guess you cannot blame them, given how much they have to hide. There's the famous Cheney energy task force meeting where, rumor has it, with the oil companies the invasion of Iraq was discussed, with the primary objective to be to get control in particular of the Kirkuk oil field in Iraqi Kurdistan. It has some of the largest projected but as yet unexplored reserves in the world. (Anybody notice how quiet the Kurdish sector is, having been totally secured, with many Arabs driven out, by Special Forces and the 101st Airborne in action we started even before the invasion proper.)
Then there is the 28 pages of the report of the Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath that is still classified. No one denies that it deals with “sensitive” issues in re Saudi Arabia. And we know how much in bed with the Saudis the Bushes have been for decades. And speaking of Saudi Arabia, there's the whole matter of the flying out of the country right after 9/11, when our skies were otherwise shut down of a group of Saudis in general and a group of members of Osama bin Laden’s family in particular. No info on that. There's the fact that the Pres. refused to have any transcript made about his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, so he can say that he said anything he wants to say he said.
Dating from the Presidential campaign of 2000, there's the fact that no transcript or tape recording exists of one particular speech that Bush gave during that campaign, at a time when ordinarily candidates want to get very little bit of what they said into the papers or on radio and television. That one speech is the one he gave to that annual meeting of a group that is itself highly secretive. It is called the Council for National Policy. It is the coordinating body for all of the major Political Right and Christian Right organizations in the country, but it tries to generate as little publicity as possible. It does not have a website, but if you want to find out something about it, just type in “Council for National Policy” at Google. It does attract annual meeting speakers like Clarence Thomas, R. James Woolsey, Jr., Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Patrick Buchanan, and Oliver North. And George W. Bush. Might Bush have been giving this Klavern of Right-Wing Power promises that they wanted to hear in order that they would feel good about giving him their wholehearted support as well as whole truckloads of their money? Well, we'll never know.
So secrecy is hallmark of the Bush and his fellow Georgites. But, like the intelligence and counter-terrorism services of our government, it does break down every once in a while. And hasn't the President told us that 9/11 happened despite all the indications that it might about which nothing definitive was done because, well, you know, everyone (except the President, the Vice-President, and their National Security Advisor, of course) makes mistakes from time to time? Like, well, you know, we missed on 9/11 because our intelligence didn’t provide us with the exact time and place, and we missed on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq because our intelligence services told us (or at least the Georgites heard them say, even though they didn’t) that they had the exact places and amounts, when they didn’t (although we might still find them, you never know).
And break down Georgite secrecy has, once again. Through sources that I of course cannot name, I have come across excerpts from Karl Rove’s political diary for the week of April 26. It is apparently the place where Rove keeps notes to himself. Not even Bush, and certainly not Cheney, is supposed to see this stuff. He may even share it with his wife (does he have a wife?) But you folks who are kind enough to read my column in (or is it “on”) The Political Junkies are seeing these excerpts here, and you are the first to do so.
The Week of April 26
1. I keep telling the guys that the key to winning this election, in fact the only way we can win, is to control the agenda. If only we can keep the attention on Kerry and off us, we will win. We have been doing a pretty good job of that, but boy does it take constant attention. I know that George thinks that his record is great. (I have no idea what Cheney thinks about it, and I know for sure what our House Nigger, no not the female one, the male one, thinks of it.) But it ain’t, and I, at least, know that. But we’ve got the power, and we've got to keep it, or they will be hell to pay with all those rich bastards who put us here. So we can't just trot George out to proclaim about this or that achievement. Of course, there have been many --- we are taking care of all our rich friends who put us here --- but we can’t very well go to the public with that now, can we?
“And so my ”Kerry Fault of the Day” project. His war record, his throwing the medals back, his wife's income tax return, a girl-friend who wasn’t, the cars he drives, his Pittsburgh haircut (good old Matt Drudge), his voting one way on some amendment 11 years ago, but another way when the full bill came up in a form he didn’t approve of, you know, all the important stuff. So that keeps him off-balance, keeps him having to deny or explain (and so what if he always comes out of it OK, the seed is planted) and keeps the media away from our record. After all, his wife driving a foreign car is much more fun than our deaths in Iraq, isn’t it? There are about 185 days until the election. I just have to make sure that we've got 185 “Kerry-piddling-diddling-items” as I like to call them, ready to go between now and then. Fox News and the boys will make sure that they are always out in front.
2. The “enemies” list thing is working just great, isn’t it? How about Karen Hughes and that abortion-seekers/terrorists comparison? Wow! Just like Coulter and the all-liberals-are-traitors thing, which she manages to keep going. (Tits and ass are great --- when they are on our side and even get loonies like her on TV all the time --- aren’t they?) Of course, it’s all nonsense, I know that. But the idea is to get the discussion onto how “unfair” or worse Karen or Anne or Rush or Bill “the-second-greatest-threat-to-the-US-after-al-Qaeda-is-the-ACLU” O'Reilly (yes, he really said that, I'm told --- on the radio out West one day) is being. Then he/she can deny he/she is being unfair, and we eventually get onto one of those wonderfully distracting “yes, he is, no I’m not” fights, and that keeps the attention off what’s really in our anti-abortion policy. We need to have it as our ultimate aim to outlaw abortion in order to keep our base (and of course George really believes all that shit), but we need to keep the subject away from any serious debate on the issue. The liberals call it “demonization.” I say, “right on, baby.”
3. I do have to check up soon on how the project to make sure that there is violence at our Convention is on track. Blackest of the black, and if news of that op. ever got out ………… As my neocon friends like to say, oy, yoy, yoy The problem is, we just cannot trust the liberals and the radicals to do it for us. Too many of them are too media wise and know how bad it would (will) look on TV if (when) violence occurs. So they will have their own private policing of the protest groups going on. We have got to be figuring a way around that. I will say no more.
4. And speaking of black ops, I wonder how our project to hack into Kerry’s personal email and contributor networks is coming along? Have to check up on that too. I'm not talking here, notebook, on rigging the election by computer hacking, if necessary. That one's well in hand. I'm talking about what we did in the Senate with those Democrat committee records and comments. Boy, am I glad that good old John has that investigation under his thumb.
5. Just as long as I can keep George saying that “black is white” our chances are excellent. He is so good at it. He gets people to believe him. Like, Iraq is going to hell in a hand-basket. The casualties are mounting and fuck “Nightline” and that Jewboy Koppel (not one of our House-Jews, that's for sure) for doing that number on war dead. And funny, about a third of our deaths over there are from “non-combat” causes. What is this? The Crimean War for God's (not that I believe in him) sake? Our wars don't have dead, on our side at least. But anyway, George says, with perfect sincerity, not because he is faking it but because, by God (there I go again) he really believes it, “things are getting better; things are getting under control.” And people really believe him. Just like he can go to the Everglades, with Jeb, and say with a straight face that he is an environmentalist. And people will believe him. What a guy! He's just got to keep it up through the election.
6. Boy, do I have to keep working that “Karl Rove is an electoral genius” stuff. Gives us a sense of invincibility, doesn't it? People forget that I actually lost the last election, our boy Nader or not. Gore got 500,000 more votes than we did. Even without all of those black votes that good old Kate managed either to prevent getting cast at all or prevented from getting counted on Election Day, we lost Florida too. If Gore had been able to get his head out of his ass and put together a consistent strategy down there, like we did, with good old Jim court-bashing when we lost and court-praising when we won, if only, and thank God he didn't, had he been calling for a state-wide recount instead of just those couple of counties (where we surely lost, hanging chads or no), we would have lost despite the best efforts of Jeb and Kate (and didn't they make a nice couple?)
“My big problem this time, of course, is keeping the turnout down. If Kerry can get into any kind of proportion the 50% who don't usually vote, we are cooked. If Kerry can convince enough of those folks that there is a real difference between him and us for what he would do and not do for them (we know there is, but he's got to show it, not us), he's going to win in a landslide. That's why we've got to keep him on the defensive, and on the defensive on little stuff like haircuts. That's why we've got to make sure that we never get on the defensive. As the sainted Lee Atwater (and boy, did I learn so much from him) said, “Always attack; never defend.” I've just to keep the boy, and the boys, on message. That'll do it.”
And that'll do it for this week’s column. Fascinating reading, eh wot?