CheneyBush Burned Again: Too Near the Plame

Bush and Cheney being fingered in the Plamegate scandal by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is not news. More than a year ago, Americans learned about CheneyBush's complicity in the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative -- a treasonous act that put America's national-security at risk -- and about the coverup that followed.

We learned all this partially from good journalistic reporting and partially from Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in his 2005 indictment of Cheney's then-Chief of Staff Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction, and from Fitzgerald's May 2007 comments about Cheney after Libby's conviction.

No, the news now is that the political situation is far different than it was in 2005. Now, Bush and Cheney are much more politically vulnerable to impeachment and criminal prosecution. Also newsworthy is that the mainstream media this time around, at least currently, is mostly treating all this as a non-story, with barely a follow-up mention of McClellan's bombshell and its implications. And I've seen no story in the corporate media that mentions Bush's granting of clemency to Libby as a possible obstruction of justice by someone who stands to benefit by his aide's continued silence.

If a scandal falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, did it happen?