No More Mister Nice Guy wrote the blog post I was just about to write:
Life in the United States of Bushistan is now one permanent Swift-boat attack. The latest victim, Mary McCarthy, was sacked for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture gulag, and the sleaze attacks began almost before the news was announced.
Speaking of which, why was the news announced? I mean, why was it necessary to plaster McCarthy’s name, position in the CIA, etc. over the front page of every newspaper? Isn’t that in itself a damaging leak? Oh, I forgot – when the junta betrays CIA agents, it’s to “enable folks to see the truth” about why we need to destroy other countries. When anyone else leaks information on the crimes and misdeeds of the regime, it’s treason.
Anyway, no sooner was McCarthy in the news than the freeposphere triumphantly announced proof of her treason and America-hating: she donated to John Kerry in 2004. Okay, case closed! Off to Guano with her! Burn the witch! Burn the witch!
It’s fairly obvious why McCarthy’s getting the royal Swift Boat treatment. Between Bush’s tanking approval numbers and tomorrow’s CBS Sixty Minutes report on the Bushies’ cooked Iraq intelligence, the Bushies needed a diversion, a red herring, to keep the Bitter Enders in line. The McCarthy story is red meat, and the Right Blogosphere is eating it up like a pack of starving hyenas.
The 101st Fighting Keyboarders are working overtime today. Some of their more overheated posts include “First Traitor Nabbed!” and (I kid you not) “Did Mary McCarthy Send Joe Wilson To Niger?” This blogger ties McCarthy directly to Joe Wilson, Sandy Berger, Valerie Plame, Patrick Fitzgerald. He predicts gleefully that McCarthy will turn on other leakers, that the Justice Department will target journalists next, and this summer we’ll all see Bush completely vindicated.
Clearly, the righties believe the accusations against McCarthy are just a plug pulled out of a dam, and now the waters of righteousness will spring forth and wash away all the nay-sayers and liberals and journalists and the rest of the traitors who doubt the glorious truth of Dear Leader.
The CIA’s firing of the official who allegedly leaked the existence of Eastern European black prisons to Dana Priest of The Washington Post has prompted an orgy of celebration among Bush followers, who apparently believe that the dreams they harbor — whereby anyone who discloses information which results in political harm to the leader will be imprisoned — are about to be realized. The NSA leakers are next, they gleefully proclaim, followed by the whole parade of nefarious, traitorous “cockroaches” — including reporters — who have leaked and/or published information that resulted in embarrassment to The Commander-in-Chief in this Time of War.
(How could we have doubted Dear Leader? What is wrong with us? Oh, wait … we have brains. Sorry.)
Be sure to read the rest of Glenn’s post. He makes a lot of excellent points. For another sanity check, see Taylor Marsh
It’s too early to say if the story has legs or not, and the overheated imagination of the Keyboarders notwithstanding, I don’t believe I have enough information to make predictions about where the story will go next. But somehow I doubt that the 57 percent of Americans already disillusioned by Bush will find the story as compelling as do the Bitter Enders.















