Where's Donald Segretti when we need him?

All I did was order a few pizzas. Really!

Last week I was in a place with no TV news or newspapers, so it was a blissful time free of worry about bombings in London or the rattish morality of Karl Rove. I got back on Saturday, though, just in time to read about the bombings of candy grabbing school children and market place gas tankers in Iraq. Two loud bangs and there were more dead Iraqis in two days than Londoners or Madrilenos in the past two years.

Who do we blame for this? It might be a good idea to look at what’s behind all this Rove/Cooper/Wilson stuff to find an answer.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, (and the fact that calls for a certain President’s impeachment haven’t yet reached the level engendered by a stained blue dress indicates you haven’t,) the whole mess was ultimately precipitated by Joseph Wilson writing an op-ed piece for the NY Times saying that the administration’s claims that Iraq was on the verge of making nuclear (or nucular, if you’re the village idiot of Crawford, Texas) weapons was unsubstantiated.

Now, those idiots don’t much like being called idiots, so they got right after Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA agent. Now whether you believe that revelation broke the letter of the law or not, you still gotta admit that’s pretty low, at best. And if there’s one thing that’s certain about Rove, it’s that there is nothing too low for him. (As one person said, the only reason he can’t get any further into the mud is that his shirt buttons are in the way.)

But what is important to keep in mind is not that Rove actually set out to get Wilson and his wife, but rather the mindset that Bush’s people can do anything they damn well please, up to and including lying to the country to start a war. That, and that anyone who tries to stop them will, at best, be dismissed as ineffectual, and at worst, end up with ruined lives or ruined political careers. If you have a short memory, look up what was done to John McCain in South Carolina in the 2000 primary or Ann Richards in the Texas governor’s race in 1994. (OK, you don’t remember, but McCain’s wife is nuts and had a mixed race child, and Richards was a lesbian, according to their opposition.) That’s just for starters, though. Read Bush’s Brain if you want real nightmares.

So here’s how I read the whole Rove thing: it’s just part of the most insidious government we’ve had in this country in my lifetime. Nixon’s boys were complete amateurs when it came to dirty tricks. Donald Segretti went to jail for much less than what Rove does daily as a matter of course.

And that’s why children and shopkeepers get incinerated in Iraq.