ROVE'S WAR

Given the wall-to-wall press coverage the Rove scandal has been getting this past week, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit the Bush's Brain DVD my parents gave me last Christmas. I watched it last night and didn't really learn anything new; it just kind of reinforces the fact that Rove is a devious bastard and a political genius, absolutely unhindered by ethics. Rove's been screwing political opponents since he was in his early twenties, and his enemies list isn't confined to Democrats. Well, okay, I guess I did learn something new: there is a classics professor here at LSU, a fellow named Edgewood, who ran against Rove for national president of the Young Republicans back in 1970, and he was one of Rove's first victims. Rove's smear-stunt was so ballsy that it made the Bush family take notice--our President's daddy hired him on the spot. The rest is history.

Anyway, I wanted to repeat a point made in the film: the Iraq war is as much Rove's creation as it is the neo-cons'. Rove is a student of history, among other things, and understands clearly that wartime Presidents are much more politically powerful than their peacetime counterparts--I suppose this results from America's tendency to root for the home team regardless of its record. The video runs a montage of clips where Bush proclaims himself "a wartime President" again and again, followed by analysts and experts asserting that Iraq is Rove's war. When you look at how much Bush and the conservatives have gained politically from the ill fated invasion, it makes complete sense. Of course Rove was one of the central architects of the war.

And that makes him much worse than a cold-hearted bastard: it makes him a murderer.

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