Rove at Duke Letter: My Response

The following letter appeared in The Chronicle today. My response, posted on the comment thread, follows the letter here.

To the editor:

I'm assuming that you've received many e-mails expressing outrage, embarrassment, frustration and disappointment over the scheduled appearance of Karl Rove at Duke tonight.

Please add my name to the list.

Rove, the former chief propaganda minister (not his formal title, of course, but it should have been) for President George W. Bush, rather than being invited to speak at Duke, should instead be on trial for subverting democracy at home and for enabling war crimes abroad.

As even the casual follower of current events knows, Rove was "the architect" of Bush's whole ghastly political career. He conducted the "whisper campaign" that Ann Richards was a lesbian, which resulted in Bush's being elected governor of Texas. Rove smeared John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary with a series of "push poll" phone calls to voters claiming that McCain had a "black child" and had been rendered mentally unstable by his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Those lies revived Bush's flagging campaign and put him on the road to his hostile takeover of the presidency.

As a policy maker in Bush's administration as well as a political hit man, Rove helped sell the Iraq war, torture, the Swift-boating of John Kerry and the relentless fear and faux patriotism that resulted in Bush's remaining in the White House for a second term. Rove has tellingly abandoned Bush as his former boss' ship sinks (to go out and make money at universities and other places willing to pay large sums for him to deliver speeches), but he remains the sort of man willing to tell even the most obvious of untruths. His latest "big lie" is that the Democratic Congress was responsible for rushing the United States into the Iraq War.

What will Rove say tomorrow night at Duke? That he had nothing to do with illegally "outing" covert CIA agent Valerie Plame? That there never was a war in Iraq, or that, if there was, no civilians died in it? That, contrary to Democratic propaganda, Osama Bin Laden has been captured?

I'm not advocating taking away Rove's freedom of speech; however, Duke University should not have given such a professionally dishonest man a big payday to come and spread more of his transparent lies.

Rodney Allen
Graduate School '82

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Dear Rodney Allen:

You say that as “a policy maker in Bush's administration as well as a political hit man, Rove helped sell . . .the Swift-boating of John Kerry.”

But you offer no proof that he did.

You also don’t say what you mean by “the Swift-boating” of Kerry.

Do you mean, for instance, the disclosures during the 2004 presidential campaign by men who served with Kerry in Vietnam that, despite repeatedly promising to do so, he'd failed to release to the public all his Navy records?

By Swift-boating do you mean alerting the public that contrary to what he had claimed in a Senate speech, Kerry hadn’t actually spent Christmas in Cambodia?

Do you know T. Boone Pickens has offered Kerry $1 million if he can prove even one Swift-boat charge was false? Kerry wrote Pickens accepting his offer but so far he hasn’t produced anything to disprove a Swift-boat claim.

Here’s a link to The American Spectator’s site where you can read more about Kerry’s failure so far to refute any charge.

You wonder whether Rove will say “he had nothing to do with illegally ‘outing’ covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.”

Do you know the Special Prosecutor did not accuse Rove of “outing” Valerie Plame?
Does that matter to you?

Also, why do you say Plame was a “covert” agent?

For more than five years before she was “outed” she lived in D. C. and each workday drove to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

CIA “covert” agents don’t commute by car to headquarters for more than five years, do they?

Sincerely,

John in Carolina