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By Daniel Samper Pizano
October 26, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

Karl Rove: Pudgy, Intelligent, Likeable, and Dangerous.

We all have a cousin like him: pudgy, intelligent, likeable and chubby-cheeked. So far, what I have had to say about Karl Rove may seem inoffensive. It is not it. Quite the opposite. According to what has been discovered over recent months, he is the co-author of the war in Iraq, the invasion that was declared in disregard for international law and that has caused 30,000 civilian deaths.

Karl Rove, right hand man of George W. Bush, is on the verge of being called to judgment. But not for war crimes, (which would be the proper charges, since he lied to cause an illegal attack against a nation), but for revealing the identity of a CIA agent, a much less important matter, but one that the United States considers a serious crime. 

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald

The possible trial of Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, could cause a sever jolt to the government and even jeopardize its leadership, the real brains behind the conspiracy to hide the truth about Iraq from the people.

The judicial wheels are in motion. Although the process has been flowing along without much fanfare, as occurred at the beginning of Watergate, it has been gathering steam. Now, thanks to the investigation of Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, it is known that Rove and Libby leaked to the press the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame as revenge, after her husband, American diplomat Joseph Wilson, revealed to the nation that Saddam Hussein never obtained uranium from Niger. Bush had made the claim during a solemn speech [the State of the Union address] on January 28, 2003.

The Great Unraveling?

At the time, his government had yet to find any evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction - WMD - and knew, from the report Wilson had submitted to the CIA in March of 2002, that rumors of Saddam acquiring atomic [fissile] material were false. On March 7,  information was made public that should have aborted preparations for war: the International Atomic Energy Agency informed the U.N. Security Council that claims  of Saddam having WMD were based on false documents.

Nevertheless, few days later the United States and its allies unleashed this deadly and unjust war that has no sign of ever coming to an end.

Each time one turns around, the depravity seems to have multiplied. On the one hand, there are the fundamentalist neoconservatives that chaperon Bush and that discharged (this is the correct verb; not "released") a celebrated imperial manifesto for American military and political supremacy [Rebuilding America's Defenses from 2000 READ]. And, on the other, there was the decision that only a good old-fashioned-war would guarantee popular support for the government. Rove concocted these plans. His credentials as a political strategist are impeccable: it is he that Bush owes the successful campaigns that took him from governor of Texas to the presidency of their country.

As Frank Rich said in one of his columns for The New York Times, the invasion of Iraq was "the political Viagra that Rove needed for the electoral year." For that reason they invented the lies about WMDs and the nonexistent link between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.

From delirious ideologists and amoral political tacticians arose this illegal war, to which the Colombian government has adhered with much enthusiasm and little sense. The peculiar thing is that, up to now, the only people to be accused for the episode of revenge against Joe Wilson are two journalists that either revealed or merely wrote down the name of Valerie Plame and that she was a CIA agent. 

I hope this week American Justice rises to the height of its prestige, and public prosecutor Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury put Rove and Libby on trial. That would be the equivalent of thrusting his foot into the White House. Soon, that is what history will require.