Karl Rove is having a bad day. In fact, he is has been having a lot of bad days. His president is down in the polls, way down. Bush’s approval ratings are as low as a president can go without being impeached or censured, and those options could well take place any day now.

Currently, Karl Rove is sweating bullets for a very specific reason. His pal, Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been singing to the Grand Jury. Libby has fingered Rove’s boss, President George Bush, as the federal official who authorised the leak of the covert status of CIA agent Valerie Plame. This leak was tantamount to treason. Along the way, Libby has incriminated his old boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. Another member of the White House staff has already incriminated himself, and National Security Advisor to the President, Stephen Hadley, is awaiting the arrival of the inevitable – a letter from the Special Prosecutor informing him of his indictment.

While that situation is bad enough, the press has just played a very large and intimidating hand of high-stakes political poker. Yesterday, Seymour Hersh published a paper entitled, “The Iran Plans” in the New Yorker that outlines in minute detail the White House’s secret strategy to launch a massive air strike against Iran.

According to Hersh, and there is no valid reason to doubt him, the military high command all the way to the Joint Chiefs are up in arms over the Iran plan. Many are opposed to it, and many are threatening to resign. That is actually not a serious threat to Rove, who is now like a hunted animal. If a load of military brass resign and go public, Bush will merely appoint willing apparatchiks to their vacated posts and their Commander-in-Chief will order them to do their duties and bomb the hell out of Iran.

Last summer, it was necessary to defuse a series of troubling events that were described by some as an attempted military coup by top brass who refused to contemplate the invasion or Iran. There may well be yet more military fallout, but Rove is planning a reversal of fortune to escape the public outrage that would be triggered by a military reaction against his neoconservative regime. That said, it is not clear that Rove backs the Iran plan himself. Whether he does or does not really does not matter. His job is to keep the administration on political course, and he is doing everything that he can – under the appalling circumstances – to do just that.

To make matters much worse, Senator Russ Feingold filed a censure motion against Bush. While there seemed little likelihood that the Feingold censure would gain any traction, now the climate has changed, and with the stories about Libby fingering Bush as the ultimate source for the Plame leak, it may take on a life all its own.

The polls do not look good for Bush and Rove. In fact, they look terrible. The public have lost their trust in the Republicans on a lengthening slate of issues that run right across the board. The Democrats are winning the generic congressional races by double digits. But that is today, and election day is a long way away in neoconservative political terms.

If the Democrats regain control of either house of Congress this autumn, then it could well be curtains for Rove and Bush. Majority control of either house will allow the Democrats to appoint their own Special Prosecutors to go after Bush and Rove on any number of devastating issues: fabricating evidence for war against Iraq; ignoring repeated high-level warnings of 9/11; financial scandals involving Enron, Halliburton and a load of corruption in occupied Iraq; the use of torture and rendition; flagrant abuses of power involving electronic eavesdropping and, no doubt, many other scandals.

Simply put, Rove has a lot a stake: his freedom, his reputation, his livelihood, his future, his dreams.

The American public have abandoned Bush on Iraq. Worn out with mealy-mouthed excuses that amount to a plate full of broken promises over Iraq, the public smell a rat. They do not believe the Bush White House on anything they say about anything anymore.

Recently, another portentous problem has been threatening to break out of its box. A rising chorus of protest against the official version of 9/11 has now reached the Hollywood stage with Charlie Sheen and others making their opinions public. The latest Hollywood critics of 9/11 agree with a steadily growing segment of US public opinion that believes that 9/11 did not happen like the official version says it did.

It is probably worth remembering that three and a half years after the assassination of JFK, US public opinion was just beginning to wake up to the fact that the Warren Commission Report was deeply flawed. It took twelve long years for the government to release the Zapruder footage that revealed that JFK had been hit by a bullet from his front. That startling film launched the second official enquiry, the House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded that JFK had been assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. Today, circa ninety per cent (90%) of Americans believe in a JFK conspiracy, and circa ten per cent (10%) still believe the Warren Commission. It is now perfectly clear, that 9/11 is following the same course as JFK.

In years to come, the number of Americans believing in a 9/11 conspiracy will rise, and those adhering to the official version will shrivel. Oliver Stone is now known to be working on a star-studded version of 9/11 to be titled, World Trade Center, and judging from his previous work, his forthcoming film will not make the Bush administration any more popular or the American public any more confident in the official version of events.

Karl Rove is worried about the pending collapse of the public’s attitude about the cause and responsibility for 9/11. In fact, he is losing sleep, and his dreams are morphing into macabre visions of confinement and torture. If the American public wake up and start demanding more information about 9/11 it will be curtains for the neoconservatives.

Never to be underestimated, Rove is a powerful, intelligent and determined man. With himself right in the firing line for the very next round of indictments in the Valerie Plame case, he has been busy designing a strategy to eradicate his worries – all of them – with one fell swoop of strategic manoeuvring that will transfix America; transcend the climate of doubt and transform the situation re-launching the Bush presidency as the saviour of America during a time of unprecedented national crisis. Today, we know a good deal about Rove’s and Bush’s plans to reverse the polarity of the problems now bedevilling them. The Bush administration is in the process of deploying a strategic game plan designed to spin the tables on their overconfident political opponents.

For starters, the Bush White House must effectively reverse the polling trends this autumn to retain control of both houses of congress – even if only marginally. To do otherwise would open Bush up to special prosecution, censure and potentially, impeachment. To accomplish this goal, they need a diversionary tactic to distract public attention from the Valerie Plame case and the collapse of the official story for 9/11. They desperately need to win the midterm elections in order to bar the doors to impeachment, silence the calls for censure, stop the proliferation of special prosecution and prevent the re-opening of the 9/11 investigation.

In the late nights and early hours of the mornings, Karl Rove has been burning the midnight oil in the Bush White House. Still at the helm of the executive branch that gives them virtual command control and decision authority over the Pentagon, the US military and a large proportion of the security and intelligence establishments, Bush and Rove are actually holding a very strong hand.

One factor that gives them a great deal of strength is the utter disarray of their opponents. The Democrats are divided. Many actually support the neoconservative assaults on the constitution and the culture of Islam. Seymour Hersh reported that one top-ranking Democrat had been “briefed” by the White House on the invasion of Iran, and they had approved urging an early timetable for launch. In contrast, John Kerry has spoken out stridently against the Iran plans for a pre-emptive air strike.

The Republicans hold an ace up their collective sleeve, the Democratic Leadership Council, a fossilized remnant from the Paleozoic era of Henry “Scoop” Jackson who was the most bellicose member of congress during the Vietnam War its tragic denouement. Scoop Jackson served the financial interests of the arms and aerospace industries headquartered in his home state of Washington, and his successors on the Democratic right still serve those same interests. Rove factors this crazy quilt of Democratic fragmentation into his calculations every time he faces a crisis, and to date, the right wing Democrats have never failed him.

Karl Rove’s dream scenario for the next few months leading up the midterm elections probably goes something like this.

Labor Day - the launch of the fall campaign amidst the orchestrated hoopla of ballyhoo, flag-waving, jingoism, prayers and venomous condemnations of our axis-of-evil Islamic and Asian enemies.

Mid-September - a major act of terrorism takes place on US soil, perhaps, a dirty nuclear device that has slipped through the lax security at America’s ports might be detonated in a major blue state city, perhaps, Washington or New York, or even in a red state metropolis, say, Houston – that is, of course, attributable to Islamic terrorists of the Bin Laden school of extremism. This would be the second time a Bin Laden-Al-Qa’ida attack would have saved the Republicans from a serious nosedive in the polls. The first time was, of course, 9/11, itself, when Bush was the most unpopular first term president in American history and the WTC collapsed to reverse his political fortunes.

October would bring the launch of a multi-pronged air strike against circa four hundred (400) hard targets in Iran that can be linked to its nuclear programme as outlined by Seymour Hersh.

Halloween night could see the emergence of a new tape from Osama Bin Laden threatening America with a chilling threat of worse attacks yet to come. This guest appearance by Bin Laden would simply mirror his collaborative appearance on Halloween night in 2004 which threw the phobic citizens of the red states into a fearful frenzy of hand-wringing that led to a fit of Republican voting.

On the Monday before the election, Saddam Hussein could be hung in Baghdad, and Bush could address the nation in prime time to beat his breast, notch his gun in public and pray for more direct evidence of the divine status of America’s mission in the modern world – to destroy all terrorists.

In the minds of Bush and Rove - after that sequence of political volcanism, election day would see Republicans winning in a walk while maintaining their majorities in both houses of congress.

Triumphally, Bush would address the nation congratulating the leadership of the Democratic Party on seeing the light of day and responding to his neoconservative message by supporting his plan to launch America into a permanent state of global war.

Calling for unity, Bush would praise individual Democrats who collaborated with his campaign to end terror, and he would call any and every political opponent who still opposes his extremist bellicosity a traitor guilty of treason and the fomentation of terror.

These events would bring about the merger of the Paleozoic part of the Democratic Party with the Republicans, and a wrenching schism that would actually divide the Democratic Party into two separate political parties, one neoconservative and one progressive.

In the aftermath of these events, the constitutional rights of American citizens would fade into the mists of history to become items of academic interest only. Worse. The new post Apocalypse America would strive to enforce its new regime of police power and military occupation on a global scale closing the period of personal freedom, civil liberty and the rights of humanity that opened in 1776.

With a renewed and rejuvenated political power base, George Bush would dismiss Patrick Fitzgerald, pardon Scooter Libby and any other co-conspirators in order to focus on the one problem facing America – terrorism. All American resources would be channelled into the war against terror, and all forms of education, information and the media would be predicated on the causes of terror and the solutions for fighting it with ultra-violence and malice aforethought.

The internet will be transformed from a global source of information for the general public to an anti-terrorist network for the transmission of information condemning and combating terrorism.

At that point, Karl Rove’s and George Bush’s dream will have transformed America.

The era of the American dream will close forever, and the era of the American nightmare will open.

References:

The Iran Plans

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact