In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics

Salon.com | Karl Rove is a liar: "In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics. | By Joe Conason | June 24, 2005 |

Karl Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He is not a patriot but a pure partisan, as his own record proved long before now.

The other night Rove lied about the liberal reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and again exploited patriotism for narrow partisan advantage in a time of war. He seeks to divert public opinion from the failures of the Bush administration by suppressing dissent, stigmatizing "liberals" and returning to the same old tactics that the Republican far right has used ever since the McCarthy era.

His unhinged rhetoric is a sign of deep worry within the White House, of course, as polls continue to show deepening public alienation from the president and growing skepticism about the war in Iraq. Most Americans now understand that they have been deceived about the war from the beginning, and most doubt the Bush administration's strategy for extricating our troops. Moreover, Rove must cope with Republicans as well as Democrats who are openly dissenting from the administration line, not only regarding Iraq but on the Bolton nomination and Social Security privatization.
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The truth is that liberal New York -- and the vast majority of American liberals and progressives -- stood with the president in his decision to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. On the day of the attacks, I wrote a column that endorsed "hunting down and punishing" those responsible because the dead deserved justice -- and noted that when the culpability of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban was established, the United States "is fully capable of dealing with them."
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"We can go to the country on this issue, because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America," he said. Provocative as those remarks were, they were mild compared with the kind of slanders that ensued against Daschle -- who was paired with Saddam and bin Laden -- and many other Democratic candidates.

So when vicious little Ken Mehlman, the RNC chairman, claims that Rove was referring only to Michael Moore, he's lying too. I expect no apologies from either of them or their bullying supporters. They should expect none when those they have insulted and betrayed tell them what they are.