The War Continues

....of the Enemy Media against the Bush Administration, that is. If Dubya weren't term-limited, the plug on that onslaught would never be pulled.

More specifically, I refer to the Washington Post's campaign to smear and destroy Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales over the U.S. attorney firing non-scandal, a seemingly unending fusillade of blanks metophorically akin to a blind watchdog having cornered what it thinks is an intruder and in reality just standing there barking at empty air.

This time Dan Eggen's salvo is that FBI Director Robert Mueller's "contemporaneous notes" about the signature hospital meeting regarding continuance of the "controversial" NSA data-mining program between an ailing then-AG John Ashcroft and Gonzales "contradict" Speedy's congressional testimony about Ashcroft's lucidity in the exchange, and therefore Gonzales DID TOO LIE to the Senate Judiciary Committee and IS TOO A PERJURER!!!

Speedy told the Leaky Committee that Ashcroft was "all there" during their conversation and, in fact, did most of the talking. Unfortunately for Eggen and the WaPo, Director Mueller's notes actually agree with him. In point of fact, Mueller was not present for this discussion, and by the time he did see Ashcroft again, the latter was wiped out, as one might expect from a bed-ridden man having conducted what sounds almost like a briefing of Gonzales on a complex legal issue and Ashcroft's position on it.

I probably wouldn't bother posting on this except to note the barometer of the status of this (anti-Hispanic?) assault on Oh, Boy, Alberto - aka the respective takes of Ed Morrissey, a dogged but now flagging Gonzales opponent, and Brother Meringoff at Powerline, who has a much better developed public relations sense and has recognized the need to defend Gonzales against false, harassing charges, even if he is a personification of the Peter Principle.

The Admiral concedes the Eggen piece is crap but insists Gonzales should be canned anyway, which raises the question of why he bothered posting on it since it doesn't advance the anti-Speedy cause. Meringoff, by "contrast," was merciless:

Eggen, then, is simply fabricating a contradiction (he uses the word "contrast" instead of "contradict," but they mean the same thing and the Post's headline uses the latter word). Mueller does not (and could not, because he wasn't present) deny that Ashcroft was lucid during the visit or that Ashcroft did most of the talking. Moreover, Comey himself has confirmed that Ashcroft did, in fact, speak coherently about the issue Gonzales came to discuss, becoming too exhausted to continue only after he had said his piece. And Gonzales hasn't claimed that Ashcroft expressed the ability or willingness to make a decision on whether to continue the surveillance program at issue. Thus, even if Mueller could confirm what Ashcroft told Gonzales on the subject (which he cannot, because he wasn't present) this would not contradict anything Gonzales has said....

By now, it should be apparent to the Post's editors that Dan Eggen is too invested in attacking Gonzales to provide honest coverage of matters relating to him. But maybe this state of affairs is what the Post wants.

Indeed, it would seem that such stubborn, irrational partisan hostility is about all that Gonzales' enemies have left - or ever had at all. Ironic that this requires them to cast Ashcroft - a man they loathed and hated far more than poor ol' Speedy - as the victim. Perhaps that's another reason why his testimony has never been sought in this kerfuffle, and why the latter is destined to slowly wither and die in the keystrokes of dishonest "journalistic" redoubtists like Dan Eggen.