Going Fishing?

Firedog Marcie Wheeler, who has seemingly devoted the rest of her life to bringing down the Bush administration ex post facto, is living vicariously through the new CIA investigation that's quietly being led by John Durham. Ms. Wheeler seems excited at this tidbit gleaned from a recent interview of Colin Powell's former chief of staff Larry Wilkerson:

No. My wife thinks that ultimately there’s going to be something. I’m a little more cynical than she, but she’s convinced that this investigation that’s been going on [by John Durham] — very low-key, the guy’s very persistent, he’s very determined, he reminds me of [Patrick] Fitzgerald on the Valerie Plame case, and his starting point is the destruction of the videotapes, and I’m told he’s got a plan, and he’s following that plan, and I’m told that plan is bigger than I think. [my emphasis]

Bigger than he thinks, eh? Ole Honest Obe told everyone it would be very narrow when he spoke through Holder's press release.

Matter of fact, so narrow that Ms. Wheeler herself and others figured it would be a pointless exercise, which in hindsight was not very reality-based based on Fitzgerald's actions in the Libby caper and the truthiness emitting from 1600 to date. Recapping, the situation has morphed from "looking forward, not back" to "only a narrow investigation" to potential sugar plum fairy frogmarch land. There's always hope.

The bigger news from the Wilkerson interview was his characterization of dastardly Dick Cheney as 'just now crazy'. As if the old boy has only recently flipped but was lucid while fighting dirty with the terrorists (man-causers; Islamic; not right wing domestic variety). Well, at least he can get sympathy and treatment if he's crazy, and of course won't be responsible for his actions. Back when he was an evil genius or just evil he had no hope at all.

But this rhetoric is funny coming from a man who recently produced some scoff-worthy material himself, losing his timeline on the Rachel Maddow show during an attempt to paint crazy Darth as so diabolically twisted that he would expect Sheik al-Libi to admit under water torture that Saddam was a bloody-thirsty murderer who had extensive links to terrorism and hated America. As if! But in the Colonel's way of thinking, just a bunch of chickenhawks:

"One day," says Powell's former chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, "we were walking into his office and Rich turned to me and said, 'Larry, these guys never heard a bullet go by their ears in anger ... None of them ever served. They're a bunch of jerks'."

Hope nobody tells him about Biden and all his deferments. By the way, some may consider it jerky to say something like this in 2008 in an interview in Foreign Policy:

FP: What’s your take on the tone of the campaign?

LW: I was fully expecting the grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan to arrive from Maryland and endorse McCain. I was becoming frightened that we were returning to 1968, when they assassinated Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Those were bad times.

Bottom line, he's a Powell supporter, was on the other side of the internecine Bush war, became an Obama booster, and hates Cheney, Rove and crew just the rest of liberal land despite guys like Van Jones. Some may call that crazy.

But this next bit might be more interesting. In the same interview Wilkerson, responding to a hypothetical, elucidated a vision of how a good presidency might progress from day one:

LW: That’s an easy question to answer, but hard to do. On Inauguration Day in my inauguration speech, I would do two things: I would ban torture and I would direct the closure of Guantánamo. And then I would do other things in the first 100 days: I would take a look at negotiations with Iran and at the six-party talks with [North] Korea. I would take a look at U.S.-Cuba relations. Those are actions that would indicate that America is back.

All those things have occurred just as he outlined. Let's see, might someone have been listening (or talking, such as Colin Powell)? And are we back yet?