Thursday, 03 June 2004

The W Files. Following in the footsteps of The Iraq War: A Play in One Act (link via lies.com, and curse you all for posting your idea first!), I'm thinking about creating a TV series. It would star two FBI agents, Deana Skeptic and Fox Wingnut, and their assignment would be to look for evidence supporting the Bush administration's claims.

One week the agents would be in Prague, investigating a tip that a 9/11 hijacker met with an Iraqi agent; the next they'd be at Abu Ghraib, checking to see if the prison atrocities were the work of a few bad apples; and so on. One agent would be deeply skeptical about Bush's claims, and the other would swallow them hook, line and sinker.

The difference between my show and "The X Files" would be that, week after week, Deana would be absolutely right and Fox would have egg on his face. Each and every claim gets proven false by Agent Skeptic, but for some reason Agent Wingnut never detects the pattern… in fact, he continues to believe the claims are true even after they've been shown to be false.

Also, in spite of a remarkable zero-for-infinity track record, Fox starts each new investigation with an unshakable blind faith in the veracity of the Bush administration: He'll be sort of like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, except that our national security will be at stake.

I might even have different guest stars playing the part of Agent Wingnut every week, with each one introducing a different wild-eyed premise: I want to believe Richard Clarke committed perjury, say, or I want to believe Saddam was behind 9/11. The WMDs are out there.

Whaddya think?

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 9:38 am. comments.

Thursday, 03 June 2004

Photo caption contest.

"Not to worry. I have everything under control."

Leave your suggestion in the comments. First prize is a new President.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:45 am. comments.

Thursday, 03 June 2004

Valerie Plame watch. Daily Kos diarist GDoyle notes a new development in the ongoing effort to find and prosecute the White House leaker who blew a CIA field agent's cover:

President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, the White House said Wednesday.

As I've noted before, blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony — and there's no getting around the fact that Valerie Plame's cover was blown. And, as Josh Marshall notes, the same inner circle of neocons is also under investigation for leaking classified information to Ahmed Chalabi (who promptly turned around and told the Iranians we'd broken their codes).

I'm not fond of the criminalization of politics — of people using the criminal justice system to achieve partisan political goals — but the litmus test here is that I'm prepared to indict a Democrat if the trail leads to one. You don't risk the lives of our agents and troops for personal political gain.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:34 am. comments.