The Italian Job

"Mussolini" by Diego Rivera, 1933

Perhaps even more maddening than every last, bloody outrage of the Cheney-Bush cabal has been the free pass each one has received from the media wing of weapons manufacturers and the cowed, bought and emasculated Democratic Party.

So now, at last, that the open secret of Karl Rove's having been the source of the Plame leak threatens to become the administration's open sore, it makes eminent sense to keep picking at it. Yet still, I'm uneasy about the glee the story is generating amongst the regime's critics.

I'm not saying the story's going nowhere. (Though after the example of so many before it, I understand why one might have that thought.) What I'm saying is Karl Rove can go down, and nothing will change. Because as rich as the story is, the Plame story remains political, and politics - as demonstrated by recent election cycles - doesn't really matter all that much anymore.

There are bigger fish than Rove, and if they are to fry, attention should be paid to another unfolding story.

Just as parapolitics trumps politics, global power networks eclipse American domestic power structures. Rove's domain is certainly significant, but it remains one circle within many. And potentially more damaging to the Power Elite than the Plame leak, though perhaps not as satisfying to us as Rove's expected perp walk, is the disclosure of a secret, "parallel" counter-terrorism network embedded in Italy's security infrastructure. (Which, by the way, now provides a compelling motive for Nicola Calipari's single bullet to the head.)

If this sounds familiar, you've been paying attention. It's Gladio, it's P2; it's the fascist-Masonic false flag terror: the assassins of Pope John Paul I and the true Balogna train bombers. It's the gang to which Michael Ledeen served as an "advisor" in the late 1970s.

Nearly a year ago, in Yellow Cake and Black Shirts, I wrote about the connection of Ledeen's Italian network to the Niger fraud, so perhaps, actually, we're really talking about different facets of the same story, and what's unravelling in Italy now is the deep politics to Rove's politics.

Rove can go down and it will only make us feel better, and only for a little while. But if such a network goes down, it threatens to take with it the whole, rotten system.