How does EW find those layers?!

This is rhetorical: I think the Gang sees the Cheerleader’s pardon power as critical to:

[a] putting a lid on the cover-up
[b] facilitating the Beast escaping to its lair in order to moult for its next emergence &
[3] not incidentally, so individual conspirators can cash in their Get Out of Jail cards.

Keeping their phony-baloney jobs [per Mel Brooks’ prescient portrayal as governnor to Harvey Korman’s Hedly LaMar] proved too ambitious – though cashing in is still childs play given the height at which corporate establishment media outlets set the bar for them

[Were I regent I would impose regulations requiring those like Dobbs, Beccchh, Blizter, & that entire stable of vacuous pretty-face backups starting with King to put up a FauxNoose seal of approval & that the likes of TIME & Newsweek in the section for PEOPLE & TEEN GLAMOR].

So: while Spottie’s preserving the image of the Cheerleader as Alfred E Neuman is partly true [some small portion being thrown into the pot being essential element in your more successful ongoing fraudulent brew];

at the same time Spottie gets to make a buck from his convenient thesis;

& Spottie gets to ‘earn’ his spurs towards a space on one or more of those cable news poorman’s-version-of-Hollywood-Squares punditry panels [just wait];

& meanwhile the clock keeps on ticking.

from NewYorker website:

The Washington Post’s Michael Abramowitz has been reading “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story,” by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the American military commander in Iraq, and has unearthed what he drily calls “an arresting portrait of Bush” from 2004, shortly after four private contractors were lynched by a mob in Fallujah:During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk:
“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.”“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”
It is unclear whether Sanchez recites verbatim from the recorded conference or is paraphrasing in a grossly twisted manner.The use of quotation marks did pass thru the NYer editors!.

So, to put it in a sentence, Scotty’s still (a) untruthful about exactly what went down at the beginning and (b) he’s still a loyal Bushie covering for his old boss, but he’s doing it in a manner which makes him look like he’s being disloyal (and therefore more credible). Fair?

Amazing work EW…