And yes, here is yet another post we “reichwingers” are compelled to make in order to beat back the incessant scandal mongering of such ideologically-committed media outlets like the NYT.
I’ve noted this before—and it’s a sentiment that drives my visitors from the left apoplectic (to which I say, so, how’s it feel being put on the defensive all the time, hard chargers?)—but to many on the anti-war, anti-Bush side of the political divide, the charge is the thing. Which is to say, the goal is not so much to convict anyone in the administration of wrongdoing (though that would be super dooper awesome!) as it is to force them on the defensive and create the constant appearance of impropriety.
This is accomplished by leaving out key pieces of information or context, misusing technical terms, crafty editing, etc. And most importantly, repetition of debunked assertions presented as established fact.
The latest scandal involves the “revelation” of Bush’s supposed “leak” of “classified” information—which, as a WaPo editorial noted yesterday, is neither a leak, nor is the revelation new.
From the editorial itself:
Rather than follow the usual declassification procedures and then invite reporters to a briefing—as the White House eventually did—Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter. The full public disclosure followed 10 days later. There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security.
And if that is not enough, Powerline does a bit of work on Lexis Nexus and gives you the following (from “Three Years Later: It’s Still News!”):
Today’s New York Times page-one, joint-byline story by David Sanger and David Johnston is “Bush ordered declassification, official says.” The story of course refers to the declassification and release of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimage consensus “key judgments” in July 2003.
Referring to the same document, on July 20, 2003, the AP headlined Tom Raum’s story: “Declassified CIA documents on Iraq show divided intelligence community.”
[Powerline reprints the original story in its entirety]Also referring to the same document, Knight Ridder ran a shorter story on the same subject by Ron Hutcheson on July 19, 2003: “Bush releases excerpts of top-secret Iraq report.” [Again, Powerline posts the original in its entirety]
Note that these stories show what we all know: the release of the NIE report was part of an attempt to quell the political uproar that was starting to build over what Bush did and did not know before the war. The stories also show that the “leak,” while criticized for being “selective,” included the State Department minority opinion — material more than sufficient for most MSM stories written after the briefing to be negative!
The only new element of the story that was added last week via Patrick Fitzgerald’s brief is that President Bush, according to Cheney according to Libby, authorized the release of the NIE report ten days earlier than the July 18 briefing that was widely reported, and that they disclosed it to Judith Miller, who didn’t write about it. On the contrary, however, today’s New York Times story reports that Bush only authorized the declassification and release of the NIE report, not the manner of its disclosure specifically to Judith Miller on July 8.
[My emphases]
To those whose mission it has become to bring down the Bush administration, none of this will matter. And why should it? What are the consequences for floating smear after smear and repeating lie after lie when you have on your side a media that will aid you in making the allegations look serious and troublesome in the professional language of newspeak? Remember, it’s the appearance of impropriety that matters, allowing the “culture of corruption” meme to continue its viral spread throughout public discourse.
The facts here are quite clear: Bush declassified NIE documents at the behest of reporters and in order to provide justification for the Iraq campaign. He was providing information to answer questions like those posed by “Good Morning America’s” Charlie Gibson at around that same time: “President Bush and Iraq. What did he know and when did he know it?”
That members of the administration then passed that declassified info on to specific reporters before they made a full public announcement about it has no bearing whatsoever on the legality of their having disclosed it.
None of this should need repeating, and yet here we are, three years later, defending the President’s decision to declassify information (now being spun as proof that the declassification was part of an attempt to “out” Valerie Plame) when back then, the President was being taken to task for as yet not having declassified the information.
Joseph Wilson lied. And those left defending him as some sort of hero are hopeless true believers, clinging like possums to his thin and brittle branch of self-serving prevarications—all the while casting around wildly for some justification to continue believing him (which chiefly entails projecting his lies onto the administration).
It’s sad, really.
****
Gateway Pundit has much more.
Are you thinking we forgot Bush standing in front of the cameras telling us how serious these charges are, and how he is firing up an investigation to get to the source of the leak?
Do you think that putting words he didn’t use into Joe Wilsons mouth and screaming liar make it so?
What could possibly motivate someone to lie repeatedly in a blog? Idiology> Idiotology?
I lead last Friday’s gaggle coverage with this exchange between Helen Thomas and Little Scottie and was surprised that none of the other bloggers who covered Friday’s gaggle mentioned it at all. The question of whether or not Bush knew that Valerie Plame was both Joe Wilson’s wife and a clandestine CIA operative is important.
Notice how Scottie does not answer Helen’s simple yes or no question, but instead points her to the latest Fitzgerald filing which actually says nothing definitive about the President’s knowledge of Plame’s status.
Q Did the President know that Joe Wilson was married to a CIA agent before Novak revealed it?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, this goes to—go back and look at previous comments, but this goes to an ongoing legal proceeding, and I would encourage you—
Q Did he know? It’s a simple question.
MR. McCLELLAN:—I would encourage you to go and look at the filing that was made just the other night, because Mr. Fitzgerald touches on that subject in the filing.
Q You mean the President did not know?
MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I can’t get into discussing an ongoing legal proceeding, and that’s a question relating to the ongoing legal proceeding.
Q I think it’s a very simple, important question.
MR. McCLELLAN: Matt, did you have something?
Today Jason Leopold tells us that the president did know.
In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson’s undercover status to the media.
………………..
Here’s a brief collection of the gaggles mentioning the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq from July 11 to July 18, 2003.
July 11, 2003: Condi aboard Air Force One.
Q But isn’t it slightly strange that you have different agencies with different reports and different sentences? I mean, not everyone is singing from the same song sheet here.
DR. RICE: But let me just go through the process, because it’s not at all unusual. We have several intelligence agencies, not just one. We have the Central Intelligence Agency, a Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department has its own intelligence agency. And there is a process which the Director of Central Intelligence, who is the coordinator for all of those agencies, runs which is called the National Intelligence Estimate. The National Intelligence Estimate is supposed to come to a conclusion that is the considered, joint opinion of all of those intelligence agencies. If at the end of that process, a particular agency still has a reservation, they take a footnote. And so the INR took a footnote in this case.
Q But it’s in the Estimate?
DR. RICE: It’s in the Estimate. It’s, by the way, in another section, but it is in the Estimate. But the DCI is responsible for delivering a judgment, a consensus judgment of the intelligence community, which is called the National Intelligence Estimate. And that’s what the President—
Q Is there a chance that that particular citation could be declassified, so we could see it?
DR. RICE: You know, we don’t want to try to get into kind of selective declassification, but we’re looking at what can be made available.
David Brock might now. That dirtbag. Where did he grow up? Where did he learn his values?
Who did they source it to?
And thus CK and Actus make Jeff’s point. Honestly you two, with oppostion like yours the center-right doesn’t need any help.
CK:
Jeff:
Like continuously trying to convince themselves and others that Valerie Plame was some sort of clandestine super-spy (while working at CIA headquarters and allowing her husband to make patently false allegations centering around a job she sent him on during a heated presidential election) and that Bush, Cheney et all broke some law and damaged national security by outing her. I mean if Bush & Company did all that what Wilson said must be true.
Notice the sleight of hand from “covert” to “clandestine.”
Covert carries legal implications whereas clandestine does not, yet sounds important. In truth, as Valerie Plame was neither covert nor clandestine, Bush could have held a press conference announcing she was a CIA agent, and – this part is important Lefties so pay attention – it would not have been a crime.
Got that? Valerie Plame does not fall under the stature criminalizing the ‘outing’ of a covert agent. Sorry.
Jeff – nice piece.
I think Jeff may soon realize why Atrios doesn’t bother putting any more thought into his postings beyond “BUSH SUCKS! OPEN THREAD!” When all of your commenters are of CK and actus quality, there’s no benefit to spending time and effort actually constructing an argument. You just need to include a few keywords so they know what to focus on during the two minute hate.
CK and actus: As corvan pointed out, citing a transcript of Helen Thomas badgering Scott McClellan and name-checking David Brock are not particularly effective rebuttals to Jeff’s observation that the left has fallen into the habit of using unsubstantiated allegations and insinuations in place of making actual arguments.
It’s the Culture of Conniption.
Maybe that should have been Culture. Or is it Kulture?
Please advise.
Oh, its not a rebuttal. Its context. And the context is victory. Attack is for the strong. Reason and arguments? Thats for the weak. Go with your gut is what I learned from my newsman, mr. colbert.
The MSM still ignores the Wilson/Kerry campaign connection.
Was Wilson motivated to lie by pure partisanism or was the title “Ambassador to France†dangled in front of him by a notoriously “French looking†candidate?
I’d still like to know how Joe Wilson got clearance to write about a CIA mission in the New York Times.
Victoria Toensing has quite a list of questions that haven’t been answered, but should be.
But they do good work, after all…
I was just thinking this weekend that since the weather is getting nice it must be about time to start talking about the Wilsons again. Oh Joy.
Seriously, has anyone on the Left ever addressed this point? Care to take a stab at it, acthole?
The bad man did something he shouldn’t have to the good man which resulted in a great and horrible thing being unleashed, and for this we are rightly pissed off. If you were any sort of real American you’d be pissed off too.
Leftist Executive Summary, Affair de Plame
The Wilson trip was a gotcha move by a group within the CIA who should have done a better job changing the conventional wisdom about Iraq’s WMD (which was that they still had ‘em) during the interwar period, if they really believed they were right and if the facts had in fact allowed it.
It beggars belief to see intelligent progressives act as ablative armor for Joe Wilson. He’s become quite the crank. He’s played fast and loose with virtually every element of his role in this story.
Well Jeff, to my total astonishment, the GOP legal strategist who masterminded the attacks on Bill Clinton last decade, and who has an NRO blog together with his wife Kellyanne (the ubiquitous conservative commenter on CNN and elsewhere), is now lambasting Bush for corruption and incompetence. My eyes bugged out when I read this today from George Conway:
(my emphasis)
Rest here:
http://conways.nationalreview.com/
I guess NRO is now hosting those whose “mission it is to bring down the Bush administration” by floating smears and promoting corruption memes, eh?
This signals something, I do believe.
Eh, wrong. It is the Culture of Constipation.
They have replaced those things that they know with those things that they think they know, suppose they know, hope is true and take these false premises and build (what they think is) rock solid brick shithouses on them.
Since Bush mangles syntax and mispronounces words, he is stupid. Since he is stupid, he must surround himself with stupid people, therefore the entire administration is stupid. Since stupid people are inept, this administration must be inept. Ergo, any and I repeat, any policy or program initiated by these stupid people is incompetent. See how easy that is.
Never mind that Dr. Rice has a PhD from Stanford or that Cheney has a long history as a successful businessman or that AG Gonzalez passed the bar (acthole?) and was a State Supreme Court Judge, etc. (just google any admin person and look at their CV). For the loonies it is just a short step from stupid and incompetent to EVIL!
Just look at the personal attacks on these people that appear just just on this web site, let alone the sewer of Dkos or Ballon Juice. According to those on the port side GWB & his administration has never promulgated or proposed one decent idea or program that they could agree with. Not.One.
I think Valerie was both clandestine and covert. She was wearing a scarf and sunglasses in her Vanity Fair spread.
Uh… if in fact that was her in the photos, I mean.
I would be far more inclined to believe in signals and tides turning and such if this sort of thing ever happened in the other direction. That is, when facts come in that don’t support the current meme’s of the loyal opposition were suddenly seen as being ‘signals’. Because as it stands, this kind of crap just seems like pretentious appeals to authority masquerading as the final release of the long awaited ultimate truth.
Mona,
What exactly does your comment have to do with the post at hand? Because “they do it too” does not an argument make.
Joe Wilson is a lying partisan hack. If you disagree, say so.
TV (Harry)
Inspector Callhan asks:
I quoted from the section of Jeff’s post to which my observations pertain, to wit and to repeat:
Ooooooooo, a GOTCHA moment from mona.
How original. PAY ATTENTION, mona, you will see this information again:
Everybody that disagrees with Bush is not ‘on a mission’ to bring down the Bush Administration. Just about by definition, Conway and NRO, certainly, are not on your side.
Even on Iraq, I doubt you two could agree past three sentences, two of which are ‘Hello’ and ‘Hey’.
But, there are some Captain Insano people that ARE on a mission against him.
Any more nonsequitars, sweet tits?
Verc
Thank you for stating the obvious.
I was busy banging my head against the wall after reading Mona’s post to reply in a timely manner.
The thing is, I don’t regard the news media (or much of anything I see on TV or in newspapers) as anything other than than the propoganda wing of the leftist/Democratic alliance. I think many feel as I do, so I don’t despair at the impact this trash could theoretically cause if presented to a receptive audience. For my part, I give zero credence to anything they say, with the exception of raw fact (e.g., a hurricane happened) and the rare instances of stories free of political innuendo (e.g., . . . um, I haven’t watched enough TV over the last few years to think of the last time this happened).
The start of the Iraq war represents for me the death of national TV news, the NY Times, and the AP. They are no longer journalistic outlets but political operatives. They are the left’s thinktanks. Short of an admission and public renunciation of their Democratic propoganda mission, they can never regain my trust or business.
someone might note that that Conway was specificly talking about Congressional corruption while Jeff was talking about an aura of corruption surrounding the President…but I’m not a lawyer and really shouldn’t even try to discuss such points with my betters (rhetorical point! open thread!)
But, of course, you could dig up conservative bloggers and writers who disagree with the President in both the substance and style of his politics. Sullivan has his panties in a bunch over everything. Malkin and the Powerline crew don’t like how congressional republicans or Bush are dealing with immigration. There are paleocons at NRO who think Bush is a free spending liberal with wild-eyed liberal foreign policy plans. And- shock of all shocks- they may use some high-falutin’ hyperbole in talking about the issue.
The only people this fact seems to surprise, however, are liberals.
Perhaps it’s simply unfamiliarity with a political party that actually discusses issues in a manner that doesn’t simply rush to assert the moral highground on everything.
Vercingetorix declares:
Well, I certainly read Mr. Conway as doing more than “disagreeing” with George Bush and with the GOP crew running Congress. In fact, I’d characterize it as a denunciaton, based on charges of both corruption and incompetence; you know, the “smears” and “memes” Jeff writes of in this post.
So, how do you distinguish among those who insist Bush is incompetent and an awful President but who are on some (unspecified) side, from those who say the same things, but are on a certain other (unspecified) side?
More particularly, what is “my” side, and what is George Conway’s? And I also wonder if you would answer this: Does the truth or falsity of whether Bush and the current GOP are incompetent and corrupt, reside in the motives of the person making the claim?
ss,
Yes, but you are an informed consumer of news. There are tens of millions of people in this country that are politically ignorant. They scan the headlines of their morning papers, maybe reading one or two stories, never reading the op-ed pages and tune into the network news for sports and weather. What “news” they get is the kernels picked, cleaned, processed and cooked by the MSM. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times someone has said to me, “That is the first time I heard that”, when I give an alternative source on something.
What the NYT, AP & Reuters prints and what the MSM leads with is all the news that many receive.
Darleen, I prefer to do my head banging near the end of the day, where I can concentrate on only the finest, most pure strains of ignorance.
No. I assume that you are asking about the leadership of the GOP. Regardless of who is making the claim, no one has profferred any evidence that Bush is either corrupt or incompetent. I also fail to see any valid evidence that the GOP leadership is corrupt or incompetent. Sure some have opined on the competence of GWB. I do make a distinction between that which is politically expedient and a task that is chosen and performed competently.
As you might have noted, some even opine that GWB is stooooopid, the reincarnation of Hitler and actually read his mind as to his motivations for actions he has taken. (OIL, HALLIBURTON, SAUDI RICHES). No matter who is making these claims, I have failed to see facts supporting them.
Some Guy in Chicago writes;
Well, no. Conway wrote:
(emphasis in both quotes mine)
Conway is indicting the whole modern GOP, which he states is corrupt (and grossly incompetent) courtesy of both the Administration and the congressional Republicans.
ris insists there is no evidence of Bush Admin incompetence. Hmmm.
(The software here doesn’t like my link, so I couldn’t include it; the above excerpt is from a Time article.)
And since this is his opinion….it makes it true? I believed at one time that Santa was a real person and there was a tooth fairy and an Easter Bunny.
Well, good luck with all that, Mona. Doesn’t look like you are going to influence anyone here.
Here’s the moment I await: “Mr. Wilson, raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth…”
Wilson may have a little problem there.
Such as these gems.
Maybe, just maybe, there are those who say Bush is XXXX but don’t insist on single-payer collectivization of whatever, abortion and condoms for fifth-graders, throwing our Marines and Soldiers under blue helmets, giving Chirac and Kofi Anan a veto over US foreign policy…you know, the red lines, that divide sane people, such as everyone to the right of NOW, ANSWER and the DNC, from well, yourself, Mona.
So you have the batshit crazy folksâ€â€your tribeâ€â€and the poor crook-horned sheeple that drift off to greener pastures, away from the hard life defending the flock from moronic wolves.
Well, it doesn’t. On the other hand, seeing as how you consider ANY and ALL evidence to point to chronic corruption, you merely have no credibility.
Is this corruption? How about now? Now? Now? How about now? Now? And now? Here, corruption? Corruption! Corruption? How about now? And now?
Turing Word Engine: Do these pants make me look fat? No, babe, your ass makes you look fat.
Mona, I assume you’re a member of the nuance crowd, so I’ll ask you: when someone says there are mindless Bush-haters out there whose thought processes have more in common with a dogmatic religion then a rational world view, how is it a rebuttal to say that there are people with a rational world view who also don’t like Bush? (I express no opinion on Conway’s world view, merely on your use of him here.)
And FWIW, Jeff’s post related to Joe Wilson specifically, not Conway’s more generalized claims.
Mona,
That you consider that evidence obviously says something about your competence as an attorney.
tim maguire asks:
And vercingetorix claims:
Tim’s inquiry is reasoned, the other is feverish crap. I voted for George Bush in ‘04. I’m a libertarian who was quite hawkish in the wake of 9/11, and was nervously supporting of the Iraq war—a support I now regret.
I despise– and I mean hate, despise and cannot abide—far leftists and groups line ANSWER. In my strong opinion, Roe v. Wade is an intellectual and jurispridential monstrosity; I supported the Sam Alito nomination.
George Bush has been a disaster, on every level, foreign and domestic. His legal theories of unlimited Executive power are a dangerous joke that are repudiated by the federal courts, when the Bush DoJ cannot arrange to evade judicial review. George Conway is just one of many very smart Republican lawyers who are deeply skeptical of Bush’s legal defenses of his warrantless spying in violation of FISA. Conway has said he agrees with (non-leftist) Orin Kerr’s legal analysis, as do I—Bush is behaving in flagrant violation of a criminal statute, based on legal theories that no small government conservative should accept, and which the High Court would repudiate if we could but get the matter before them. These theories would literally establish the Executive as a monarch.
Bush is an incompetent, leading a party of corrupt jackasses, and he is arrogating unto himself law-breaking powers that no one but the most deluded Bush-worshippers (or the uninformed) believe are legitimate. I couldn’t have voted for Kerry under any circumstnces (that little matter of working with the Communist enemy back in the 70s), but I now deeply regret my vote for Bush.
ris writes:
Well, I suppose so. Expert witnesses deliver expert opinions in areas like whether behavior rises to negligence and such with some frequency.I would imsagine Lt. General Newbold would qualify as an expert in military strategy. But perhaps that is just me.
Or,perhaps your unhappiness is driven by the General’s forceful argument that George Bush and his DoD are a crew of incompetents?
So you’re a libertarian, not a leftist. Good.
So you voted for Bush, now you don’t support him. Fair enough.
Like Conway, you’ve changed your mind. Okay.
But neither you nor Conway likely are the people that Goldstein refers to when he says ‘people whose mission in life’ it is to destroy Bush. Right?
So what the hell are you moaning about?
If you don’t like Bush, fine, say so. State your reasons. Say ‘because’… But get the hell out of the way.
There are leftists that you also despise, the people that are unreasonable, that hated him from day one, that thought 9-11 was our fault.
Mona, if it doesn’t apply to you, stop jumping up and claiming it does. Stop wasting our time with this crap.
Vercingetorix writes:
Get the hell out of the way? Of what, exactly? Unimpeded cheerleading for Bush?
Look, whatever Joe Wilson’s sins of mendacity, it is clear that he was ultimately right about there being no Nigerian uranium purchases planned, and no WMDs in Iraq. What is very oddly missing from any of the Fitzgerald papers or papers filed by Libby, is discussion of exactly who declassified Plame’s CIA status and told Libby to divulge it.
But at the end of the day, Plamegate is a distraction from much more serious issues. I don’t get all excited by the partisan Bush-haters who hang on every morsel released by Fitzgerald, and I think both sides are paying too much attention to this “scandal” when there are much more serious reasons for being alarmed by George Bush and the modern GOP.
No, but the motives are instructive when assessing the credulity of the claim.
Wha?
…there is no evidence of Bush Admin incompetence. Hmmm. [Proceeds to quote some general]
You make Jeff’s point. You offered someone’s opinion as evidence that an opinion is true. Opinion quickly becomes allegation, and the allegation itself becomes evidence of its own validity.
Well done!
Mona,
I’m not an attorney…but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I’m sure the Gen’s testimony could be admitted in a court of law just as I’m sure the way you phrase a question to him would be, “Is it your opinion that…..” which is what his testimony would be – his opinion. I’m sure that you or opposing counsel could obtain just as credible “expert” testimony that would refute the Gen’s testimony.
While errors abound in any armed conflict (of which I could give “expert” testimony) they are not indicative of incompetence, per se. I’m sure you can get all kinds of differing opinions on the strategic moves and prosecution of the war itself. Disagreement of the strategy or of the implementation of that strategy do not extend to provable incompetence.
If only the DNC Nomination Fairy had given us someone else to choose. Alas, alack, alackaday, that they did not do.
Far too many people display their utter lack of logical acumen by stating or implying that the choice was “Bush or Not-Bush”. It was Bush or Kerry, Mona. You made your choice. Own it. Your sack-cloth and ashes routine is mere sound and fury.
The British stood and stand by their claim. Wilson is and was wrong. Iraqi officials did meet Nigerians, and it wasn’t for the illicit goat trade…
And Wilson was where, late 2002, early 2003?
Oops, that’s right: he showed up AFTER the US went in and there were demonstrably no stockpiles of WMD, so he was retroactively right. Hat’s off to your prophet.
On the other hand, I don’t care if he had stockpiles or even if he had destroyed them before Destorm Storm.
Don’t care.
He was a threat. He cuckholded terrorists. He was a psychopath. We spent billions taking him out and rebuilding Iraq, but we were spending billions just containing him. We would spend billions containing him forever. ENOUGH.
He shot at our planes. Ceasefire is over.
He tried to assasinate an expresident. Ceasefire is over.
He massacred his own people by the hundreds of thousands while we watch. Ceasefire is over.
He kicked out weapons inspectors, for any reason whatsoever. Ceasefire is over.
Or it fucking should be. Enough of this pedantic GOTCHA! bullshit.
Come back to reality, Mona, and smell the starving babies. That’s what you prefer. Enjoy.
Dave S writes:
And again I state — he is an expert. Experts give opinion testimony in courts, like, all the freakin’ time. Their opinions carry weight, and are so accorded under the rules of evidence.
Lt. Gen. Newbold argues—and to some extent explains why—Bush and his DoD have incompetently handled foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq. He is in a position to know. He is an expert.
Neither you (I am pretty certain) nor I are competent to assess whether George Bush and his DoD made incompetent strategy decisions in the military context, but fellows like Newbold are.
Damnit, Karl Rove = Me
No, you ignaramus, it is clear that he was mendacious in his earliest interviews and his op-ed on the topic. He stated unequivocally in both his initial debriefing and his Senate testimony (on cross) that former PM Mayaki told him that Saddam sent a delegation to Niger to open negotiations for a uranium purchase. You have not done your homework. Further, Wilson was never tasked to determine if there were WMD.
You are as tedious here as you were when you were arguing the pro-Administration side on L2R.
Speaking of corruption…there’s always Hillary in ‘08!
That was not what he said and you know it.
And this is a blatant dishonest, or woefully ignorant, conflation of two seperate incidents. Libby has not been accused or indicted for divulging Plame’s CIA identity. Your credibility just took a swirling flush right down the toilet.
“Karl Rove” writes:
I care about my nation’s interests. If removing Saddam Hussein could be done with limited expenditure of blood and treasure, and without ensnaring our troops in a nightmare of sectarian and tribal warfare in a nation with deteriorating political structures in a population that on the whole is not amenable to the Wilsonian nation-building project we have undetaken, if all that, I’d still support the war.
Iraq is a deteriorating mess that has potential to casue an explosion throughout the ME. I do not see that Bush’s policy vis-a-vis that nation has been in my nation’s interests.
My nation’s interests are my first concern.
And that is the crux of the matter. You certainly are entitled to that opinion. That you charge the administration with incompetence is hubris to the nth degree, as I expect that same hubris infects others of your thinking.
Disagreement with the policy….sure. Actively supporting those that agree with you….sure. Making charges of incompetence to many extremely able, highly intelligent, dedicated, hard working people who have the best interests of this country at heart because you disagree or are disappointed in the progress is just flat out wrong.
It couldn’t.
Priceless, let’s not have that stop you…
Abandoning it will only make things worse. In no way will this be good for Iraq or the ME. Nor will running away from ANOTHER conflict be good for the US. The best that could come of leaving Iraq now would be a short term period of self congratulatory rhetoric. A small window of feel-goodism.
In fact, despite what might amount to the wishes of every last living American, there is a damn good chance that there will be more war in addition to what we already have. You know, in case you were making plans.
Mona moans:
I’ll submit that we’re already there. And I’ll also submit that you’ve got a ways to go to call Iraq deteriorating given it’s state for the last 15 years. There are a number of ways the thing could go, and we’d be damned fools to quit pushing for our favored outcome now. Of course it’s an explosion throughout the middle east. That’s the point.
Would all of you who know exactly how all this should be accomplished please grace the rest of us with your plan and its track record?
tw: Hello, I must be going.
Clearly, I am talking—and have repeatedly talked, as Mona well knows (her semantic games notwithstanding) about a group of people who believe that the the ends justify the means, and that if they have to “fudge” the truth a bit for the greater good of destroying their hated Bush’s credibility, then so be it.
In short, just leave Mona to her straw man arguments. She knows that I didn’t call Buckley or Will or Fukuyama “traitors” or “liberals,” etc. when they disagreed with the President. I simply disagreed with their assessments and argued my own point of view.
But Buckley, Will, Fukuyama, et al., are hardly in the same category as those who (as I and others have pointed out) know something to be false and yet repeat it anyway in an effort to harm the President.
Above, I cite examples of procedures that require a degree of intent. Some of them are perhaps habitual, but it cannot be argued that such habitual bias hasn’t been pointed out enough so that those still committing it haven’t had the opportunity to address their shortcomings.
Let’s review: Those who repeatedly state that Bush “lied” about WMDs when they should know better (examples, those in Congress who had access to intelligence; anyone who is honest enough to admit there is an important difference between a lie and a “mistake”—and this trickle of translated documents may even throw that “mistake” bit into conflict soon); ostensibly and self-proclaimed “objective” or “neutral” news sources who routinely misapply terminology, like “leak” for declassification and disclosure, or “chemical weapon” for Willy Pete, or “domestic spying” for NSA surveillance gathering of suspected terrorists; these same news sources who leave out context and necessary information, such as that the “revelations” of the last two days were reported on 3 years ago, and on and on and on).
And to answer another obvious question posing as a deep metaphyisical observation, no, the motives of the people doing the accusing do not change the ontology of the corruption (well, beyond ways Heisenberg might posit). But the corollary to that observation is that simply asserting corruption is not enough eithter to create or prove corruption. It is, however, enough to create the appearance of corruption. And when people purposely engage in this activity—without proof of corruption and with no regard for the impact of their charges—they are acting in bad faith.
These are the people I’ve criticized again and again. So keep the straw men coming if you must, but you’re tilting at windmills here, Mona.
Oh. And I haven’t read your comments, so excuse me if you addressed any of this stuff. I am simply going by other commenters’ reactions to your posts.
Sorry. But I don’t waste my time on the extensive verbiage doled out by back-stabbing character assassins.
ris misses the point:
I never remotely implied that Libby was indicted for that. He is charged with perjury and obstruction of justices, related to statements he made about classified information, when he learned of it, and who told him to share it, and with whom when.
And papers filed in the matter heavily discuss declassification of parts of the National Intelligence Estimate, but nothing about Plame and her CIA status. That is odd, cuz this is, after all Plamegate.
John Dean thinks so, too (my emphasis).
Rest here:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060407.html
That is another shoe that may well drop at some point in the Libby prosecution, but it would only be a political scandal for Bush, in all likelihood, if he and/or Cheney declassifed and told Libby to leak Plame’s status. It is weird that the issue of declassification of Plame’s status is missing so far, and instead all the NIE stuff is in papers filed. But as I’ve said, there are more serious things to be worried about.
Phil Smith sez:
Phil, I think I’ve got to go with Mona here. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Kerry’s campaign slogan was “Not Bush!”
Sure, it’s semantics, but once he reported for duty, Kerry was Not Bush and not much else. He even had the same ideas, but they’d have worked a whole lot better since he was, in fact, Not Bush. And vaguely Fwench, IIRC.
tw: wife
Don’t get me started. Hi Laura!
I guess I did miss the point. I don’t think anyone in the administration (including Bush) declassified Plame’s status and authorized it to be leaked. Niether does Fitzgerald.
That the NIE was declassified and disseminated is totally another incident. You appeared to conflate the Fitz investigation of Plame with the release of the NIE. If that was not your intent, then I apologize for making that connection.
And if you think anything that John Dean (IMPEACH BUSH) has to say is in anyway credible, then you just may as well quote from the commenters at Kos.
kerry ran an abominable campaign.
i actually went to see him speak (no, the place did not smell like pechuli(sp)).
He had a couple of very strong ideas (not ideas you would have liked at all, but ideas that were way better than previous democrats – not that that is saying much.)
But the whole thing had the professional touch of the pep rally I organized in high school (fictional example, but you get the point.)
I read recently that kerry’s campaign manager lost 7 major elections before kerry selected him.
Not making excuses for kerry, merely agreeing that kerry had no visible message aside from not bush.
and it’s his own fault
Jeff insists yet again:
Well Jeff, I state my views on the propriety of people’s behavior quite without respect for persons. Even people I like or often agree with. If you require sycophancy, i.e., that someone can never find that you’ve exceeded bounds, then I can see where you’d regard me as a “back-stabbing character assassin.†But you are being foolish and quite thin-skinned.
Well, he wasn’t Bush, but he was much better than Bush. Not Bush, better Bush, not Bush, better Bush.
I think the average Democratic voter simply voted for Bush in the end, so confused was al Qerry’s campaign.
chains sez:
He also had Carville and Begala offering their services, and he declined. (Which may be the dumbest political calculation ever, but certainly made Mary Beth Cahill feel good!) He also stood on his service record, and then declined to discuss it when it was attacked. And then, well he is Flipper.
He ran a pathetic campaign, and Bush would have lost to a better candidate. The closest the Dems had to a better candidate was Zell Miller. Or Al Gore’s old running mate.
So true, Verc. That and the fact that about 50 million Americans believed he committed treason in the 70’s.
(And again in the 80’s, in Central America)
Good Christ. The last gasp of a truly vapid argument.
Who is mona going to go to for her next argument from authority???
I smell a return of Baghdad Bob.
Mona
There are over 200 active duty generals/admirals in the military today–not to mention the thousands of retired ones. You’ve chosen one–Newbold–as your expert witness. You could also add Zinni to that group. However, the folks in the Combatant Command (CENTCOM) don’t necessarily concur. You don’t see those comments coming from Tommy Franks, Abizaid, Casey, Mosely, Pace,or others who were directly involved in the planning and execution of the war. So you’ve got one or two who disagree (and they had no direct planning/oversight of the operation–though Newbold was the JCS/J3 during the beginning of the war–he had no role in the planning by CENTCOM). If every general had the same mind-set, I’d think we’d done a poor job of promoting people with diverse ideas and the ability to ‘think outside the box’. So–give me a much longer list of current military thinkers who were directly involved with the war, and who now think it was a strategic blunder, and I’ll reconsider.
But at the moment–one/two retired generals out of thousands does not justify incompetence on the part of the Pentagon.
But don’t you see that providing counter arguements by competing “experts” would derail the train off of the preconcieved incompetence tracks. When you start with the premise of incompetence (because the policy & strategy are contrary to your POV) you naturally seek out those that share that view, discarding the hundreds or thousands of other equally or more qualified experts, then you stoop to the level of using John Dean as supporting credibility for your preconcieved judgement of incompetence.
The reason you do this is because……you just know!
Jeff: “a group of people who believe that the the ends justify the means, and that if they have to ‘fudge’ the truth a bit for the greater good of destroying their hated Bush’s credibility, then so be it”
You’re kidding, right? You would be making a step in the right direction if you managed to only “fudge” the truth. Instead, you trample all over it, on a regular basis.
Here I proved that you invent your own facts, and then invent your own invisible documents to back up those facts, and then refuse to correct your lies even after they’ve been pointed out to you (which is a pretty strong indication that your falsehoods are intentional and not just a mistake).
Then to top it off, you climb on a moral high horse pointing fingers at others because they allegedly “fudge” the truth.
You’re hysterically funny. Are you trying to be? I don’t think so.
Defense Guy writes:
That is all likely true, and is Gen. Newbold’s opinion as well. (I tried to post the link to his whole essay in Time, but I got a “forbidden link” error message.) As much as a disaster as it has been and is, he thinks pulling out now would send a horrible message to the world that we cannot afford to send.
The question is, however, shouldn’t we be changing some regimes here ourselves, and give some other people a chance to clean up the mess? And yes, I think that means voting in some Democrats so that the GOP no longer controls every federal branch of govt.
rls writes:
First, even if “impeach Bush” were a crazy idea, that doesn’t vitiate any other arguments Mr. Dean makes. And he is correct about how odd it is that all discussion of the classified status of Valerie Plame is missing from Libby court papers—since that subject is the crux of the perjury charges Mr. Libby faces— and all the talk is about NIE declassifications.
Second, former Reagan-DoJ lawyer and Alito-supporting Con Law scholar Bruce Fein was the first person, to my knoweldge, to publicly suggest Bush should be subject to impeachment. He’s right, in my judgment.
Mona, if you are in fact an attorney, you’re clearly not a very good one: expert testimony is admissible under rules of evidence; it is by no means, in any jurisdiction anywhere, dispositive under rules of evidence.
It’s an editorial, not holy writ, for chrissakes.
Pete writes:
No, also demonstrating it is all the bullshit “mission accomplished” announcments and celebrations a few yrs back, in light of the mess over there that you can read about at sites like Iraq the Model. Or Bush shill John Hinderaker just recently announcing that, you know, we actually won’t know whether Iraq was a success for another 30 years or so. Puh-leeeze. That is not how this war was sold, and we were not told of 30-year metrics.
Newbold writes this (first part is intro):
I cannot post the link to Newbold’s article; I keep getting a message saying it is a “blacklisted link.” Whatever the hell that means.
shouldn’t we be changing some regimes here ourselves, and give some other people a chance to clean up the mess?
Like who, Mona? The French? The Russians?
‘course, Saddam was counting on us doing just that…
esquirerumson —
As I noted before when you brought this up, I simply got the days wrong. Not the dates, mind you, just the days. If you’ll recall, things were happening quite quickly. You can do a search for “Katrina” to see how much information I was handling at the time.
So no, I didn’t make up facts. The original post you allude to is here.
In it, I quote from a briefing given by Admiral Keating:
[My emphasis] I thought Tuesday was the 31st (it wasn’t: Wednesday was. Which is why I called Monday the 30th when it wasn’t; the 30th was Tuesday).
As for the 30th and the ship’s info, you aren’t looking hard enough.
Now, it may seem strange to you, but actually quoting the Admiral saying Tuesday and linking to the ships site (the date given is the 30th) would suggest that I simply got my days wrong when I said Monday—though my DATES were correct. Missions began on the 30th, which I mistakenly called Monday once. But I always called it the 30th.
And I made the correction in the comments.
So if this is your evidence that I routinely invent facts, etc., you have misfired badly. Which is really no surprise: anyone can read the tenor of your comments and see that all you are doing is looking for gotcha moments from the comfort of retrospect.
You add nothing to the conversation here. So please, beat it.
And that is what Libby’s attorneys want to know also. They have specifically asked for the “classified status” of Plame in filings. IIRC Fitz has gone out of his way to distance his investigation from the “covert” designation and has simply stated that her employment was “classified” as is thousands of CIA employees, actually the entire roster of CIA employees.
I watched Dean on CSpan when he was on that panel of Harper’s discussing the impeachment. He is batshit crazy, trying to sell some book. You care to list the charges that your impeachment would include?
Great, Newbold, got it.
What about the 2 million other servicemen and women?
Fuck off and Die, Mona.
Luv,
Vercingetorix, USMC
Brett writes:
Thank you, Brett, for backing me up on the point that expert testimony is, in fact, admissible evidence. It was claimed that such is not evidence, I said it is, and you reinforce that.
Of course, I never said or implied that it was dispositive. Just that it is evidence. So, we are actually in complete agreement.
Mona:
In order to “give some other people a chance to clean up the mess,” you’d vote in the party whose leadership appears completely focused on a rapid “redeployment” out of Iraq at any cost – if we’re lucky, first declaring victory? Maybe you ought to be sure that the “other people” have any realistic idea or intention to “clean up the mess” first? I mean, I could assign my four-year-old to clean up her nine-year-old brother’s room if he wasn’t meeting my standards of tidiness, but what’s the likelihood that she’d do a better job than he does?
I don’t mean to imply that Democrats are four-year-olds – just that, as with my four-year-old, I know enough about the leadership of the D party not to have high expectations of them where the common defense is concerned.
Pssssst… Mona?
We still gots them troops in Germany and Japan.
Guess we really got sold a bill of goods ‘bout WWII, eh?
Geez, did you get your bar card in a box of Cracker Jacks?
Brett unwittingly comes to my assist:
Thank you. I never said it was dispositive; somone else insisted it is not even evidence. Of course it is, as you just confirmed.
rls writes:
Why, what did he argue that was manifestly “batshit crazy”?
Darlene writes:
And if you don’t know the difference between that presence and the state of affairs in Iraq, well, good luck. Yeah, the GOP should run in ‘06 telling the American people that our troops in Iraq are identically situated to those in Germany and Japan. (eyes rolling) That’ll convice them the GOP is sane and competent, and will up those sagging approval ratings.
And furthermore. Mona, as an attorney, and I think you do try cases IIRC, you divide a case up into its various parts, yes? Discovery comes before filings, both of which are separate from the actual trial, and whatnot? (My own experience with The Law is limited to one “expert witness” stint of my own, some depositions, and making a fool of myself trying to do girl-talk with our outside counsel.) A military campaign is the same, and Phase I was in fac a cakewalk (though all three of my kids just participated in a school cakewalk multiple times and I still have no cake, so I wonder at the origin of the phrase), and was in fact, a mission accomplished. Securing Iraq has been a much longer Phase II, and we’re not all the way there, but no-go areas are greatly circumscribed where they exist at all now, casualty rates are dropping, and – Phase III – the training of Iraqi security and military forces continues apace, with Iraqi units taking lead roles increasingly. Note too that this training includes, for lack of a better word, a certain amount of indoctrination in national identity to counter the tribal identities so many of these men and women grew up with.
Not a cakewalk. Not remotely. But give me one better idea from anywhere electable about how to proceed from here – better, I mean, than “hang on, teeth and toenails, throw all our diplomatic weight behind the ongoing Iraqi effort to create unity from factionalism, stay armed and alert and present, keep on training up the Iraqis and testing them in controlled conditions,” or, in short, what we’re now doing.
[my own eye roll] Just read your GOP strategy idea. You have a talent for strawmen. What was Germany or Japan like *three years* after the end of WWII? That’s the relevant metric, innit?
Actus:
I’ll say.
Mona, how long do you think U.S. and/or British, French, Soviet troops were an occupying force within Germany and Japan?
Whoops, never mind – Jamie got there first, and phrased it far better.
Jamie McArdle writes:
Again, sell that to the American people, that the brewing civil war and ongoing tribal nightmares and murders, sectarian militias, and troops still coming home in body bags with no end in sight and no stable govt able to rule or monopolize force, tell the American people this was a “victory.” Tell them it is like Japan after it surrendered. Tell them we really won’t know of it was all worth it for 30 years.
Yup, there’s a plan.
Late to this part of the thread- but the statement:
Look, whatever Joe Wilson’s sins of mendacity, it is clear that he was ultimately right about there being no Nigerian uranium purchases planned, and no WMDs in Iraq.
is absolutely incorrect.
Wilson not only believed Iraq had WMD, he feared they would be used on our troops and/or they would proliferate.
Oct 2002:
http://www.mepc.org/forums_chcs/30.asp
“My feeling on this, and I share Tony’s—I think—conclusions on this, is that we really do need to do something against the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and I would concede to this administration the possibility that one of these days these weapons might move from the tight control of the Iraqi regime into the hands of organized terrorist groups who would, in fact, want to act against United States interests either abroad or in our homeland.”
Mona, you say:
And I repeat, Mona, does your chosen horse have a better one? Or are you just hoping the four-year-old will be a better cleaner-upper than the nine-year-old, against all common sense?
This is not WWII. There are, however, some points of similarity, one of which is that we’re trying to introduce representative government to take the place of a longtime dictatorship (Saddam’s miraculously successful “re-election” results notwithstanding). In that context, what was a devastated Germany, what was a shell-shocked and bereft Japan like, three years on?
The point we on the right side (in every way, of course) are making is that it’s awfully early in the game to be saying, “Lord, we can’t pull out of this death spiral! We’re doomed!” When my husband was taking flying lessons, his instructor gave him an article to read. The gist was, if you get into trouble in the air, for God’s sake, for your own sake, don’t give up: fly the plane. Fly the plane all the way to the ground. Some pilots, when the engine goes out and the flaps won’t respond, make their peace with God, give up at thousands of feet up, and die. But if they decided instead to continue to fly the plane, they might effect a change that could mean the difference between a survivable crash and a non-survivable one. If Iraq is the disaster you believe it is, which party has the better chance of allowing us, and the Iraqis, to survive the crash: the one that continues to fly the plane, or the one that pulls out the rosary?
Well for starters, Dean acquiesed in the idea, maybe even seconded it, that Bush could be impeached for, among other “sins”, of stealing two elections, in 2000 and 2004.
He had a “list” of crimes that were impeachable offenses.
By the way, you neglected to inform us of the crimes that you believe are impeachable offenses.
Mona
That big ::::whoosh:::: you heard was my point going right by that point you call your head.
During the first years of our occupation of German and Japan, the brave American press was calling it an abject failure. deja vu
Did you know when we caught German “insurgents” we just lined ‘em up against a wall and shot ‘em? Even the teenagers?
Even GW said that this was just the start of a LONG hard difficult process.
You just weren’t listening.
~~Darleen
I’ve been active online since 1994. As a libertarian who is squeamish on the abortion issue but very pro-gay, I have come into conflict with both left and right, and received abuse from both.
The right is worse. Jeff’s absolutely putrid, revolting and perverted diatribe about tristero is unlike anything I have encountered at any relatively popular left-wing blog. That blew me away.
And that I recall, no left-winger— not when I was pro-Bush and pro-war, and not wrt any other issue where I could be characterized as on the right— has ever told me to “fuck off and die.” But eliminationist rhetoric is becoming common on the right.
Who, on the left, is doing Coulters and “joking” about poisoning a justice on the Supreme Court? And Ramesh Ponnuru is about to unleash a book characterizing all Democrats as “the party of death,” nevermind that it was GOP Sen. John Cornyn implying that judges bring death and death threats on themselves. And nevermind that it was the deranged GOP religious right that had FL Schiavo Judge George Greer—a Republican— under armed guard due to many death threats.
The right has become pathological. Segments of it are literally unAmerican, and extremely boorish and hateful. For my country’s sake, and to destroy this hubristic and increasingly foul and mean-spirited right, I want the GOP to suffer badly in the next 2 elections, and will do what I can to bring that about.
What did you think about the naked shots of Jeff Gannon? Or anything on Firedog Lake?
You are entitled to your outrage, but it is certainly selective. Perhaps the selectivity feeds it.
Wanting the GOP to suffer in the next elections is absolutely legitimate. Wanting to impeach Bush rather than letting the electoral process take care of it is unsupportable.
The illegal spying without warrants, in violation of a federal criminal statute.
And Darlene, tell the American public that: Iraq is just like post-war Germany. The point is so stupid on so many levels, and so not what we were told to expect about Iraq—as opposed to the GWOT, which is what we were told would take a long time—I’m not even going to answer it substantively. To suggest it as a GOP campaign talking point is to show how vapid and what a loser that “argument” is. Yeah, quote Hinderaker and tell America that on second thought, we won’t know whether this was all worth it, not for 30 years.
That’s true. You merely implied it heavily:
Of course, as I pointed out, evidentiary rules absolutely do not dictate how much weight expert testimony should be given. Evidentiary rules govern admissibility, full stop; fact-finders weigh evidence.
A fair-minded reader might thus interpret your contribution to this thread as nothing more than a series of patently ridiculous appeals to authority that would get laughed out of a high school debate club, never mind a courtroom.
The illegal spying without warrants, in violation of a federal criminal statute.
Illegal as declared by whom, Moan?
Well, I don’t know where you got your bar card, but I get the impression actus is studying at your alma mater.
TW: Long as in as long as you keep spelling MY name incorrectly…
Mona
Sandpaper Sn*** Kate, on firedog ladies blog, was what I consider a high point and just kooky fun, don’t you?