James Taranto muses on the latest turn in the Plame affair. From WSJ’s Best of the Web:
If you’d told us earlier this week that the Valerie Plame kerfuffle was about to turn even sillier, we wouldn’t have believed you. But it has. This story appears on the front page of today’s New York Times:
President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony.
The testimony, cited in a court filing by the government late Wednesday, provides the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq at a moment that the White House was trying to defend itself against charges that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
Well, here is how the filing (PDF) by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald describes what happened (page 23):
Defendant [Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.
In other words, this was an authorized disclosure of information, the opposite of a leak. Yet the Times, the Washington Post and even the New York Sun (albeit only in a headline) call it a “leak.”
These reports have served as pornography for the Angry Left, which has constructed an elaborate fantasy world around the Plame kerfuffle. One reader shared with us his reverie about how this is actually a signal that Fitzgerald plans to indict Vice President Cheney.
In fact, it is nothing more than a battle over procedure. Libby is seeking to compel the prosecution to turn over certain information to the defense; Fitzgerald is resisting. Among the information Fitzgerald has so far refused to turn over, by the way, are the two facts supposedly at the center of the case: whether Valerie Plame was a covert agent (extensive evidence on the public record comes close to proving that she was not), and who “leaked” Plame’s identity to columnist Bob Novak.
More than anything else, the whole kerfuffle is a reflection on the way anti-Bush animus has fed into the adversarial culture of post-Watergate journalism in America. First the New York Times beat the drums for a special prosecutor to investigate who provided accurate information to reporters, albeit supposedly in violation of the law. Among the results: A Times reporter went to jail.
Now we witness the astonishing spectacle of newspapers trying to spin a scandal out of a legal disclosure of information to the press. GayPatriot aptly describes it as “the Orwellian worldview of Bush-haters where releasing facts means having something to hide.” Maybe we can’t expect better from political partisans, but journalists are supposed to stand for the neutral principle of the public’s right to know. If they pervert that principle in the pursuit of a partisan program, they will find it harder to assert it when it serves their purposes, whatever those purposes may be.
Because Joe Wilson had busied himself by spreading misinformation via leaks to Nick Kristof and Walter Pincus, and then finally under his own by-line at the New York Times twelve days prior to the release of the NIE information. The media had demanded answers to the charges leveled by Wilson and his supporters, and those answers were found in the NIE. The decision to declassify it and publish it came as a result of that demand. Once the decision is made to declassify information, it can be released in any number of ways. This was both leaked and openly presented in the same fortnight. […]
[Bush] declassified the NIE so that everyone could see what exactly the intelligence services had told him about Iraq’s WMD programs. Now everyone wants to proclaim George Bush a criminal for releasing the information that the entire media establishment demanded he reveal.
…and Austin Bay.
As for the timeliness of this SPANKING NEW PRESIDENTIAL SCANDAL story…well, like the NSA “domestic spy” story that the Times sat on for a year, this story, as Powerline’s John Hinderaker points out, is old news. In fact, John wrote on this particular attempt to gin up a scandal back in early February, after the release of an Associated Press story, “Libby: White House ‘Superiors’ OK’d Leaks”. Here’s Hinderaker:
From the headline, you might think that the story at least has some connection to the Valerie Plame “leak,” the second most over-hyped story of modern times, after Abu Ghraib. But no:
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.
The NIE is a report prepared by the head of the nation’s intelligence operations for high-level government officials, up to and including the president. Portions of NIEs are sometimes declassified and made public. It is unclear whether that happened in this instance.
“Unclear”? How is it “unclear”? The NIE has been declassified since the summer of 2003, and we have quoted from it many times since then. These proceedings from the House of Representatives show that the NIE had been declassified no later than July 21, 2003. So it’s not exactly a mystery whether “that happened in this instance.” There are only two alternatives here: either AP reporters are too lazy to spend 30 seconds on Google to educate themselves as to what happened during the ancient history of 2003, or they write articles that are deliberately misleading.
By the way, the 2002 NIE was the document that indicated that the consensus of all American intelligence agencies was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a substantial threat to American security. No mention of that in the AP story, either.
UPDATE: A reader points out a whopper in this AP story that I didn’t notice:
Wilson’s revelations cast doubt on President Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration’s key justifications for going to war in Iraq.
As probably all of our readers know, what Bush said in the 2003 State of the Union was: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The difference between seeking uranium and successfully buying uranium is critical to the fact that Joe Wilson lied about the significance of his trip to Niger.
The reporting on this topic continues to be worse than awful.
Sadly, this isn’t the only topic suffering from what looks to be an ideologically-driven “sloppiness” in the reportage.
In fact, were one cynical, one might suggest that this is less “sloppiness” than it is an attempt to 1) further the “culture of corruption” narrative being peddled by the DNC, and 2) keep the White House on the defensive by forcing them to justify what the press should know are clearly common and legal procedures.
And the worst part is, I suspect that the majority of those pushing this “scandal” the hardest are well aware of its essential emptiness. Which speaks to the unsavory level of partisanship some of the administration’s critics find themselves mired in.
“Sadly, this isn’t the only topic suffering from what looks to be an ideologically-driven “sloppiness†in the reportage.”
It’s no longer at all covert. The famous David Gregory meltdown over Dick Cheney’s hunting accident has made it perfectly plain that the Old Media regard the Administration’s #1 duty as dishing up dirt with which the Democrats and the Old Media can make political hay.
This country—hell, this species—badly needs a reliable source of hard facts on current events. It’s quite clear that our existing cadre of “journalists” can’t be trusted with the position.
And yet, the media moguls are utterly baffled at the plunging viewership and readership of the major news outlets.
It’s that darned Internet thing stealing their audience, that’s it!
I don’t get it.
Heh (to coin a phrase)
I’ve made just this point over at Rosen’s a couple of times. The consensus there is that it’s just too plebian to simply report the facts. To achieve status as a journalist one must take pains to explain to the ignorant ruck what the “facts” mean.
But I am more and more convinced that bias, while it exists, is not the explanation. It’s simpler: Woodward & Bernstein have the head of a President on their wall. Pinch has no such trophy to show, and he and the others are anxious to rectify the lack. The fact that this is enormously convenient to Democrats is a coincidence, a case of fellow travelers. It cannot be denied that the bias makes the two parties more comfortable with one another in their uneasy alliance, but (as can occasionally be seen) they are willing to go for one another’s throats when the occasion warrants—much more a case of Stalin and Hitler than Churchill and FDR.
Regards,
Ric
If you want to a spectacle of willful stupidity on the part of the press, check out yesterday’s White House press conference on C-SPAN streaming video. Virtually every journalist was in a tizzy to prove that just because Bush is concerned about the leak of the NSA program that he is somehow hypocritical in this case. None of the reporters could see the difference.
Judging by the SEC filings of the New York Times Company, attempts at spin are rampant throughout the Pinch culture. Stock performance shows that investors realize that the NYT is the number three paper in metro-New York despite the spin.
The questions to be answered are: 1) will the Times survive Pinch’s abuse of the family jewels and 2) will the rest of the MSM recognize that the Times is the number three paper before they fully castrate their own credibility.
O.K. The trends indicate the answers to both are NO with a high probablility of certainty. The elections of 2006 and 2008 will be the proof.
TW: Given the NYT’s corporate governance, Pinch can’t be shown the door until the Times completely implodes.
NYT has been a pack of hypocrites pre-dating Pinch. Though editorially opposed to concealed carry…managed to obtain permits for the security surrounding the Publisher (Arthur Sulzberger?) at the time.
Message: my ass is more important that your ass.
Excellent point! Sheeps off the cliff.
Which has always been dumb strategery…Dems can’t understand why voters consider Dems residing in the same “culture” of corruption, in addition to striking a pose you they can’t possibly maintain…which is Dems aren’t corrupt…
And shock! Voters are right!
Ah yes, just a “kerfuffle.” Like Abu Grahib (where we tortured people for all the world to see, critically wounding our moral standing) and Plame (where a CIA agent’s cover was blown for no purpose that anyone will admit to) are just “kerfuffles.”
When information comes out of the White House without anyone’s name attached—i.e. “sources say that Saddam has a giant dildo and he’s coming after your butt”—it’s a leak, regardless of whether the leak was authorized by the source’s superior. What distinguishes a leak is the lack of a publicly-named source who can be held accountable.
In this case, it took a subpeona to discover that the Prez actually authorized this disclosure; he didn’t share this strategy with the public. Which leads us to only one question: Why did he leak this? It’s not illegal. But it does raise questions.
And Ric, you got something spot-on correct:
And why is that head on their wall? Why? Because the president was hated? No. Becuase the media was biased against him? No. Because that President broke the law? YES! Bingo. Nixon was part of a crooked, criminal operation and he got his ass busted.
So don’t blame Woodward and Bernstein any more than you’d blame the cops who rousted a drug dealer. As you suggest, Ric, the press isn’t biased. They’re not motivated by ideology. The highest acheivement in news journalism is to expose a corrupt public official and remove him or her from power.
So when evidence of misdeeds and deception piles up around this President, don’t be surprised that the press goes after him. That’s what they do. That’s their job. This whole leak “kefuffle” would be just that if it happened in a vaccum. But it doesn’t. It happens in an environment where a growing body of evidence leads some to say this (Strobel and Hutchenson, Knight-Ridder, 4/7/06):
“Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials have reacted angrily at unauthorized leaks …. But secret information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated.”
Whadda kerfuffle. My fantasies grow ever-wilder.
or how about this: where a few individuals tortured prisoners and were prosecuted and convicted for their crimes.
where we tortured people for all the world to see, critically wounding our moral standing
Ah yes, those bloody Cartoon crusaders were appalled!
What we have seen develop before our rather astounded eyes is the evolution of the term “journalist†in the currently accepted meaning of the word: a paid liar.
Ken Bazinet of the NY Daily News is an example. He begins his lies with: “President Bush vowed to fire anyone caught blabbing classified information to the media, but he himself was the leaker-in-chief, a former top White House aide testified.â€Â
Unfortunately for this paid liar, the testimony of Lewis Libby does not say this.
Jeff’s explanation is a good one. Thank God and Al Gore for the Internet.
sure, sure, and a growing body of evidence would lead me to say that beetroot has a reading comprehension problem.
okay, let’s try this one again too….from this post that jeff linked.
oh, i don’t know, to defend his policy maybe? or is that too obvious?
Those facts are not at the center of libby’s case.
hmmm, yeah, i think he’s talking about Fitzgerald’s case.
They’re not at the center of that either. Libby’s not charged with anything having to do with Plame being covert, or with who leaked her name.
Care to elaborate, Maggie?
Because I believe that I accurately comprehend that a lot of what I read (here, there, and everywhere) is crap. Such as:
Typical of the bogus hairsplittery so common on the pro-Bush side of the ideological fence. First of all, as probably all of your readers should know, in the instance cited above, Bush chose NOT to share that American intel cast significant doubts on the yellowcake story. That’s why he sourced it to the Brits, and that’s why it can’t be said that he was completely honest with the American people.
So I just point that out to suggest that just because I dismiss something doesn’t mean I don’t comprehend it. Sometimes I comprehend it and dismiss it because it’s garbage.
But to restate: the important question isn’t whether the leak was legal; it was. The question is, why did he do it? And the evidence suggests that the administration was engaged in a pattern of selective leakage designed to to drum up support for the war.
Not illegal. But, potentially, less than completely honest.
Ah, the republican shrills and their love of amateur psychoanalysis… Fanatasy lands, delusions, projection… The only places I hear these self satisfied words are the backslapping rightie keyboard kommando hideouts. Problem is, the American people no longer trust Bush to do the right thing… Check the polls. What fantasy world do they live in?
i’m sorry, remind me about what Fitzgerald’s job was again?
Special counsel. Too bad its not an independent counsel.
I was under the impression that Ambassador Wilson’s testimony to congress was that Iraq had tried to buy Uranium from Niger. Are you calling him a liar?
So all those on the right who spent time looking at percieved ethical lapses from the Clinton administration were doing the right thing? Time and again, people seek a simple explination when it’s actually a combination of factors. The right truely believed Clinton to be corrupt and truely sought to expose a corrupt official and remove him from power. Do we then say that they were not motivated by ideology? That their choice of targets was the highest and most prominent official in the opposition party was no coincidence, and they tended to overlook exculpatory evidence and overstate negative evidence.
well, thank the lord your mind reading skills are so beyond the rest of ours.
yes, yes, he’s supposed to make your argument for you. this just shows again, that you don’t quite understand how intelligence works. there will always be doubts involved, should we always let them debilitate our decision making? perhaps you could cite some this?
oh and by the way, my point was more that people can be lead to say all kinds of things, but that doesn’t neccessarily make it “true” or a good source of support for your argument.
wait, we’re getting closer…. special counsel to investigate what exactly?
Actus, I’m a little surprised at your apparent nostalgia for independent counsels, but am I reading you right as implying that were Fitzgerald an independent counsel, he would have greater freedom of action?
IANAL, most emphatically, but judging from the terms of Fitzgerald’s appointment and the motion to dismiss filed by Libby’s defense team, it seems that Fitzgerald has a wider margin of unsupervised freedom of action than any independent counsel in recent years.
So don’t blame Woodward and Bernstein
I’ll gladly join the hairsplitting Beetroot.
Ric wasn’t blaming W & B for anything. They clearly caught Nixon doing something illegal and now the NYT is trying to manufacture a crime to hang on Bush. I thought that was crystal. Then again, I’ve been off the booze for 8 years now.
You however, throw the big ILLEGAL grenade and then say that Bush is NOT ILLEGAL.
You don’t need that drink ‘root.
You forgot to mention Halliburton. Tsk tsk man, you oh-so-loveable cartoon characters are slipping.
[url=”http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/ag_letter_feburary_06_2004.pdf”]
authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses[/url]
Libby’s prosecution is the second sort.
There’s a removal issue, I believe.
AFAIK, independent counsels can’t be removed. Special ones can.
oh good lord, i knew better, but you left out this bit:
emphasis added because you apparently missed it.
I had a sentence that included that, and more. A sentence that your quote says ‘clarifies’ your italicized bit. Lets look at it?
That’s what you think i’ve ‘missed.’ But there’s also:
Ta Da! That’s what libby’s being charged under. It doesn’t have much to do with who leaked the name or whether it was an undercover person or even whether it was against the law to do so!
Actus, please understand that I’m not trying here for any snark, and I fully admit that as someone with zero legal training I’m likely way off the mark:
but don’t you find the terms of Fitzgerald’s appointment a bit unusual? And as regards removal, I don’t understand how Fitzgerald could be, since in effect he has no effective oversight from the AG, or anyone else in the Executive Branch.
I haven’t looked at the terms of appointments of other special counsels. It doesn’t look surprising to me that they look into a matter and whatever crimes are uncovered by the investigation into that matter.
The investigative authority has been delegated. But he can still be removed by the AG.
actus, going waaaaaay back to your original comment:
to which i replied:
and you said:
so going back to what started this:
alpuccino is correct. The prototype for the whole business is the “Bush AWOL” madness. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, along with their sympathizers, moaned for months that they “couldn’t get any traction” on the story—and it seemingly never occurred to them that there simply wasn’t any traction to be had, that they were on glare ice with bald tires. (The vital point of the accusation falls completely on its face if one acknowledges how the Reserves work and the circumstances of the time; the secondary points have been systematically exposed as either bald-faced lies or hysterical overrepresentations.) Eventually they fabricated “evidence” from the whole cloth in support of their accusations, were caught out, and slid completely into the ditch.
This is the same sort of thing. I’m now on record over at Greenwald’s that they’ll eventually be caught doing the same thing—complete fabrication—in the NSA matter. The fabrications are already in place for “Plamegate”, and I don’t really think the American people are drawing the conclusions actus, the DNC, and the NYT would prefer they draw over the story. The only thing the whole business really proves is that the people who presume to run our lives are mostly self-satisfied but eternally hungry egotists with the morals of ferrets.
There’s much less interest in Plame et al than you’d think from the prominence of the story in the papers, largely because there’s nobody, but nobody, involved in it that a self-respecting NASCAR fan wouldn’t render into lubricating oil without hesitation.
As for polls, the left shouldn’t read more into them than is there. Lots of people are dissatisfied with George Bush; I am, myself, though I remain a supporter. The issues upon which they, and I, are dissatisfied are, in the main, not the ones actus and the DNC would support. I’m just about ready to join Bill Quick’s third-party effort.
Regards,
Ric
And those two facts are not at the center of the case against libby.
The left has been working the refs for so long they’ve forgotten how to play the game.
where is Libby mentioned in the quote?
Misinformation by Joe Wilson? That’s rich, biatch. He was right. Bush was wrong. And where are those WMD? Think people are going to believe you when he wants to nuke Iran?
By implication where they say ‘center of the case.’ ‘The case’ is against libby.
Ric, Why slur ferrets? They seem way more honest and direct than our political class.
Take for example, the now collapsed immigration “deal.” That one didn’t make 24 hours before it was obvious that it was a do nothing PR stunt designed to cover political behinds.
We need another line on the ballot – one that says “No, and you may never run for elected office again.” Call it term limited with prejudice.
God, if only Junior had the stones.
I elect nuking Mexico, just for that night I woke up naked in the goat corral in TJ.
Oh, and any and every point within thirty miles of the world’s-most-fucking-stupidest-commenter, Actus.
dubya might not do that. But the terrorists will. Fight us over here!
You should then.
The investigative authority has been delegated. But he can still be removed by the AG.
How would the AG know when it appropriate to remove him, since he is unsupervised?
Why did Joe Wilson assure us Saddam would use his WMD on US troops and caution us from going to war because of this?
Was he lying?
Aren’t these guys employed at the will of the executive?
Or the authority could just be removed.
Aren’t these guys employed at the will of the executive?
An appointment? When was the confirmation hearing?
Or the authority could just be removed.
What supervisor would make that determination?
Do they need confirmations for inferior officers? But I was wrong, those don’t serve at the behest of the president, but of department heads. Per congress.
Why does there need to be oversight for this? If the guy hits the bottle and stops working, you think they can get rid of him?
And does the determination need to get made?
back on topic…
beetroot, actus, et al, when a docment is declassified it becomes opensource. anyone can read it.
by definition it cannot be “leaked”.
Those headlines are lies, plain and simple. or perhaps they reflect a profound ignorance about how classified information is handled in America.
Do they need confirmations for inferior officers?
Inferior Officers have to be supervised, of which Fitz is not.
Why does there need to be oversight for this?
Because inferior officers are not confirmed therefore require supervision.
Funny, Comey is saying now his “intention” was that Fitz be supervised
And does the determination need to get made?
DOJ’s usual MO
No, journalists think people are stupid and unable to discern the information themselves and therefore people believe every word they write.
MarkD,
Ferrets are, in my experience, rather nice animals. Their habits are not appropriate for the simian-descended, though.
I would support your proposed addendum to the ballot, but there ought to be two more items: yours, and one that says “shoot the incumbent and leave the office vacant ‘til next time.” Not practical for President, alas, but most States could do without a Congresscritter or two for a couple of years without much problem.
Regards,
Ric
actus: what is Libby accused of lying about?
Amusing to see that “lamespinbyyou” and “beetroot” still cling to falsehoods long debunked. In order to maintain the false religious belief of a “lying” Bush, they visit blogs and lie about the most basic of facts.
We know how to destroy people.
That’s what we do.
to add to B Moe’s question: what investigation is Libby accused of obstructing- and how did he obstruct it?
– This, and all the other “Gate-scams” bring run by the LSM (I don’t really think they can be called maonstream any longer, but they are proven liars and Liberals) doesn’t seem to be working. That Bush’s polls are down would be great for the asshats except for one nettlesome problem; the Dems are down even more. In fact the Congress as a body, is down deeper than Buah.
– Add to that the fact that Bush’s numbers reflect more the collective angst over the stallmate in Iraq, and the opportunism of Syria/Iran as the root cause for the poll depression, and nothing that the Dems have done, you can expect even greater anger and ratcheting up of the false, smear tactics rhetoric.
– The “get Bush” campaign is a total failure, but the Dems keep on trucking. With no alternatives or party plan, they really have no choice but dirty politics. It won’t work, but its all they have. Personally I enjoy seeing them self-destruct every time one of their “hate programs” falls on their heads.
Sorry, BBH, but from out here in the hinterlands I can say that’s BS.
The war in Iraq has dropped off the radar of all but the leftist partisans. Even those have simply become more entrenched, their opinions solidifying like the stuff left at the bottom of the carafe when you leave the coffeemaker on too long. The typical broken-toothed redneck, like myself (I should post a photo of the dead cars in my front yard) has direct contact with one or more persons who have been to Iraq, and as a result essentially ignores “war news” in the papers.
Bush’s numbers are a combination of the well-established effect of the fifth and sixth years, essentially boredom, and the immigration business. Note that people on both sides of the issue there are pretty equally dissatisfied, a classic case of standing in the middle of the road, vulnerable in both directions. Whether he came down pro or anti (and whatever your definitions of “pro” and “anti” might be) simply making a choice would instantly improve his approval ratings.
Strange as it may seem, I’m beginning to see the leftoids as at least somewhat sincere—insane, but sincere—about the Plame business. It certainly isn’t getting them any “traction” out here in the sticks, where people’s eyes glazed over at the ramifications of what, with which, and to whom about the middle of last summer, and it sure as Hell isn’t selling any papers. They must really be hearing the voices or they’d have dropped it long ago.
Regards,
Ric
So you don’t think he’s an inferior officer, which means this whole thing is unconstitional to you?
I don’t see where they require supervision. Just removal authority.
I have no idea. What he knew? when he knew it? who he told it to?
– Not sure what part you feel is BS Ric, since I agree with all your points, in addition to the on-going Iraqui “standoff”. I don’t think the Liberal “gates” idiocies have had much if any effect, and I do think people in general are weary of the whole war thing. War fatigue. Not realistic but typical in the long hual.
– The one and ONLY thing I agree with the idiotarians about in regards to Iraq, and certainly not for all the lame ass reasons they site, is its a fools game at this point to get sucked into their intercene feuding. Its been going on for mellenia, and isn’t going to stop until all or most of one side or the other is dead. Thats an overlay being taken advantage of by all sides including the Jihadists, but nothing we should be a part of. You simply cannot win another countries civil/religious disputes for them. Its not possible. They could be down to 12 people and a goat on each side and they’d still be trying to tear each others hearts out.
– We should tell them they have a clean slate, get their asses going on their gov. formation, and say adios. Its not about cutting and running or slacking off on the overall WOT. Its about dealing with Iran/Syria, and getting ourselves together and ready militarilty, because you just know its coming down to that. Iraqs become a deadly distraction, and Iran will try to take advantage of that. In fact they already are by supporting the insurgency, looking to keep us tied up while they plow ahead with their nuclear program. We souldn’t fall for that.
Do you not see the problem, here, counselor?
– As far as Plamegate, there is no “there” there. The left has gotten some of what they wanted by having it dragged out incesantly giving the NYTrash the opportunity to continue day after day with the “Leak” partisan BS non-news Ops-eds on the front page. When it turns out Fitz has no real proof of anything, other than Wilson is a pompus small peanuts partisan jackass that bragged up his wifes CIA affiliation, along with some press rats, then the LSM can write about the sinister “cover-up” that must be lurking behind the failure to find any “governmental/White house official” wrong doing. Its a game. Dirty politics in the absense of a party plan like I said.
Actus – What’s your take on the motion to dismiss by Libby’s defense team?
Oh, bullshit. The Brits still stand behind that intel, which apparently means that they find Joey Plame and his
MommySecret Agent Wifeâ„¢ to be wrong/lying.tw: sense, several varieties of which are clearly lacking in our dear actuse…
Once again old George Snuffleupagus provides showtime for Mr. Wilson to bask in the limelight without anyone present to present a dissenting opinion.
Georgie also omitted asking Wilson about his homophobic post in Kos.
THAT would have been fun to watch.
Broken clock, finally right.
Poor Joe Plame; he was already picking out tasteful drapes and color schemes for his new Sec. of State office.
This Mom & Pop Black-Op against the president was nothing more than a failed third-rate coup-attempt by a cabal of rogue intelligence officers. The Left used to be against that sort of thing. But that was before the Bush Dementia robbed them of their minds.
By this standard, JFK criminally “leaked” photos of Soviet missle bases in Cuba. Ditto Clinton, who released details in response to the “aspirin factory” raid. Andrew McCarthy quotes the Post:
“While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is “sure” that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.
Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.
Given the evidence presented to the White House before the airstrike, Clarke said, the president “would have been derelict in his duties if he didn’t blow up the facility.””
Only a Lefty could think that a president has no right to declassify material helpful to the war effort–while the Times has every right to declassify material helpful to the enemy.
Not really. He’s accused of lying to an investigator, and of obstructing justice. The actual crime committed and being investigated doesn’t really matter, except insofar as his lies may have been the truth.
Its a hail mary. Won’t work. Special counsels have been around for awhile. Even the more powerful independent counsels have been found to be constitutional, although they don’t exist anymore.
Unfuckingbelievable.
Isn’t it? The moral of the story is either shut up or tell the truth to the cops.
actus;
You’re right about this one point; Libby has no right to perjury, even though there is no underlying crime. I doubt he perjured himself, however. But the trial should not be conducted before a jury of black Democrats in D.C., who have historically proven themselves incapable of rendering justice impartially.
DARKNESS, EVERYONE, DARKNESS! HEY EVERYBODY, DARKNESS IS SPREADING!
Nice try, actup, but I also disavow “LIGHTNESS!” juries. If John Hinckley had shot Jesse Jackson instead of Ronald Reagan, he’d not be out on weekends unsupervised. To cite but one example.
Christ on a friggin pogo stick, actus: If you have no idea what he is lying about, how can you say what is or is not relevant to the case?
Because while I don’t know exactly what he lied about, I don’t think its got to do with those two material elements of the underlying case. I haven’t heard of any question along the lines that he was indeed telling the truth.
– The fact that all the trolls on the left are totally uninterested in when, where, and what Wilson lied about that was the basis for this entire feckless witch hunt by the asshats says it all. Just another “Missing weapons stockpile” bullshit rumor campaign. If they did’nt have the left-wing polito-rags to print their lies they’d be screwed.
He’s not accused of lying, he’s charged with perjury. Which means he’s charged with lying about a material matter. So what is the material matter?
I don’t know. Whats your guess?