It’s rather frightening, I think, that even after an extended trial in which an abundance of evidence was revealed, so many people are still in disagreement over the facts undergirding the Scooter Libby trial—with administration critics continuing to cite as factual accusations long–since disproven, as if by the sheer force of their insistence and the sheer duration of their vigil, they can somehow will fauty supposition into objective reality.
First, here’s my friend and noted defense attorney Jeralyn Merrit of TalkLeft—who covered the trial as a reporter—writing in today’s Rocky Mountain News:
The cable news airwaves were filled Tuesday with juror No. 9, Denis Collins, discussing how jurors in the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter†Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, deliberated and arrived at their verdict of guilty on four of the five counts against him. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements to FBI officials and perjury before the grand jury. He was acquitted of one false statement count.
[…]
As a political liberal, I wanted prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to win. I wanted to see Libby, Dick Cheney and other administration officials held publicly accountable for leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters, ruining her career and smearing her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the guts to go public with his charge that the administration had misled the country on the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.
As a criminal defense attorney, I wanted Libby’s lawyers to win. This was a case dependent on memory and every witness’s memory was flawed as to some aspects of events. I was hoping the inconsistencies in their testimony would leave jurors with a reasonable doubt. The jury deliberated 10 days. They were told they could not consider whether Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent or whether her employment status was classified.
The task before them was a narrow one. Did Libby lie to investigators and the grand jury about where he first learned of Valerie Wilson’s CIA employment and whom he disclosed it to, and did he intend to impede the criminal investigation? Juror No. 9 explained they painstakingly dissected every bit of testimony and exhibit, filling up 34 large pages of post-it notes. They didn’t take a straw vote until after their first week of deliberations. There were no holdout jurors. They would have liked to have heard from Cheney, but it didn’t bother them that Libby didn’t testify, since they heard eight hours of his grand jury testimony. They felt sympathy for him, but they couldn’t ignore the evidence in front of them. He lied, he impeded the investigation and he was guilty.
Juror No. 9 said the jury wondered why Libby but not the leaker  Richard Armitage  or Karl Rove, among others, had been brought before them. He believed that Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, may have been correct in saying Libby was a fall guy for the administration. It just didn’t excuse Libby’s lies.
I agree with the jury’s verdict, but I feel cheated.
Having followed the Plame investigation closely since 2003, I believe there was an orchestrated attempt by the White House  and Cheney in particular  to discredit Joseph Wilson by alleging his trip to Africa in 2002 to check on intelligence claims that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger for use in weapons of mass destruction was the result of nepotism. Cheney’s handwritten notes, introduced at trial, plainly asked whether Wilson had been sent on a junket by his wife.
This trial should have been about whether the vice president of the United States  in an effort to justify going to war by hiding the truth from the American public that there was no intelligence establishing that Iraq was in the process of acquiring materials for weapons of mass destruction  used Libby and other officials to manipulate the media and cause them to disclose the identity of a classified CIA agent.
Instead, because Libby clammed up, as is his right, and took a bullet for the team, even claiming to the grand jury he forgot the details of his conversations with Cheney, prosecutors weren’t able to get to the truth and decide if they had a case against Cheney. As Fitzgerald said when he announced Libby’s indictment, Libby had thrown sand in the face of the umpires.
In the end, while Libby’s lawyers were unsuccessful in defending their fall guy, they did a heck of a job for the administration.
[my emphases]
Note all the assumptions of fact here, from Jeralyn’s implicit assertion that some underlying crime was committed in the leaking of Plame’s identity, to the idea that Joseph Wilson was being “smeared” for his bravery (an implied motive) rather than for ginning up a false controversy with several well-documented lies—lies that have resulted in a book deal and the notoriety he so clearly craved, even if he purchased such trifles at the expense his country’s honor.
Now, compare the “facts” that Jeralyn took from the investigation, prosecution, and trial of Scooter Libby with those taken away from the same set of disclosures by Jay Ambrose, a Colorado columnist and former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard:
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby stands convicted of telling lies to the FBI and a grand jury, whereas happy-faced, opportunistic Democratic leaders and the man who started this whole, awful charade, Joseph Wilson, are merely telling lies to the public.
Unlike the former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, of course, they won’t be found guilty of a felony or face the possibility of years in prison, but they should pay a penalty for their misstatements, something on the order of a total loss of credibility and widespread disgust.
It won’t happen, I am afraid, because it’s been a complicated, slowly evolving case that the left has assiduously misconstrued. When Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid says it’s “about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics,” echoing statements by other Democrats, many citizens will likely think he’s merely saying the obvious.
In fact, the statement illustrates that Reid either doesn’t have an honest bone in his body or is so utterly incompetent that he failed to grasp two things: what went on in court and a 2004 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee. It showed conclusively that it wasn’t the Bush administration doing the manipulating in this case. It was Wilson.
Wilson, a former ambassador, had been sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to check on whether Iraq was trying to buy enriched uranium from that African country in a quest to build nuclear weaponry. He later wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times saying his research had shown it highly unlikely such a thing was happening, and that even though the administration had been informed of this in a CIA report, President Bush still said in a speech that Iraq had sought the material from Africa. Media outlets all over the country picked up on the story, making it look as if there were clear-cut evidence the administration had tricked us into unfounded fears.
Let’s cut to the truth, as revealed in news accounts of the intelligence-committee probe. Wilson’s report to the CIA included information that Iraq had made inquiries about doing business with Niger. CIA experts evaluating his words felt he actually had strengthened the argument that Iraq was trying to do a uranium deal. There was never a CIA report to the White House casting doubt on that proposition. The Bush speech, as Wilson himself said, referred to a British intelligence report. The British have never recanted what it said.
Wilson did not just write an op-ed piece or appear on TV shows. He also wrote a book that blasted the administration for leaks revealing that his wife worked for the CIA and saying she arranged for the trip. As definitely demonstrated by a memo she wrote, she clearly was the one proposing that he be sent on this eight-day fact-finding mission. Wilson was knowingly mistaken again, just as he has been on still more issues than there’s room to delve into here.
He was right that the administration leaked the story that his wife worked at the CIA, however. There was nothing illegal about this. It is now widely agreed, for instance, that she was not a covert agent under the meaning of the law, and Bush had declassified the information about her, anyway. Some say the administration effort to expose the truth was overreach, but an administration needs the country behind it in war, and Wilson was fabricating material that could erode that support and getting national applause for his efforts. It’s OK to put facts on the table.
So then we get to Libby’s conviction. Did it rest on the thesis that the content of his information was incorrect or that he was engaged in illegal leaks? No. As others besides me have stressed in response to Reid and others, the conviction was based on the jury’s determination that he lied about the sources of that information.
Whether you believe as I do that an overzealous, vastly empowered, pit-bull prosecutor should have abandoned this case long before it got to the stage of ruining a man’s life, it is impossible for any halfway-informed person honestly to believe the conviction had anything to do with the Bush administration manipulating intelligence.
[my emphasis]
Two commentators, two different sets of “facts.”
Unfortunately for those interested in the truth, only one set of facts is based in reality. The other, sadly, is steeped in disappointment and the boundless ability of humans to self-justify, particularly when they have so heavily invested themselves in a particular point of view.
We saw this the other day with Andrew Sullivan’s predictable histrionics. And today, we see Ms Merritt exhibiting symptoms from the same class of BDS—namely, that she’s willing to cling to her narrative even if the evidence points elsewhere, because to let go of it would be to admit that she’s spent the last several years cozying up to the wrong set of suppositions.
Joseph Wilson. Richard Armitage. Tim Russert. David Gregory. The Senate Intelligence Committee Report. Plame’s actual CIA status. These are where Jeralyn should be directing her energies.
But instead, she remains constrained by the overarching narrative she has embraced, and whose boundaries are preventing her from broadening her perspective. Which is a shame—not only because she is a defense attorney and a friend—but because she is an evolutionary leap beyond people like Jane Hamsher, who relies on her readers’ willingness to lavish praise on the naked emperor’s glorious garb, and who is so truth averse that I wouldn’t be surprised if her perspiration contained some sort of strange pheromone that treats facts like piranha treat stray cattle venturing into the shallows of the Amazon.
As always, Tom Maguire has more. And, as always, it has the advantage of being sourced.
****
Ancillary material (thanks to Jeffersonian); more here.
****
For a less incredulous take, see Patterico.
Been thinking about writing about this cognitive dissonance for a couple days now. The problem I’m running into is my inability to sufficiently wrap my head around the fact that there are people out there who live in an alternate reality. For real.
It just blows my mind beyond the point of words. When I begin to form some kind of thesis regarding this behavior I always end up returning to the belief that they have to be jerking us around. They can’t possibly believe what they say.
Can they? I mean seriously, is this for real?
Yeah, but in the sense that authentic cubic zirconia is for real.
Or, you know, the way Baudrillard was real.
Jeralyn has dealt in enough detail with the real facts of the controversy that she actually knows that what she writes in the editorial is just a series of misrepresentations. She should be embarrassed.
Never underestimate the power of self-delusion.
I think people are consistently ignoring the elephant in the living room concerning this verdict.
A juror has gone public with an account of the deliberations that specifically says that the deliberations included speculative and, implicit in his account, damning discussions of matters the judge made clear were not to be considered.
I’m no lawyer, but it is my understanding that while jury deliberations are sacrosanct and a juror cannot be subpoenaed and forced to recount his rationale in any challenge for mistrial or appeal, that’s not true of public statements made by a juror after they have been excused. (Open to correction on that, but bear with me). In this instance, the juror in question has already made his position and his account of deliberations public knowledge.
This also happened in the infamous charade of the OJ Simpson trial where jurors were very specific afterwards in saying that considerations of racial issues did indeed skew the verdict. However, in that case, reversing the decision would have meant someone was guilty. In this case, it means someone is not guilty and an entirely different kettle of fish.
A trial judge can toss out a jury decision if in his opinion it is not based or the facts presented at trial and that goes for the appeals courts also. So it seems to me that Libby’s lawyers will have a slam dunk in pushing for a mistrial or on appeal. They have only to call the juror in question and ask him whether he disclosed an accounting of jury deliberations that included discussions of information when specifically told they could not include that information by the judge. The juror doesn’t have to even recount whether they actually did so or whether that accounting is true or not. His credibility as an impartial juror was shot as soon as he mentioned it publicly. As a matter of fact, I would avoid asking him that or allowing him to say whether it was true one way or the other. Just ask him whether or not it is what he after the fact.
If based on what the juror said in his account, another court decides that the jury indeed discussed Libby being a fall guy for the administration, then they stepped outside the bounds of the trial judge’s instructions and used information not examined at trial nor relevant to the charge as a qualifier in their decision.
May be way off here – no lawyer as I said – but I really do think that when people stop looking at the political end of this trial and really look at what has been learned about the deliberations, the elephant in the living room will become very, very smelly.
I’ll admit to having lost some interest in the Libby case out of sheer confusion about who said what to whom and when and why it mattered, but when I hear Leftoids braying about this verdict and what it means, (see: Kos, Merritt, etc.), I wondered whether I had missed or misunderstood some salient point here. I feel almost as if they’re talking about an entirely different trial.
I see now that I have not and that the southpaws are furiously attempting to inflate Libby’s lies (real or imagined) into an indictment of the Administration in general. Expect the media to act as a megahone for their lies.
I had an all-day email exchange on this very issue with my brother. He is a pretty standard Democrat, but was pro-war up until recently (note to self: find out who he’s dating).
During our conversation, in which he stated that the trial of Libby was not about the Joe Wilson story, but about Libby’s lying to a Grand Jury I mentioned that the trial should never had happened since, aside from Libby’s presumed lying there was no underlying crime.
The answer I got was nothing short of spectacular BDS, “like it or not”, he wrote, “she was covert. Cheney did order the leak, and Bush is responsible for a National security nightmare to cover his ass over a lie to the American people.”
So after emailing him a PDF of the Robb commision report, the NIE and really anything I could find on Libby’s trial, including the good parts about Armitage, I am a little worn out on the subject.
But I still have one basic question that no one has answered yet:
How many lies must be told before we all can believe Bush is a liar?
There’s no persuading the willfully obtuse.
Eben,
In a word, yes, it is thought to be real. When you have two sides that swear up and down that They’re Right you have, in a word, problems.
There’s a lot of things that this implies about psychology, cognitive bias, the value of bipartisanship, pattern matching, evolution, the development of the scientific method, and culture. Which, I am going to skip here.
But, the important thing to take away from this is that no matter how right you think you are, you may not, in fact, be right. This is where Manichean absolutism becomes so damned dangerous. I think the best advice to those who prognosticate about politics and policy should keep in mind the following advice:
BRD
live in an alternate reality
But that reality is reality based, isn’t it? It isn’t? Gosh, but I was trusting those folks to tell the truth!
Actually, I’ve known since I was a but a wee lad, that lies are more likely to be taken for the truth if you believe them.
Jeralyn thunders:
To which I respond: So what?
Where is it written that The White House cannot defend itself against charges such as Wilson’s? Does Wilson REALLY believe that the VP’s office sent him? Or was he lying through his teeth?
Woah,
There’s no evidence that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Where did that come from?
At best, you have some unnamed “businessmen” who may or may not have been Iraqis discussing improving economic ties between Niger and Iraq.
And that’s because Niger had so much of what that Iraq might want to buy, alphie?
I’d take it easy on Jeralynn Merrit; she’s one of a handful of people who are willing to disagree with Jeff, yet refrain from calling him something like “Pasty”. I think if we all refrain the invective, she just might be inclined to come over and chat, and then we can all get to the bottom of why she says what she says.
Then again, maybe not; I’m pretty sure what I’d do in a similar situation.
Unnamed, alphie? Either you’re a complete idiot, or…I can’t think of another explanation.
Black folks! According to Howard Dean, you can’t run a hotel without them. And I hear they make some damned fine mint tea.
tw: party31
Right this way, Mr. Hussein.
Uh, Alphie, these are not “unnamed businessmen.” Christopher Hitchens has named them in great detail, and let’s say that they’re not the kind of guys you’d send to buy onions and cowpeas.
Lost My Cookies asked:
Until it’s overwritten all contradicting evidence?
Aaah,
I see quite a few biased assumptions here, I thought we were discussing facts.
Silly me.
There. Fixed that for ya, alpo.
alphie
The Iraqi ambassador was in Niger… Niger has TWO principle exports … yellowcake and onions..
Do you think Saddam was just craving a huge plate of crispy onion rings??
Yep. Pretty much.
But that’s what get’s me. Seems to me that Wilson’s deep seated self aggrandizement and the BDS echo chamber in which he and his super duper spy wife dwell led him to think he could lie like this and expect that the VP’s office couldn’t be bothered to check his claims. My question is why wouldn’t they–at the very least–inquire as to who this schmuck was and how it came to be that he went to Neeszaire supposedly at their behest?
And don’t forget chickpeas! Maybe Saddam was jonesin’ for some hummus.
Educate yourself, Alphie:
LINK
Iraq has only one asset, $10 trillion worth of oil in the ground.
By the logic being displayed here, any official (or Army) that visits Iraq is “only there for the oil.”
Yet I’ve seen a few people claim that we didn’t invade and occupy Iraq for its oil.
Are those people mistaken?
Ooo… alphie’s firing off the chaff’n’flares already…
Oil is not something that can be processed into nuclear weapon cores. That’s A.
B. is we’re always being accused of STEALING the oil. People seem to forget that “trade” <> “theft”. We could have TRADED for Iraq’s oil with Saddam in place a hell of a lot easier by taking the French appeasement route.
Not so. The dates and the chicken briyani are pretty goood, too.
So America invaded and occupied Iraq for its dates and Iraq went to Niger for onions.
Sounds good to me.
and:
Jackass. How many times does it have to be said that Wilson’s account of his Niger trip was discounted from the first and that the intelligence reports from the Brits, reports they stand by today, were not. It was LATER determined that Wilson’s account taken alone was a shoddy and amateurish, but what little meat there was supported the British reports, not refuted them.
If you ever bother to read up on it, you’ll find the British intelligence reports were part of an ongoing initiative assigned to trained assets in place. There isn’t a lot of operational detail – one wouldn’t expect there to be in a professional intelligence assessment (in contrast to Wilson), but enough came out to know it was a professional analysis done by longterm professionals. Not based on a short boondoggle trip by a diplomat. Which report would you operate on, assuming you could remove the BDS filter and view their relative merits from a national security point of view?
Read up on logic and logical fallacies too.
Don’t forget the Arak, they make the best in the world.
Had some of it! I still have trouble seeing out of my left eye.
JPT,
I’ll agree that the latest James Bond flick was decent, though nowhere near as good as earlier efforts like Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
But, judging by the size of the British military these days, I’d bet “British Intelligence” consists of a few old men watching and summarizing the BBC News while downing pints of warm, tasteless beer.
Not really an organization that could provide information we should basing any American foreign policy decisions on.
Thank you, Jeff. I am so sick of the lies about this case. And when I see otherwise sensible people who have not spent one minute studying the trial opine that if Libby lied, no matter how bad the prosecutioon, the investigation or the rulings, we should accept it. He didn’t. Anyone of the prosecution’s witnesses–could have been in his spot of inaccurately recalling meaningless conversations from months ago. Fleischer for example–the immunized star witness, said he told Dickerson and Gregory. Dickerson wrote he didn’t, but Fitz never even questioned him. Gregory has said nothing, and was never even questioned. ,Fleischer denied telling Pincus (something Fitz had Libby in the grand jury for hours, trying to force him to admit having done. At the trial, Pincus said FLEISCHER is the one who told him.
alphie turned up in this prior thread on Wilson, and was directed to both Section II of the unanimous report by the Sen. Intell Cmte on the Niger intell, and the WaPo editorial noting that Wilson’s claims were false. The CIA actually took Wilson’s report as generally supportive of the rumor about Niger.
alphie has strayed far over the line between ignorant and dishonest. He should just get the “ignore” on this from now on, save to note that he refuses to acknowledge what reich-wingers Russ Feingold, Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller found on this matter.
Karl,
Maybe my reading skills aren’t up to par.
Could you please extract and post here the parts of the documents you linked to that prove Iraqi officials went to Niger and discussed purchasing some dirt with urtanium in it?
I’ve read through all of them and could find no such thing.
Stupid, illiterate, and lazy just seem to go together, yet dishonesty does require some effort, so go figure.
Lest we forget:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/07/the_african_connection_rep_jef.html {middle story, scroll}
Which isn’t to say that Wilson was, given his business dealings, a good choice to go. But I’m a bit damn tired of hearing Lefties talk about Patriot Joe without their recognition that Joe was an international consultant/business man doing business in Africa at the time he travelled … to Africa.
On a trip for which his wife, Valerie, recommended him to her CIA superiors.
Plus, and this point is lost on the Left as well, read the NYT Editorial and decide whether one human being – any human being, let alone Joe Wilson – could reasonably make the conclusions he made given the amount of time spent. It’d be like Jimmy Carter spending a week drinking tea with Hugo Chavez and then declaring the Venezuelan elections were free and fair. Sure, he could say it, but only a fool would believe it.
Lastly, I think what intelligence value there was in sending Wilson was the amount of traffic picked up by intelligence agencies (NSA, CIA) coming from Niger talking about how they duped this Joe Wilson guy into believing nothing happened between Niger and Iraq.
But, thankfully, you won’t hear about that.
–
This is so absurd I almost believe it’s satirical. Almost. I actually think it’s a quintessential example of the depths of delusion that BDS drives the gullible to plumb. It is such a stunningly ignorant statement I don’t know where to start so won’t bother with it or you in the future.
ACTION CHIMP ALERTâ„¢!!!
The Action Chimpâ„¢ (dba alphie, Neville, nee monkeyboy) was last seen peeking his head ober the Mile High Dirt Bermâ„¢ and slinging rhetorical feces.
Just when all thought that the screeching action figure was finished besoiling the thread, a particularly large and odiferous turd was launched over the berm (Weapon of Mass Defecation) and landed revealing this:
Who got the information from French Intelligence.
All are warned to stay one hundred yards away from the berm until the shitstorm subsides.
Did anyone see that Rep. Waxman (D-CA) is going to have Plame (testify?) before his Committee next week and that he invited Patrick Fitzgerald as well? Either Rush or Sean Hannity pointed out that some Republican on that Committee should grill Ms. Plame about who else besides Joe Wilson on the 2nd date did she tell she was CIA!
They’re just making hay while the sun shines. The media did little to provide a framework for understanding this case, and Patrick Fitzgerald didn’t do much to clarify things. He has done everything possible to suppress relevant facts in this case, to encourage as much confused speculation as possible. Throwing sand in the face of the umpires? Fitzgerald threw sand in the face of the whole damn country.
alphie sure does like to put his feet on the table and let his ass do the talking.
BECAUSE OF THE NARRATIVE!!!1!11!one
Corn & Isikoff’s contention is that Zahawie actually wanted to defect; so he was unlikely
to have done something as incriminating as try
to buy Uranium. It’s true that Wilson’s chat
was not unlike the Fulford and Kilpatrick
reports; but Clark’s NATO deputy and the local
State apparatchik don’t have much in the way
of credibility; otherwise why did they send
Joltin’ Joe, not his wife. By the way where
did the 500 tons of yellowcake at the Al Tuweitha
reactor at the time of the arrival of the Allied
forces come from.
You’re stationed in Italy. You want to defect.
So you go to Niger?
Besides, Bush never said Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake from Niger.
Sounds like the old Soviet Union.
Bush said in his now infamous 16 words that “British intelligence” says that Iraq sought yellow cake from “Africa” not Niger.
The reason that he stated Africa, and not Niger was because the Butler report (which is what the reference to British intel is referring) mentions Niger, but also the Congo as a place that Iraq sought yellow cake from.
So what exactly did Joe Wilson refute? Was he privy to the Butler report, did he speak to the sources that the Butler reports based its intel on, or did he even visit the Congo? How then did he refute anythign?
Not even going into all the fabrications that we know Wilson was involved in, and the spin he and his side engaged in.
On the most basic level, how is his op ed the least bit accurate considering he doesn’t address british intelligence and their fidings at all.
And how is Bush lying. If British intelligence didn’t say that Iraq had tried to procure yellow cake (or whatever the exact wording was) then you could say that Bush lied. But the fact is the Butler report states exactly that. Therefore, Bush is not in fact lying about anything.
He’s attributing something to a source, if the source said what he attributed to them then there’s no lie, even if the source is wrong.
i.e. If I say “Joe said that its’ going to rain tomorow” and it doesn’t rain tomorrow or it does rain tomorrow there is no lie involved if Joe said it was going to rain tomorrow.The attribution to the source is correct. One could argue that the Brit intel got it wrong or that the Brit intel was lying, but to point out what they said is no lie, unless they didn’t say it.
And you could say that the Brit intel was wrong or that THEY were lying, but you’d have to actually have someone come forward and refute that. Since Joe Wilson did neither there is nothing refuting the argument but lefties wishful thinking and lack of reading skills.
Thanks for the invitation above to come over here and chat, but I learned my lesson when I guest-blogged here during one of Jeff’s vacations a few years ago. The personal attacks in the comments are way beyond anything I want to engage in.
I do, however, frequently comment at Tom Maguire’s site.
I’m not criticizing you, just saying that every blog’s community of readers is different and this is not one whose comment section I feel welcome in. Even though Jeff is my friend.
Robert, I’m gonna use alphie Logic(TM) here. Because you can’t disprove that he didn’t want to defect, Cheney is a criminal.
Easy.
I’d offer to protect you, Jeralyn, but I don’t want to break out the chivalry only to have it pointed out to me that I’m furthering patriarchal stereotypes
jr565:
I believe the allegation is that Bush KNEW the British were lying.
Jeff:
Did you see that Waxman wants to get Fitzgerald to testify? http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070308134201-02108.pdf
Imagine that.
Let’s mosh, kids!
Jeff found this months ago too…WSJ
Maybe the CIA was just embarrassed they turned to Wilson for nothing for so long.
BTW Jeff – did you happened to notice one of the trial exhibits, I believe the full uncensored version of the infamous INR memo Armitage read from?
2 funny notes – One of the lefts and Wilson’s canards about Cheney behesting Wilson took another thwack, it again supported Valerie sending Joe – you see they said Val wrote her Wilson recommendation memo in response to Cheney’s question/behest – Valerie apparently has ESP because she wrote a memo to answer Cheney a day BEFORE he asked his question.
Also, in the memo – Wilson said if he were to undertake the mission he was afraid his mere presence after having served on the NSC would cause panic, as they would see him there on “National Command Authority” and so he would only go if he could TELL his contacts he was acting on behalf of the government so as to assuage those fears.
Fell like a dog chasing your tail on that logic? Me too. His arrogance is stunning.
Sounds like the old Soviet Union</blockquote>.
Bingo. And its just going to get worse.
Saddam Hussein was a hateful, bloodyminded, bloody-handed tyrant who ran one of the nastiest regimes the planet has ever seen. Righties, we’ll stand before the Throne stammering excuses for supporting vile regimes, but Anastasio Somoza never fed people into a chipper-shredder. If the Left, including Democrats, believed one-tenth of what they’ve been spewing for the last half century they would have been screaming in the streets in 1993 for Clinton to remove Saddam by any means necessary.
Instead they have blocked that removal by any means possible, screamed in frustration when that blockage wasn’t successful, excused his excesses, lionized his followers, and made every attempt to vanish his crimes. In the course of that they have betrayed every Leftist and abandoned every democrat in Iraq.
So the only thing, the only strategy remaining to them is make it didn’t happen. It is imperative, a matter of psychic survival, that the Michael Moore “narrative” win out—that Uncle
JoeSaddam was a benevolent father figure presiding over a somewhat-strict but peaceful, pastoral land of kite-flying children until viciously mauled by the evil George Bush.Bush lied—not just about uranium in Africa but about everything: no Kurds got gassed, no Marsh Arabs got killed, no palaces got built with children’s food money, no living babies got thrown in an open ditch to be smothered with the bodies of their parents and buried. It didn’t happen—because if it did, if Bush didn’t lie, they have violated every precept, betrayed every principle, and smashed every ideal that makes the Left, including Democrats, anything but scare-tales to keep people lying awake sweating in fear.
Which is exactly what happened. Whether or not George Bush is a clever man, his record clearly shows that he isn’t a liar.
The thinking ones know it, and sweat bullets and swing into action immediately anything pops up that threatens to expose them. That’s where the feverish desperation comes from—there’s so much they have to suppress. It leaves them open to opportunists. Joe Wilson doesn’t believe in anything but Joe Wilson; his behavior is purely for his own aggrandizement, as is evident to anyone who examines the case, but the Left is forced to support the insupportable because to do otherwise is to threaten the sacred narrative.
It won’t get better soon, but it’ll never get better if the Right doesn’t keep up the pressure.
Regards,
Ric
Wow Ric…just wow.
That comment deserves a blog post all by itself. And bolded.
I am emailing that around.
Boy, that was very courage of the LeftTalker to come by and say what she wrote was indefensible. Typically leftie.
Pathetic.
tw: average86. Couldn’t be the average IQ of the poster at TalkLeft could it? Maybe it’s the average year they were born?
P.S. Jeralyn, you might want to type Senate Intelligence Committee Report Iraq into a search engine. It’s fascinating stuff, it says things like, “There’s this crazy report about Saddam Hussein trying to buy yellowcake,” and “My husband has good connections…” I won’t tell you who said these things. You’ll just have to read it and find out yourself. Don’t forget to put a little oxygen into your vacuum chamber before you go to bed.
BOO!
alphie writes:
First, alphie is not going to get away with airbrushing his stupidity. Let’s review what alphie actually wrote:
The matter is dicussed on pp. 43-44 of the SSI phase I report:
But hey, what does the former Nigerian Prime Minister of Niger know? After all, he was just the head of government and a party to the conversation. And there is the info from a foreign intell service on this as well. alphie dismisses it because it contradicts his position, but he cannot negate its existence.
So, there was “no evidence” that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger?
Wrong.
There was only an unnamed “businessman?â€Â
Wrong. That the name was redacted for public consumption does not make him unnamed to the intell community. Moreover, we have the very named former PM of the country, who is in a much better position than alphie to interpret the conversation.
Instead, because Libby clammed up, as is his right, and took a bullet for the team, even claiming to the grand jury he forgot the details of his conversations with Cheney, prosecutors weren’t able to get to the truth and decide if they had a case against Cheney.
1. The beauty of any conspiracy theory is that evidence in favor of it, evidence against it, and absence of evidence can all be used to “prove” the conpiracy.
2.Whatever it was that Cheney supposedly did cannot be much different than what Armitage actually did. Obviously, getting information about Plame from classified documents, talking about her to reporters, and concealing that fact from the investigators is not something that troubled Fitzgerald greatly…when it was Armitage that did it.
3.If Fitzgerald had truly wanted to get beyond what he considered lies, all he needed to do was confront Libby with the evidence that contradicted him. That he never did indicates that he never cared about getting more accurate information from Libby.
I should add that the reason this particular matter generates so much spittle and pulpit-pounding is that the Left sees it as a potential weak spot into which a wedge might be inserted. The matter is complex and thus relatively easy to insert (or claim) ambiguity; and it doesn’t help that the Bush Administration has made statements that can be interpreted as backpedaling.
We’ve seen the tactic before, most prominently in the matter of the Swift Boat Veterans. If you peruse the Leftie sites you will see repeated references to the “debunking” of the SBVs—but, if you trace the claims back, you will discover that the “debunking” rests on three things: contributions by Republicans to them, picturing John O’Neill as a Republican “activist”, and depicting several of the Veterans as scumbags of one sort or another. The first is irrelevant; the second is a bald-faced lie, as I can say from direct knowledge; the third is true, but again irrelevant—the scumbags in question didn’t do anything having to do with Kerry. I forget the name of the debate tactic that refutes a single, small, possibly irrelevant assertion, then claims that that makes the argument as a whole invalid, but that’s what we have here.
In the Wilson/Plame/yellowcake business, they feel that if they can establish any significant wrongdoing it validates the whole “Bush Lied” meme, and they can wash their hands and go to dinner in peace, having accomplished their mission. Soap and towels for Pontia Merritt–
That’s why people like Karl are so valuable; Karl, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t have either the time or the resources to go digging into the jots and tittles, but they are absolutely vital.
Regards,
Ric
Oh and YAY! I have Patterico back, baby! He is no longer forbidden to me.
First commenter said:
“Been thinking about writing about this cognitive dissonance for a couple days now. The problem I’m running into is my inability to sufficiently wrap my head around the fact that there are people out there who live in an alternate reality. For real.
It just blows my mind beyond the point of words. When I begin to form some kind of thesis regarding this behavior I always end up returning to the belief that they have to be jerking us around. They can’t possibly believe what they say.”
Have you heard of Toxoplasma? It’s a nasty little parasite whose life-cycle takes it from cats to other mammals and birds and back to cats. Evolutionary theory tells us that its survival would be enhanced if cats survival was enhanced. Amazingly, rats infected by toxoplasma lose their fear of cats, making them easy prey. The parasite infects the brain and modifies behaviour. It turns out that toxoplasma infects humans. Infection rates range from 4.3% in South Korea to 66.9% in Brazil. As Carl Zimmer explains: “People with Toxoplasma tend to be more self-doubting and insecure, among other things. Among the differences in men, Toxoplasma is associated with less interest in seeking novelty. Toxoplasma-infected women are more open-hearted.” Maybe Democrats suffer much higher toxoplasma infection rates than Republicans. Perhaps it affects them like it does rats; they fear everything except the thing they should fear most.
Karl, I was just about to help ‘ol alphie out by quoting exactly that portion of the Intel Cmte report. I think it’s also important to note that the CIA never forwarded Wilson’s findings to Cheney’s office, and, to date, the CIA hasn’t corrected or changed their report on the yellowcake inquiries.
Alphie, just in case that quote from the report was too much for you, since you missed it the first time and all, the dumbed down conversation went something like this:
Wilson: So, what’s this I hear about uranium sales?
Mayaki: No such thing could happen. I mean, maybe some rouge elements could make a sale but no one in the government has conducted any secretive sales with any foreign governments
Wilson: So Iraq never contacted you about it?
Mayaki: Well, at the behest of a business man I know, I met with a delegation of Iraqi’s who didn’t say “uranium” but that’s what they meant. I changed the subject real quick though, confused the allah out of them.
Wilson: Thanks for your help.
CIA: So what’d you find Joe?
Wilson: Well, it’s highly doubtful that any uranium has been sold or would be sold by the Nigerian government. But Mayaki did mention that some Iraqis inquired about doing business, which he took to mean uranium.
CIA: That is consistent with what we know, no need to deal Dicky about your trip. Thanks Joe.
Joe in WaPo: What I didn’t find…
Cheney: Who the hell is this guy?
MSM: Who the hell is this guy?
Armitage: I hear he was sent on his wife’s order, she works in the CIA.
Joe to NYTimes: She didn’t send me and I didn’t find any connections.
Senate Intel: Yes she did and yes you did.
alphie: nothing like that is in the report
all of us: Yes it is, just read it.
She so challenged the truth that you couldn’t even believe the opposite of what she said.
Apply to the appropriate suspects.
alphie,
Iraq, Libya, A. Q. Kahn
Last I looked Libya was in Africa. North Africa. You can look it up.
But, judging by the size of the British military these days, I’d bet “British Intelligence†consists of a few old men watching and summarizing the BBC News while downing pints of warm, tasteless beer.
Translation:
I can’t offer a substantive rebuttal.
Why do you leftists bother?
Seriously?
Is no one going to challenge the Alphster on his affront to common decency?
“Warm,” I’ll give you – few things are more amusing to Yanks than Brits taking chilled brews and leaving them out in the sun to make them “drinkable.”
But TASTELESS?!?!>
Alphie, sir, this is completely beyond the pale.
HOW DARE YOU!
Unbalevalble. Just wow.
Here Scooter Libby get’s busted for outing Valery Plane and you dhinger’s are whining how he didn’t out her. How the trail mean’s he didn’t out her. Wow I need another sip of Coor’s hang on a minute becuase that is COMPLETLY mess up.
Okay. There. Let’s see again. It go’s like this.
If Sooter Libby get’s busted for outing Valery Plane, than it’s time for DHINGER’S to go ape shit how he didn’t out her and that’s not what the trail case mean’s.
Huh? Can anyone freaking get they mind’s around how he get’s busted for outing her mean’s he didn’t? Unbalbalevable.
I think you guy’s of tooken not reality base to a whole nother level then you did before.
Borat?
Unfortunately, in today’s media age, facts and truth don’t matter. Perception does. I’m afraid this case will become even more distorted when our favorite undercover agent’s book comes out. And I’m sure a movie deal isn’t far behind. Let’s hope it gets as chilly a reception as ‘The Day After Tomorrow.’
Two things about this case trouble me. Obviously the crushing weight of media lies. But also the fact that no member of this administration was ever given a chance to defend themselves against Wilson’s lies. Will this be the template the Left sets for future Republican administrations?
I think you need to lay off that beer. Or are you normally this incomprehensible?
What a maroon….
Worse. This is the template they set for anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. Look at what they’re doing to that Congresscritter from California.
This is part of a comment I made at The Belmont Club, but it applies here as well:
I was going to avoid alphie’s cavalier slur on British intell, but let’s consider it for a moment:
OTOH, in alphieworld, great intell is gathered when a Langley-based desk-jockey decides a report on Niger is “crazy” before investigating it, then gets her husband sent to Niger, where he spends a few days sipping mint tea.
I’m in a different time zone, so quite some time occasionally passes before I can bring myself up to speed on alfi’s latest attempt at adult discourse.
The British Army is quite small, but more effective than any other of similar size. This has been the case for some centuries now. The service generally referred to as MI6 is also small, by US standards, and GCHQ is small by NSA standards. MI5 is positively tiny, almost alfi-brain-sized, when compared with the FBI.
However, MI6, GCHQ and MI5 tend to make up for their lack of funds and numbers by employing highly intelligent and effective people.
The Niger yellowcake enquiry was handled by the Rome station, which at that time was fortuitously staffed by a long-serving Arabist who was very familiar with both the people and the particular situation he found himself engaged in.
I realise that it was alfi’s intention to provoke a reaction, and he may feel that he has succeeded in drawing one. But I have said nothing above which is not already in the public domain. Possibly I have said enough to encourage alfi to try to remain silent when he is ignorant of the true facts. If I have achieved that, things will be a lot quieter around here, but a lot more constructive.
But the “true fact” is that Saddam didn’t have a nuke program, furris.
Oops.
We’re just assigning blame here.
Or trying to see who had the best excuse to be soooooo wrong.
Same thing, I guess.
alphie,
You are so right about the oil.
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
I guess he was a Blood For Oil kind of guy.
Who is the mysterious “he”?
Jimmy Carter
reason29
Wrong as usual, alfi. But I see you have run away from your original assertion. Also as usual, alfi.
Which one is that, furris?
That the new James Bond is good, but not as good as Sean Connery?
I still stand by it.
Dear Alphie,
I fully defend your right to make statements that I might find indefensible about political issues. I’ll give my life to defend your right to say them.
I’ll even forgive insults to my ancestral homeland, and the home of some very dear friends.
But when you insult their beer, I take deep offense. It shows a total lack of knowledge of Lagers, Bitters and Stouts. A good pint of Whitbred might change your mind, but after being so insulted, you’ll have to buy your own.
And yes, I’m a gun carrying, pickup driving Southern redneck. If you have any civility or gentlemanly qualities about you, any reply to this should be addressed to :
Doctor gun carrying redneck.
All of them, alfi. All of them.
Whitbred?
The pint that thinks it’s a quart?
Fits a lot of things, I think.
Well my friends, that pretty much sums up the typical mal-informed leftist. Very, very, very much along the lines of “Clinton got impeached for a blowjob!”
Ric,
Yes, and a few years beck, when this little black op was launched, it had been designed to take down a sitting president. That it’s turned into little more than a handful of smoke leaves its enthusiasts feeling perfectly victimized.
Ah, Alfi. The mouse that roared.
After reading some of the Alphie snot blowing, I’ve skipped a lot of comments to ask this. Has anyone gone to Alphie’s site to read his posts? I read a few. He might as well be writing about the four humours and the spontaneous generation of frogs from mud. His comments have all the weight of a daily horoscope.
Hey now, so do mine. Be nice.
And when the US had the Manhattan Project, but hadn’t yet produced a bomb, I guess we also had no nuke program…
The ONLY reason Hussein’s nuclear program was on hold (on hold, not cancelled) was out of fear that it would provoke a US military response before UN bribery had enough time to work its magic and remove the sanctions and no-fly zones. Well, that and the little setback the program suffered when Osirak was bombed. (Thanks again, IDF!)
Something changed the equation before Hussein was able to achieve his goal. I seem to remember it being in the fall, maybe a September or October… C’mon Alphie, help a brother out here.
He can write about the humors all he wants.
As for spontaneous frog-generation, he may very well be the expert. I can’t imagine any other way he came about.
OOPS!
Fact: George W. Bush is a proven liar. He lied publicly about keeping Rumsfeld in the administration after he had already decided to remove him.
Fact: Scooter Libby is a convicted felon.
Fact: Patrick Fitzgerald is not a left-wing zealot. He is a Republican prosecuting attorney.
Fact: Saddam possessed large quantities of yellowcake Uranium in Iraq.
Fact: The alleged conversation between Iraqi representatives seeking trade with Niger occurred FOUR YEARS prior to the Wilson trip.
Fact: No evidence of an active nuclear program was found in Iraq.
Fact: The Nuremberg trials established that a war of aggression is a war crime.
Fact: HH makes absolutely no point to justify his list of “facts.”
If you want a point, it is that no argument is too ridiculous to preserve the credibility of the tattered costume drama of the BushCo imperial presidency. Hint: four years ago is not “recently,” as in:
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Tenet told the White House to take this sentence out of the SOTU. He did this because it was BOGUS. Now the BushCo defenders cling to this last wisp of justification for the Niger Uranium claims.
HH claimed:
Proof? IIRC, he made that statement before the ‘06 elections and Rumsfeld resigned after said elections.
I wonder what could have happened to make the President change his mind… I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it at whatever People’s Tribunal you’ll try to establish.
Then why weren’t the Soviets put on trial?
How old are you, HH? Because four years ago was just fucking yesterday to some of us.
Fact: George W. Bush is a proven liar. He lied publicly about keeping Rumsfeld in the administration after he had already decided to remove him.
I’d like to see you prove this “fact”
In a rich bit of irony, this is a lie and you are a liar.
Fact: The alleged conversation between Iraqi representatives seeking trade with Niger occurred FOUR YEARS prior to the Wilson trip.
Uh, ok. And your point is?
Oh, and was that the only conversation on the matter?
Fact: No evidence of an active nuclear program was found in Iraq.
Really?
Could you then explain this?
And this:
And this:
Ace: How about this too, for good measure.