except joe wilson is a liar...
Posted on 10/29/2005 10:34:11 AM PDT by smoothsailing
NEWS ANALYSIS
Prosecutor Fitzgerald, Where's the Beef?
By Jim Kouri
Oct 29, 2005
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney as well as a trusted White House security advisor, was indicted Friday by a special grand jury with five felony counts of perjury, obstructing justice and making false statements in the Valerie Plame-CIA Leak case. Libby wasn't immediately arrested, but he did resign from his White House post.
The two-year grand jury investigated allegations that someone in the Bush White House leaked the identity of a CIA covert agent to the press, a criminal act if proven true.
Plame is the wife of former US Ambassador Joe Wilson, who publicly cast doubt on Bush's case for invading Iraq -- that Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson intimated at first that it was Vice President Cheney who dispatched him to Africa, something that turned out to be false. As facts slowly came to light, it became obvious that Mr. Wilson has a casual relationship with the truth. For instance, it was discovered that indeed it was his wife who pushed for Wilson to be sent to Niger to investigate intelligence regarding Iraq and uranium. Wilson repeatedly denied it until a memorandum written by Plame was discovered showing she highly recommended her husband for the fact-finding mission.
Ironically, it was British intelligence who made the claim that Iraq sought the capability to develop nuclear weapons and during Bush's speech in 2003 he mentioned it was a British allegation. To this day the British continue to stand by their intelligence and analysis. And the so-called "16 misleading words" are really a fabrication of the mainstream news media.
The Libby indictment -- the only one after two years of investigation -- provides more questions than answers in that not one person has been indicted for the crime of divulging the identity of a covert CIA operative. In fact, during prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference and subsequent question and answer session with gleeful news reporters, he continuously used the word "classified." But leaking classified information is not a crime, or else people such as Senator Patrick "Leaky" Leahy would be serving several prison sentences and keeping house for his new jailhouse boyfriend.
One could make the case that the indictment of Scooter Libby is actually a victory of sorts for the Bush Administration. Karl Rove, the so-called political genius in the Bush White House, was not indicted Friday as many hopeful reporters, pundits and Democrat operatives had predicted. However, Mr. Fitzgerald did give the reporters attending his dramatic press conference a ray of hope that perhaps the Democrats and the mainstream news media will eventually succeed in fulfilling Joe Wilson's dream of seeing Rove, "Frog walked in handcuffs out of the White House."
Prosecutor Fitzgerald claims that Libby knowingly misled the grand jury about his role in the exposing of Valerie Plame, a CIA secret agent whose cover was blown when administration aides leaked her name to reporters. Of course, no one asked about the fact that Joe Wilson mentioned his CIA wife in his bio posted on a seminar website well before the Robert Novak article outed Plame.
Fitzgerald, playing to the cheap media seats, went into a tirade about the seriousness of divulging classified information and its risks to national security. That is true. However, Mr. Fitzgerald's grand jury did not indict Libby for anything having to do with divulging classified information. He's charged with perjury and obstruction in a case of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent, and if the charges be true then Libby deserves the appropriate punishment.
Once the celebrating denizens of America's newsrooms calm down, perhaps they will begin to take this case as seriously as they wish Americans to take it. As stated earlier, there are more questions than answers in this case. For instance, did Valerie Plame testify before the grand jury? Did Joe Wilson? Was Valerie Plame indeed a covert CIA agent? Who in the CIA sent Wilson, a man with no intelligence experience, to Africa to investigate the British claims that Saddam attempted to procure yellow-cake uranium? Didn't the US congress question the validity of Wilson's reportage?
And didn't congressmen report that Wilson lacked credibility? Where is Joe Wilson's CIA report? If Mr. Wilson's trip to Africa was classified, why was he blabbing about it in an op-ed piece in the New York Times? When Joe Wilson worked for the John Kerry campaign and was prominently listed on Kerry's website, why was his bio and information removed so quickly when it came out that Wilson was a liar? Yes, there are many, many questions that need to be answered.
Scooter Libby's indictment provided a day of celebration for the Democrat Party and the liberal news media. Soon, Libby will retain attorneys who will conduct their own investigation into this case. This is not a slam-dunk for the prosecution, the liberal-left media and the Democrat Party. They may want to re-think their plans of riding Joe Wilson to victory in the 2006 elections.
Libby's attorneys and their investigators will pursue answers to many questions that the news media feel they should ignore. They will also have the power of discovery, full disclosure, and will be able to dissect what went on in the grand jury room. They will be able to delve into Valerie Plame's and Joe Wilson's attempts to undermine the Bush war effort. Defense counsel will look into the purpose of the CIA sending a left-wing activist with no intelligence or investigative skills on such a sensitive mission. The defense lawyers will reveal what many already know: that Joe Wilson and Valeria Plame had a hidden agenda. These topnotch lawyers will conduct an inquiry into the relationship Joe Wilson has with Senator Chuckie Schumer or other Democrat Party honchos.
In the days ahead the Democrat Party blowhards will repeatedly talk about the Bush Administration's "culture of corruption." The fact is there has been merely one White House staffer who's ever been indicted in five years. I suggest the Democrats look at the number of indictments and convictions during the eight years of the Clinton Administration before they start their vitriolic rhetoric. And if they want to discuss issues of national security, they should go talk to Sandy "Pants" Berger.
...........................
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
© Copyright by NationalLedger.com
As I remember the Senate voted not to go to war, but to give President power to got to war in order to give him strong hand at the negotiations. I guess second was unconstitutional but it was different from the first. So many people have short memory.
And what this supposed plot was?
Good post and welcome.
Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate yellow cake uranium sales to Iraq. He had no expertise in that. His wife recommended him. He lied about that. He didn't turn in a written report on his return. He lied about that. He claimed that the Office of the Vice President requested this fact-finding trip. He lied about that. He claims that the WH outed his covert-agent wife. There are two lies in that; one, she's not a covert agent and two, he identified her on his own website previous to all of this. He wrote an op-ed about his fact-finding in Niger for the Wash. Post, disclosing this classified trip, before submitting a written report to the CIA. His report has been proven false. He was a major player in the Kerry Campaign during this time.
Which makes me wonder...
How is it illegal or even unethical for the administration to investigate and try to curtail a concerted effort to undermine a major point of its current foreign policy mission? A point that was (and still is) positively confirmed by multiple international intelligence agencies and concerns the attempts of a rogue nation to produce nuclear weapons while under numerous UN sanctions against that activity and while under a cease-fire agreement with our nation from a previous war.
And so I conclude...
Any Executive administration that didn't take serious action to address a national security threat like that would have to be incompetent. Maybe they are. If I were Pres. in a situation like that Wilson and Plame would have ceased to exist.
Yes. To cut to the chase, it was clear to me from the beginning (before war with Iraq) that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and that he did not have WMDs.
I have and had quite cynical view of this whole issue. Different thing is with Afghanistan, the war there had some justification and once started should have been priority and more resources should be devoted to it.
This text is very partisan. Let me quote:
"The left accepts as gospel the Joseph Wilson-inspired allegation [...] the mainstream media is only too happy to support a leftist CIA, which is out to keep its power intact at all costs."
Intelligence services have to be free to provide inconvenient/unpleasant views and facts. If you force them to tell you what you want to hear you do not have a reliable source of information. Instead you are in an echo chamber, you are blind and deaf and you make your enemies happy.
Then you would hear only what is pleasing to your ears. Very smart indeed.
But Machiavelli had different opinion:
HOW FLATTERERS SHOULD BE AVOIDED
I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest, and if they wish to defend themselves they run the danger of falling into contempt. Because there is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you; but when every one may tell you the truth, respect for you abates.
Therefore a wise prince ought to hold a third course by choosing the wise men in his state, and giving to them only the liberty of speaking the truth to him, and then only of those things of which he inquires, and of none others; but he ought to question them upon everything, and listen to their opinions, and afterwards form his own conclusions. With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to carry himself in such a way that each of them should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred; outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt
[...]
(The Prince, chapter XXIII)
Until Friday I did not even know what he looked like. After watching him my strong impression was one of fanaticism, not partisanship. In an earlier time and place, he would have been an eager functionary for the Inquisition.
Some call him the Irish Alligator.
As for a connection between Saddam and 9/11, I don't recall that being a justification offered by the White House for the Iraq war, therefore it was never a relevent issue to me.
WMD is what prevents others from attacking you :)
except joe wilson is a liar...
http://yargb.blogspot.com/2005/10/libby-guilty-of-being-inarticulate.html
Cheers!
Nobody wants to be indicted.
Except that I am speaking from a position where no one person or group has a hold on my ear. If Pres. Bush was insulated from anything it must have been how specific and directed the CIA/Wilson attack on his foreign policy was.
One hardly needs to be flattered into countering an enemy attack.
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