Posted on 04/11/2006 10:42:12 AM PDT by Quilla
Lost in the brouhaha over President Bush's "leak" of "classified" information is the real reason for the outrage: The "leak" proved that Joe Wilson was a liar.
Among the things that bothered us in this affair is that it's deemed first-rate, Pulitzer-worthy journalism when a major newspaper prints classified information that our enemies find useful, but when the commander-in-chief authorizes the release of declassified material to defend his administration's position it is treated as a betrayal of the public trust, if not an impeachable offense.
When the New York Times last December revealed that the National Security Agency listened in on communications between terrorist suspects abroad and U.S. residents, or when the Washington Post ran a story about the existence of CIA prisons where the worst terrorists were being held and interrogated, the information aided our enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, whose 39-page filing revealed this "leak," has charged no one with leaking Valerie Plame's name, or established that it was even a crime.
We wonder what this revelation has to do with Fitzgerald's investigation, which has produced nothing except a claim that Libby "misled" investigators about a crime for which no one has been charged.
We also wonder, in this scenario where the only proven liar is Joe Wilson, whether Fitzgerald is out to get the truth or out to get the Bush administration.
Fitzgerald is probably interesting in adding a bit of history to his resume. It would be a crowning career achievement for a prosecutor to get a president impeached, regardless of politics.
I wonder if the Truth will ever sink into the American people.
Actually, "liar" is too kind a word to use in describing Joe Wilson. He is a traitor who peddled lies in an effort to subvert a sitting President at a time of war for a potential cabinet seat in a Kerry administration.
Don't know about the whole article, but the first snipets are dead on.
Here's something I didn't know until yesterday:
"Could one story about Joe Wilson, any one story, mention that he was working for the Kerry campaign?
"He was a foreign policy advisor to Kerry and Kerry's election website linked to Traitor Joe's.
"Then the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence showed Wilson to be a liar.
"They put the rat under oath and all his smug assertions evaporated into admissions of using "literary license", "must have misspoke" and the ubiquitous charge that the reporter misunderstood what he's said.
"Only then did Kerry drop him.
"That relationship taints everything Wilson did and said.
"But the MSM won't ever bother to mention it because they know the American people will factor his partisan ambitions in.
"Between Wilson's lies and Berger's theft/destruction of classified documents the Kerry Administration will forever stand out as one that managed to have major scandals without even getting elected. "
13 posted on 04/10/2006 7:25:45 AM PDT by Dilbert56
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612370/posts?page=13#13
Best Article I have read in the 4 months of 2006! However, Fitzgerald does not gain anything by proving Wilson is a liar. On the other hand he will become immortal if he "gets" Bush. I would predict that Fitzgerald will go after the President.
Presumably the last line, about whether Fitzgerald is out to get the truth or out to get the Bush administration, is a rhetorical question.
Today the local paper printed several letters on this topic, uncluding several who described this non-leak as an impeachable offense, even though virtually every legal expert who has commented on it says nothing illegal was done. But even to say "nothing illegal was done" creates the wrong impression, because it suggests that something improper or immoral was done. And I blame the press for this impression, because they described the leak as a leak of "highly sensitive" information. It was no such thing; it was simply a rehash of what Bush and other administration officials had been publicly referencing for months. The info was so stale that Judith Miller - to whom it was given - never even wrote about it. (If the information really had been highly sensitive, you can be sure the New York Times would have splashed it all over the front pages.) That's why these media types make me so sick; they aren't even clever at diguising their blatant biases and hypocrisy.
Messing with the President might be just too much to handle.
Exactly.
Aided and abetted by Patrick Fitzgerald, of course.
I've been reading some very similarly worded letters to the editor in my local paper about how Bush should be impeached for "leaking" classified information. Apparently the DNC has sent out a form letter for it's zombies to copy. I wrote a letter informing the nuts that the President can un-classify anything he has classified, but it won't see print.
Yeah, but for what? A President declassifying info? He can't get to first base on that.
Joe Wilson's Perfidy
Joe took the Islamicists' side,
When he said that the President lied.
While he sat on his tush
His words undermined Bush.
I'm thinking the louse should be fried.
"We also wonder, in this scenario where the only proven liar is Joe Wilson, whether Fitzgerald is out to get the truth or out to get the Bush administration."This bothers me the most 'bout Fitzerald. Up to this point, Fitz HAS NOT proven himself to be a non-partisan hack.
For the power...for the fame...for the money from a book deal...to know that the mainstream media will make a hero out of him...if he wants to run for political office...blackmailed...when is the last time the truth and the law mattered?
FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.“Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
Another article:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. More info I just found:
The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
IOW, Bush didn't authorize anything, Tenet did and the info was public in Oct 2002.
Note that Wilson no longer says his wife was "covert", which would make her "outing" illegal under the Intelligence Identites Protection Act. Now Plame was/is merely "classified", like the 20,000 other federal employess in DC Metro with any kind of security clearance. In other words, Wilson now half-admits that no crime was committed.
As a consequence, Wilson now asserts that some kind of "administrative" security violation was nonetheless committed by whomever said that Plame worked at CIA. In typical Wilson fashion, he doesn't explain how this "administrative" violation would come about. You can read the DCI/D classification regulations all day and not find an answer to that. In any case, for one cleared federal employee that say that another "works at CIA/NSA/NRO" is hardly an unusual event. It's more a breach of clearance etiquette than anything else, not a "national security violation," which is a fabrication in Wilson's mind.
WILSON: Well, it certainly makes the case that my wife was a classified officer and, therefore, the leak of her name is a violation of national security. Whether that can be prosecuted and other relevant acts, I have no idea. But at a minimum, it's a violation of national security. There are administrative procedures for that.
BLITZER: But Patrick Fitzgerald is not going after that. He's going after the -- he's simply investigating, at least based on what he's charged so far, that Lewis "Scooter" Libby lied.
WILSON: Well, Mr. Fitzgerald has made it very clear and made it very clear in his press conference two things. One, justice would be served so long as somebody was prosecuted for a crime. And second, he made it very clear that the fact that Mr. Libby had perjured himself and had obstructed justice in the view of the special prosecutor, that had stymied his effort, really, to get to the bottom of the organic crime that he was -- that he was looking in to. But irrespective of whether he prosecutes on the crime, it's important to understand that if you're a classified officer -- and Mr. Fitzgerald has said that repeatedly, that Valerie was -- then the leaking of her name is a violation of the national security.
BLITZER: But why wouldn't somebody be prosecuted for that?
WILSON: Well, again, there may well be administrative sanctions. I think it's very clear if you look at the tact that Mr. Fitzgerald is taking, he's narrowing his prosecution of Mr. Libby to what -- what is, I think, prosecutable under the circumstances.
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