Posted on 02/19/2007 10:49:24 AM PST by digger48
Having attended several sessions of the Scooter Libby trial, I was not surprised to hear that Libby and Vice President Cheney would not be testifying. The case against Libby is surprisingly thin, and from the point of view of the defense, the goal is to get Libby off, not put on a show for Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the left-wing blogs. The defense has apparently concluded that the government has not made a compelling enough case to convict Libby. When Matthews found out that they weren't going to testify, he said he was "flabbergasted." "We thought we were going to have a grand show," said Matthews.
Matthews' disappointment was palpable. "It seems to me if we had Cheney on the stand we would find out how we went to war with Iraq. We're not going to find that out again, right?"
As Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid and I wrote in a previous piece, the media have been on trial in this case, and they haven't liked it. In that column, we described what the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame/CIA leak case was really about, and why it was important to rebut the charges made by Wilson in his July 6, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times that led to the appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the indictment of Vice-Presidential aide Libby.
(Excerpt) Read more at gopusa.com ...
All the case ever boiled down to was another attempt by the RATS to drag Bush/Cheney Admin through the mud using whatever nefarious means necessary to advance the RATS political agenda. Anyone who's followed this case knows that ole Val's hubby Joe Wilson released her name to the public while attending the various functions on the DC social circuit. Val & Joe are known as hangers-on.
Let me help you with that you frikin' moron! A man named William J. Clinton laid the groundwork...
"CLINTON: Good evening.
Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.
The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world.
The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people."
President Clinton
Oval Office Address to the American People
December 16, 1998
Clinton: Oval Office Address to the American People
bttt
Was it because no crime was ever committed by Dick or anyone else in or out of the White-house?
And was this known by Fritzfong before taking grand jury testimony?
So Fritzfong has to say he earned his money for something, might as well be convicting Scooter for having a bad memory like all his witnesses.
Why war Russert ALLOWED to give his testimony from his office? Regardless of HIS knowledge of Grand Jury procedures.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm surprised the judge didn't order a directed verdict of not guilty after the prosecution's case. Even before the defense put on the case I believe the prosecution failed to prove the elements of a crime.
Regular folk aren't allowed a lawyer in Grand Jury testimory.
amen that....this was a coupd'ta by the drive by's to get Cheney, Rove and Bush . Russert and Andrea Mitchell or key criminals here. THAT IS FACT.
There is a seldom applied law (I believe) called "Prosecutorial Abuse". We may see it applied in the Nifong case. There is was a clear case of abuse.
Here too, with Fitzgerald, we have another example.
However, the Prosecutor often gets to say, "I was just doing my job".
In the two above cases, there were political and personal motives. Not "just doing my job".
I hope the Libby Team, after a rendering of innocent, goes after Fitzgerald like a lion protecting her cubs.
Amazing this has gone on so long. The article points out that in Libby's GJ testiomony he said that he heard it from his boss, Chenney, first.
He is accused of lying in saying he heard it from Russert, but in the GJ testimony ** HE DIDN'T SAY THAT **
That charges seems like it should be thrown out by the Judge.
Maybe he didn't say that to the FBI - do we have transcripts?
It makes the "conspiracy" charge pretty well void in my opinion. By the time he got to the GJ he was telling the truth, the notes prove that.
Fitz is a putz. He should be fired or demoted, he did a disservice to the nation with this absurd pig circus.
Because it was not a crime. Valerie was not covered under the "Foreign Agents Identiy Protection Act" because she was not a foreign agent and did not meet the strict tests required to be covered by it. So Armitage could not have been charged with that.
(BTW: If you go back to the start of this idiocy that was the big enchilada that the Dummies hoped to hang on Rove. It has long prison terms associated with it. The backgroun of the act is interesging. It was signed into law after Phillip Agee, a former agency employee, turned hard-core leftist. He got together with the publishers of a small circulation magazine: Covert Information Bulletin, that covers the actions of the CIA as it's mission. Together they published a long list of names of foreign agents (ie: not Americans, but people like the Asst. Sec of Defense of Turkey, the Minister of Petro Development in Hungaria, etc.) This resulted in many of those agents being rounded up by the KGB. Several were killed or assassinated.
Through a strange loophole in the law Agee could not be prosecuted because he just gave information to a press outlet (not the KGB directly). So, it's interesting that this law, which was created to stop leftists from outing foreing agents and getting them killed was attempted to be used to stop a Republican administration from doing their job.
Having failed to meet the strict criteria of that law the only other thing that Armitrage could be prosecuted for is "revealing classified information". But 1) everyone in Washington does that all the time. 2) it's not clear it was classified. If everyone knew of her status, for whatever reason, then it would not be an offense to talk about it, even if someone in the CIA thought it was classified. (Reality trumps rubber stamps in this case). 3) If a prosecution was allowed to happen for "who let out THIS piece of classified information" then we might have to have one for say, the much more important, "NSA Survellience of Foreign phone calls to terrorists (or: Domestic Wiretapping to use the liberal term) - which would put the NY Times editors in the hot seat, or the money laundering one.
So at the end all we are left with is Fitz's pathetic little prosection of Libby. And the more we learn the more pathetic is seems.
On the sunny side of this travesty is an opportunity for all to see that the sooner the stake is driven through the MSM and the Press-Traitors the better off we will be!
Never, ever trust the Media or the Libs, never, ever!
A hung jury isn't really good enough. A full "not guilty on all charges" is what is required to flip this around and focus the inquiry on Fitz (and maybe NBC).
I told mom: "It can't be considered a bad thing when special prosecutors try to get Rove and the only person who ends up in jail is a NY Times reporters. Bush to Times: 'wanna go for double or nothing?'" ...
A hung jury isn't really good enough. A full "not guilty on all charges" is what is required to flip this around and focus the inquiry on Fitz (and maybe NBC).
I told mom: "It can't be considered a bad thing for Republicans when a special prosecutors goes all out to get Rove and the only person who ends up in jail is a NY Times reporter. Bush to Times: 'wanna go for double or nothing?'" ...
I would hope that Cline (who will make the closing arguments for Team LIbby) will hammer home two facts about Russert:
1. He answered "NO" when asked if he knew you couldn't have a lawyer with you in the Grand Jury. I would bet that every one of those jurors has watched CSI or Law and Order and know that to be true. This was a blatant lie by Russert, and the Judge would not allow Wells to introduce on-air statements that Russert had made regarding grand juries where Russert talked about knowing you can't have a lawyer with you in the GJ room.
2. The False Affidavit. Russert lied to a federal court, how could the jury believe him at all since he has already been proven to be a liar.
I want Russert taken down over this trial, and NBC all together; they were colluding with the dems on this whole story and now we know Russert was working with the FBI even while he told his viewers he was fighting a subpoena because he wanted to protect sources....what a liar.
Do you also have Clinton's remarks, stating that he believed that Saddam did, indeed have WMDs, or at least he had them when he left office in 2000? The quote would be a great follow up to the '98 quote.
Here are a lot of great DEM quotes: http://www.freedomagenda.com/iraq/wmd_quotes.html
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