Originally Posted By TomSawyer From the prosecutor's press conference: In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us. And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused? Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray? And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view. As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it. So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make. I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge. This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.
Originally Posted By AgentLaRue There's no longer any valid grounds to assert that the underlying crimes have not been charged because Ms. Plame was not an undercover agent, as the wingers have been spewing since the beginning. Fitzgerald makes clear that his inquiry wasn't about whether Ms. Plame was such an agent (he plainly concluded she was), but rather the mental state (legally known as mens rea) of the people who revealed the name. In order to meet the charge, Fitzgerald knows he must prove malice and wants to be sure that he has learned everything he can before making that call. As he clearly explained, Fitzgerald has concluded that the obstruction of justice precluded him from fairly investigating that issue and he has not given up on that inquiry. Any further garbage about how none of this matters because Ms. Plame wasn't an undercover agent entitled to protection is simply baseless.
Originally Posted By Darkbeer He also said this in the Press Conference... >> I will say this: Mr. Libby is presumed innocent. He would not be guilty unless and until a jury of 12 people came back and returned a verdict saying so. <<
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder And as many of the talking heads (pundits) have said this morning, if the intention was to discredit and attack Joe Wilson, a dubious at best idea to begin with, why go after his wife? She never said anything publicly about the Bush Administration, Iraq, Yellow Cake, Chocolate Cake, etc. Whether or not she was covert as recently as 2003, why mention her name to anyone at all? Wasn't Wilson enough of a target? Couldn't they "punish" him without going after his wife? To me, THAT'S a question as yet unanswered I definitely would like to have explained. And the more I think about it, going after a guy's wife, no matter what she does for a living, demonstrates a complete lack of integrity and class. There's no reason for it. None. If not for Libby and Rove mentioning her name, no one would have known. For that alone they're a couple of soulless cowards.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>It was done to all of us.<< This is why President Bush launched this investigation -- he knows that leaking the name of a CIA agent is going too far. But the blather from dittoheads is "This is nothing! This is no big deal!" I must say that I am happy to see so few elected Republicans joining that foolish chorus. They get it, they know this kind of behavior can't be tolerated, they recognize the seriousness of the charges. And at least a few of them know how hypocritical it would be to try and diminish perjury into laughable "that's all ya got!?" false bravado.
Originally Posted By ecdc "And the more I think about it, going after a guy's wife, no matter what she does for a living, demonstrates a complete lack of integrity and class. There's no reason for it. None. If not for Libby and Rove mentioning her name, no one would have known. For that alone they're a couple of soulless cowards." Bill Maher has said that not even the mafia goes after the wife. Whether it's true or not, it's a great line
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh No one "went after" Ms. Wilson. Her name came up because it was the answer to a simple question - why would the CIA send someone on a mission if he was going to come back and lie about what he found out?
Originally Posted By gadzuux "Obstruction of justice" and "perjury" are legal terms for "lying". It's hardly surprising that these charges should come from an investigation of bush administration officials. And it's the reason that the bush administration doesn't like 'independent' investigations, such as for FEMA's response to katrina, or the WMD investigation. They can't control it. Questions get asked that they don't want to answer. So they lie. Rove seems to have left it to "I can't recall" or somesuch non-response that, so far anyway, seems to keep him from the prosecutor's grasp. Libby flat out lied - over and over repeatedly - in an attempt to shield the white house, and cheney. So he's the "fall guy". But that doesn't mean that he's just "one bad apple" - to them he's a hero. Something else fitzgerald said that I liked - "truth is the engine of american justice". This just shows the lack of respect the white house has for truth or justice. If there was no wrong-doing, there would be no reason to lie. Does anyone really doubt that the outing of plame was vindictive payback for wilson exposing previous white house lies? HUGE lies about iraq's so-called nuclear program as (yet another) trumped up justification for war against a nation that never attacked us or was a threat to us or had any involvement in 9/11. Let's not lose sight of the big picture here. Yes, what was done to wilson and plame is appalling. But nowhere near the depth of deceit involved in committing our nation to a war that has killed countless tens of thousands of people - based on lies. Damned lies. 9/11, WMD, nuclear programs, mobile weapons labs, aluminum tubes - all of it completely fabricated to scare the american people at our most vulnerable time into backing their previous intentions to attack iraq. Now that's what I call "lying". And Libby's fall from grace on a side issue doesn't begin to account for that.
Originally Posted By gadzuux >> No one "went after" Ms. Wilson. << A ridiculous contention that flies in the face of every known fact. So douglas, if what you say is true, why did they lie about it?
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Libby flat out lied - over and over repeatedly - in an attempt to shield the white house, and cheney.> We'll see. Something tells me there's more to the story, or maybe something less. <Does anyone really doubt that the outing of plame was vindictive payback for wilson exposing previous white house lies?> Yes, I do. Especially since it was Mr Wilson that was lying, not the White House. <Damned lies. 9/11, WMD, nuclear programs, mobile weapons labs, aluminum tubes - all of it completely fabricated to scare the american people at our most vulnerable time into backing their previous intentions to attack iraq.> Please. It's not like Iraq was some poor, innocent country that the Bush administration decided to attack for kicks. Our Congress voted to attack Iraq because, under Saddam, it had a history of seeking WMD's, of attacking neighbors, of supporting terrorism, and of lying to the rest of the world. Your attempt to pin the decision to drain the swamp that was Iraq solely on the Bush administration, and to claim they wanted to do it so badly that they would lie to accomplish it, is simply revisionist history.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <So douglas, if what you say is true, why did they lie about it?> I'm not sure who "they" is. I'm not sure that Mr. Libby lied about it, and the lies he supposedly told don't seem to have anything to do with Ms. Wilson being "outed".
Originally Posted By AgentLaRue Having read this comic before this thread, I must share: <a href="http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=19791" target="_blank">http://www.workingforchange.co m/comic.cfm?itemid=19791</a>
Originally Posted By gadzuux They have to do with how he came into possession of this confidential information, and who he told. That's directly related to her "outting". >> Something tells me there's more to the story << Me too - we can only hope. >> Especially since it was Mr Wilson that was lying, not the White House. << Talk about your "revisionist history"! We're barely 48 hours after the indictment of the white house VP chief of staff being indicted for lying. How can you say this? For the record, wilson said that the documents that the white house based their "niger yellow cake uranium" claims on were forgeries. Guess what? He was right - they were. Okay, so one mistake - maybe that would be understandable. But the white house bolstered the claim with the so called aluminum "enrichment tubes" even though they KNEW that the claim was false. And they didn't just talk about a "nuclear program" - no, they spoke about muchroom clouds over cleveland - all based on specious claims. >> it had a history of seeking WMD's, of attacking neighbors, of supporting terrorism, and of lying to the rest of the world. << So do we. We (particularly cheney and rumsfeld) were cozying up with saddam while he was using WMD. What's important here is that the bush administration used 9/11, WMD, and nuclear weapons as the basis of their public rationale for attacking iraq. And none of them were true. To say they didn't is "revisionist history" - and everyone except the staunchest GOP apologists knows it.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Agent LaRue, thanks for that comic! LOL I think Conservative Jones posts on LP quite frequently.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <They have to do with how he came into possession of this confidential information, and who he told. That's directly related to her "outting".> But he didn't apparently tell Novak, and that's who "outed" her. <For the record, wilson said that the documents that the white house based their "niger yellow cake uranium" claims on were forgeries. Guess what? He was right - they were.> One, the White House didn't base their Niger yellow cake claims on those documents alone. Two, Mr. Wilson didn't see the forgeries before he went to Niger. Three, his report of his Niger trip did not refute the story, but yet he claimed in an editorial that it did. He also lied about his wife having no say in his getting the assignment. <But the white house bolstered the claim with the so called aluminum "enrichment tubes" even though they KNEW that the claim was false.> I've never seen a report that said they knew the aluminum tube claim was false. <We (particularly cheney and rumsfeld) were cozying up with saddam while he was using WMD.> We were never particularly close to Saddam. <What's important here is that the bush administration used 9/11, WMD, and nuclear weapons as the basis of their public rationale for attacking iraq. And none of them were true.> Again, Saddam had WMD's in the past, and was trying to pursue them. He also failed to comply with UN resolutions regarding them. Further, he did support terrorism. These were all rationale for the war, and they were true.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA That comic reads like it could have lifted from the threads of this discussion board. By the way, what's a moonbat?
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA From wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonbat" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M oonbat</a> MOONBAT <Moonbat is a political epithet coined in 2002 by Perry de Havilland of "The Libertarian Samizdata," a libertarian weblog. It was originally a play on the last name of George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, but now the term enjoys great currency in the conservative and libertarian blogosphere as an all-purpose insult for modern liberals, peace protestors, and other ideological opponents. It is similar to the epithets Feminazi or Idiotarian.>
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Is there a term that Moonbats use to describe ultra-Conservatives?
Originally Posted By gadzuux >> Is there a term that Moonbats use to describe ultra-Conservatives? << Republicans.
