← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · SARTRE
Thread ID: 20804 | Posts: 19 | Started: 2005-10-30
2005-10-30 17:39 | User Profile
[URL="http://batr.org/view/103105.html"]Much Ado About Nothing[/URL]
The Bard of Avon would never see a man called "Scooter" as a Don Pedro. Listening to the Bush apologists you would think that I. Lewis Libby is no hero, but more like that other character so wronged - Hero falsely accused of being a whore. Well, slandering Hero can be dangerous just ask Don John. In this real world tragic play, the great Shakespeare would cast the entire NeoCon cabal as the cause of the downfall of the Macbeth clan. George W. Bush is an offspring with foul genes, while Libby is a product of contrived hubris and malevolent design learned from the master cyprian - Paul Wolfowitz.
The glee being express over the big Bush scandal is a bit premature. The carol being sung on one blog goes like this:
[I][INDENT]"Twas the night before Fitzmas and all through the White House, The felons were weeping, like a big girl's blouse. The indictments were filed, in the court with great care, In hopes that St. Fitz had caught all the crooks in his snare."[/INDENT][/I]
How inglorious events can turn out when your hopes are set to achieve the impossible! The liberals from the gang who couldn't shoot straight are in a tizzy. Karl Rove scootered right out of the courthouse with a get out of jail card. Even Chief of Staff to the big boss, Andy Card can't move up now. But take heart, being the counter part to the VP has less protection, especially when you are directly involved in making the foreign policy not just scheduling meetings. The trial of the century will never take place, pardons held in reserve - that fine tradition of Bill Clinton - is the standard to be expected.
The world series of partisian politics is as much a bust as the ball game itself. Houston we have a problem doesn't mean that Chicago Daley town will win the next election. All those dead folks won't be voting next season. The ratings are terrible for both leagues and the public is bored with the way the game is played. There are no heroes just bombers on both sides. The knuckle pitch is the only throw they both hurl, always missing the elegance of the pageant, while hitting the stike zone half a world away. No wonder that apathy is at record levels.
The tangible story that goes under reported is the warfare that goes on between competing factions. Forget the ins and the outs of political party politics, the real battle is among domestic armies. The CIA has been a foreign insurgent for decades. Subversivion is their trade and sedition their plot. Casting Valerie Plame as a victim is akin to treating Judith Miller as a martyr. It's ridiculous to view internal disinformation through the prism of mainstream corporate media.
Deceit, distraction and distortion are the meat of news reporting lies. Government is up to their neck in the business of writing the first edition of history. No version of reality is allowed to pass onto the public unless it has the state spin seal of approval. Even if elements within the "Agency" were sincere in their motives for opposing an unconstitutional pre-emptive war of agression, just look at the end results of their intrigue. The loony left perverts the serious work of organizing effective dissent to a bipartisian internationalist and interventionist foreign policy. It take a reactionary right to build a village to educate the suckers that march to a bogus jingoistic 'war of terror'.
Lewis Libby is scum not because he is a Republican, but because he is betraying our true national interest, while following orders ultimately made under a NeoCon mindset and approved in Tel Aviv. The reason that a sober investigation into the treason that permeates Middle East policy never takes place is that the political culture will not allow critical examination of the Mattoids that run the ruin of the world. Trial by combat is played only on the field of resisting regimes. Syria and Iran are the next targets in the cross hairs because they defy the New World Order timetable for regional subservience.
Patrick Fitzgerald is a typical persecutor that carries the water for a Justice Department that prosecutes show trials while avoiding the real seats of power. If you truly want justice make the American Israel Public Affairs Committee the focus of national scrutiny. Lawrence A. Franklin should become the household name and the real story, Lewis Libby is just the diversion. How likely would you see a Senator Barbara Boxer whining over the high treason coming out of her tribe?
Like the witches brewing their cauldron of poison, orthodox Dianne Feinstein, turncoat Hillary Clinton and gumbo Mary Landrieu voted their true colors. Feinstein in her speech before voting for the Iraq resolution based her vote on the premise of the existence of WMD: "If Saddam Hussein achieves nuclear capability, the risk increases exponentially and the balance of power shifts radically in a deeply menacing way. As I said on this floor in earlier remarks, I believe that Saddam Hussein rules by terror and has squirreled away stores of biological and chemical weapons." Are we supposed to believe that Libby's hardball politics and subsistent snipes against Joe Wilson dissimulation is the reason that bewitched Feinstein and Clinton, when it was obvious that the commander and chief was hell bent upon going to war?
These Lady Macbeth's to achieve their ambitions, rid any benignity that might stand in the way. Without conscience if justice is to be served their fate might mirror the disgraced queen. In order for the mob to grasp the concept, remember that veiled admonition renowned holocaust survivor Rep. Tom Lantos shouted to Craig Livingstone during those illustrious filegate hearings: "that a Navy admiral with a far more distinguished record had committed suicide for disgracing his office." Ah, if only there was accountability for our fearless leaders . . .
Don't get all worked up or loose sleep when a national debate will undertake the herculean task of establishing a sane and beneficial administration. Elections in a two party exclusive system are shams, only intense public pressure can breath even the slightest prospects for resuscitation. What trials and tribulations befall "Scooter" are immaterial. What epitaph will be written for all these heroes? Claudio was rewarded in nuptials, united with his alive real Hero. Somehow such a fate for our country is Shakespearean at best.
SARTRE - October 31, 2005
2005-10-30 18:06 | User Profile
Sartre,
I believe that the liars involved in this are dealing with something that doesn't happen that often in history. This thing is so big that they will be overtaken by events that they won't be able to control. Truth has this nasty habit of shoving its skeletal hand above the grave. It will come to pass here.
2005-10-30 19:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Like the witches brewing their cauldron of poison, orthodox Dianne Feinstein, turncoat Hillary Clinton and gumbo Mary Landrieu voted their true colors. Feinstein in her speech before voting for the Iraq resolution based her vote on the premise of the existence of WMD: "If Saddam Hussein achieves nuclear capability, the risk increases exponentially and the balance of power shifts radically in a deeply menacing way. As I said on this floor in earlier remarks, I believe that Saddam Hussein rules by terror and has squirreled away stores of biological and chemical weapons." Are we supposed to believe that Libby's hardball politics and subsistent snipes against Joe Wilson dissimulation is the reason that bewitched Feinstein and Clinton, when it was obvious that the commander and chief was hell bent upon going to war?
These Lady Macbeth's to achieve their ambitions, rid any benignity that might stand in the way.[/QUOTE]So where does dubbya fit into all this? I say if we're supposed to believe all of his explanations, that he should be cast as court jester :lol:
2005-10-30 19:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Sartre,
I believe that the liars involved in this are dealing with something that doesn't happen that often in history. This thing is so big that they will be overtaken by events that they won't be able to control. Truth has this nasty habit of shoving its skeletal hand above the grave. It will come to pass here.[/QUOTE]Well I have to wonder really. This scandal is infinitisimal compard to the things Clinton did.
What Clinton revealed is the real substance of the offense doesn't matter anymore. Public scandals are now just part of the internecine power struggle and power plays that occurs in Washington. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg. Soebody makes an issue of these things as part of coded messages to the pols wether they are overstepping their bounds. Dubbya, obviously is becoming more vulnerable. But they'll probably just settle for the hide of an underling. Maybe Karl Rove's secretary will take the rap for them.
2005-10-30 19:56 | User Profile
Okie,
I always think of [U]fool[/U] :jester: or knave when it comes to Bush.
2005-10-30 20:15 | User Profile
I wonder if the the US will have another "terrorist" attack anytime soon in order to make you forget about what is going on in the white house.:whstl:
I had a terrible dream about Australia last night......to real to be true.
2005-10-30 20:24 | User Profile
Okie,
I didn't see your other post. No, this is a lot worse than the stuff they tried Clinton on. What folks overlook is the failure to remove Clinton for his corruption and treason only emboden the Bush gang to see what they could get away with. If this mess isn't cleaned up the next administration, regardless of party, will only be encouraged to pull even worse crap, though, it is hard to figure out how to top Bush and his stupid war.
2005-10-30 20:52 | User Profile
Think you are both right. Klinton's greatest treason was the tech transfer to China. Plamegate is a non issue, but Bush's crime is a pre-emptied war. Remedy for both is impeachment. The refusal of a GOP Senate to convict proved that Klinton got a pass. Today no one will bring up impeachment, unless the prez kills someone on live TV.
The abuse of power just gets worse. Every election cycle offers no effective relief.
Who gets on the Supreme Court will be judged by their willingness to rule for the State over individual civil liberties.
Gentlemen, no solution under the Establishment form of despotism.
SARTRE
2005-10-30 21:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=SARTRE]Think you are both right. Klinton's greatest treason was the tech transfer to China. Plamegate is a non issue, but Bush's crime is a pre-emptied war. [/QUOTE]Well with all due recriminations, getting us in unecessary wars is hardly unprecendented for the US. But directly selling secrets to foreign countries, or allowing them to place spies in the White House (John Huang), directly in return for contributions is, at least for a major power.
Listening to them whitewash Clinton on this in the senate made me realize that whether a political figure gets prosecuted has nothing to do with the sustentative nature of the offense - its all purely politics.
2005-10-30 21:54 | User Profile
If Cheney is ultimately forced out maybe Dumbya could "unite" the country by appointing Clinton as VP. Just think, we could have Clinton handle domestic policy with his sheer brillance and Bush dazzle us with that Neocon foreign policy! :lol: :clap:
2005-10-30 23:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Let me clarify something. When I say that what Clinton did pales in comparison to what the Bush Administration did I mean in terms of what Clinton was tried on. I really think the Stupid Party blew it on what Clinton should have been charged with. I thought that's what you meant. Yet as one who actually had the time to watch the Senate investigations into Chinagate, you'd realize they had no chance to beat the Democrats on this one. The Democrats were lined up solidly behind the President, and the Republicans were, for a number of reasons, just totally outgunned and outmanned. The don't call it "the Stupid Party" for nothing.
I think the main thing here was that Clinton, wisely (or maybe I should just say craftily) made sure the Chinagate money was appropriately spread around on Capital Hill (I think the DNC). Other sustentative issues (i.e. the FBI files) I think were in a similar category. Reading dirty laundry on your opponents is one of the perks of power.
These, the DNC money especially are the types issues that any partisan Senator will agree to compromise on over his dead body. Starr with Monicagate was just trying the old Capone trick - try to get your target on a technicality when the main crimes are too heavily guarded. Unfortunately, such a tactic doesn't work in a political rather than just a prosecutorial fight.
[QUOTE]As for spies in the White House, before it was the Red Chinese. Now, it is the Israelis. I think that in terms of corruption and treason one could make an argument that the Bush Administration is simply a continuance of the Clinton Administration. I predict one day history will call this period the "Clinton-Bush Years".[/QUOTE]Well I doubt that Israeli spying started with dubbya, or for that matter Clinton or papa Bush either, although their brazenness ebbs and flows. In fact we know it didn't, re: Pollard.
If Cheney is ultimately forced out maybe Dumbya could "unite" the country by appointing Clinton as VP. Just think, we could have Clinton handle domestic policy with his sheer brillance and Bush dazzle us with that Neocon foreign policy! :lol: :clap:[/QUOTE]Don't joke, I bet someone is seriously suggesting it. Although the idea tends to be looked down upon, ever since JFK made the mistake of appointing LBJ veep. Don't put your enemy within a heartbeat of the Presidency if he's got the slightest hint of a taste for blood.
2005-10-30 23:34 | User Profile
Guys,
Again you are both right. Political differences between the two parties is all an illusion. It's all one big lie for keeping the slaves in line. The only dissent that alters the landscape comes from factions that fight over turf influence.
For the rest of us all you can do is to live a life of civil disobedience.
SARTRE
2005-10-31 16:58 | User Profile
[IMG]http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tr/2005/tr051020.gif[/IMG]
2005-10-31 17:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius] As for spies in the White House, before it was the Red Chinese. Now, it is the Israelis.
Now, then, and always, it is the Israelis.
[QUOTE]I think that in terms of corruption and treason one could make an argument that the Bush Administration is simply a continuance of the Clinton Administration. I predict one day history will call this period the "Clinton-Bush Years".[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
Clintons' Pardoned Buddy Spied For Israel By Gordon Thomas American Free Press 10-8-3
President Clinton's close friend, a billionaire and fugitive from justice, was a top Mossad source - and could wreck plans by Hillary Clinton if she decides to run for the presidency.
Billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, a close personal friend of President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, was one of the most important high-level contacts Mossad had in the United States.
The revelations, published here for the first time, could be a serious blow for Hillary Clinton's plans to run for the presidency.
Today Rich, a Belgian-born Jew who has taken Spanish nationality, lives in Switzerland under heavy, armed-guard protection. There is no extradition treaty with the United States to enable him to be questioned by the FBI about his until now secret connection to Mossad.
In January 2000, his last day in office, Clinton pardoned Rich, a secretive commodities trader indicted in 1983 on charges of evading almost $50 million in taxes and illegally buying oil from Iran during the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979.
The question that will inevitably dog Hillary, if she runs for the presidency, will be how much did she and her husband even suspect about Rich's Israeli intelligence links.
An MI6 file covering the Clinton years in the White House reveals that Rich is also suspected of knowing the real identity of a top Mossad informer in the Clinton administration.
The informer is still only known as "Mega." The name was first discovered in February 1997 by the National Security Agency (NSA). It provided the FBI with an intercept of a late-night telephone conversation from the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
It was between a Mossad intelligence officer, still identified only as "Dov," and his superior in Tel Aviv. The intelligence officer was later named as the Mossad director-general, Danny Yatom.
"Dov" had asked for guidance as to whether he "should go to Mega" for a copy of a letter written by Warren Christopher, then secretary of state, to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
Yatom instructed Dov, according to a transcript of the intercept, "This is not something we use Mega for."
The MI6 file indicates that Mega had been in place toward the end of the first Bush administration.
It also describes how Rich had acted as a "conduit" for the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States to counter FBI demands that the hunt for Mega should be pursued as vigorously as the FBI dealt with spies from other countries.
The then MI6 head of station at the British Embassy sent a memo to London stating that "dinner guests at the White House dining table - who include Hollywood stars, attorneys, editors and senior members of the Anti-Defamation League - lose no opportunity to remind Clinton of the damage he could face in this matter. They argue the hunt is not properly grounded and that Israel has already explained to DOS [Department of State] the use of Mega."
Mossad sayanim - the Hebrew name for "helpers" - in the U.S. media had already planted stories that "Mega" was an incorrect hearing of the Mossad slang for the CIA, Elga.
"Further, Mega is supposedly a well-known word in USIC [the U.S. intelligence community]. It is said to be a joint code for shared intelligence with Mossad," the MI6 memo stated.
President Clinton's only comment on pardoning Rich came after he left office.
"It was terrible politics. It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he told Newsweek magazine.
There has been widespread speculation among opponents of the Clintons that Rich "bought" the pardon with political donations and gifts that his former wife, Denise, gave the president and other Democrats.
But in a hint of Rich's important connections to Mossad, Clinton has admitted that he granted the pardon "partly because the Justice Department did not oppose a pardon and because I had received a request from the government of Israel."
That request came in a personal handwritten note from another old friend of Clinton, Israel's former prime minister, Ehud Barak.
The MI6 file reveals that the pardon was stitched into the Camp David peace agreement by another plea-bargainer, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Clinton was convinced there were "strong mitigating circumstances for a pardon."
Rich and his first wife, Denise, fled to Switzerland in 1983 - just before U.S. prosecutors brought charges against him of tax evasion and trading with the outlawed regime in Iran.
The couple divorced a decade later and Denise, 59, now lives in New York in a magnificent Fifth Avenue duplex overlooking Central Park.
Rich, 69, has remarried and lives in similar splendor in the exclusive town of Zug in Switzerland. He still deals in commodities. His company, Marc Rich & Co Investment, has recently been taken over by the Russian Alfa Group for a reported $3 billion.
Rich's secret work for Israel included organizing Israeli passports for members of the Russian Mafia. So far 30 known members of various Mafia groups are currently traveling on Israeli passports.
The FBI was also investigating Rich's connections to various money-laundering operations involving mid-European banks and those in Canada and the United States.
Rich's prime use for Mossad was as someone who moved in the highest financial circles in Europe, the Middle East and South America.
It is those ties the FBI and other teams of U.S. investigators were examining to see if they link to the large sums of money Rich paid to the Clintons and other Democrats before the pardon was granted.
WHITE PAPERS
At the time, federal prosecutor Mary Jo White launched a criminal investigation into Rich's financial links with Clinton and his wife.
White obtained copies of Clinton's White House phone logs and those of Air Force One. The logs covered all calls the president and Hillary made to Rich. There was also a complete record of all his calls to them.
All official calls are monitored by the U.S. communications team that accompanies the president and his wife on all visits. The calls were described at the time as "a key element in our investigation," by one of White's aides.
Clinton himself received from Denise, just before leaving office, a check for $450,000 to help him set up his Presidential Library Fund. Denise also sent $1.1 million last year to the Democratic Party to help Al Gore fight for the presidency.
SMOKING GUN
Until now, all the financial links to RichÃÂs past have not been pursued. But it is the Mossad connection which could prove to be a "smoking gun" for Hilary, should she enter the presidential race - either next year or in 2008.
Shortly before he was kidnapped by Hezbollah in October 2000, Mossad agent Hanan Tannenbaum visited Rich in his Swiss home.
Tannenbaum had been sent by former Mossad director Yatom to discuss what Tel Aviv sources later admitted were "intelligence matters of the highest order." At the time, Yatom was personal security adviser to Prime Minister Barak.
Hezbollah somehow spirited Tannenbaum out of Europe to their base in the Beka'a Valley. His fate remains unknown.
In January 2000, shortly before the Rich pardon was granted, the Senate Judiciary Committee received documents that showed Rich played a crucial role in helping the Bank of Credit and Commercial International (BCCI) arrange for Abu Nidal to receive "hundreds of millions of dollars for illegal arms transactions in an effort to persuade its wealthy Middle East backers that the bank was staunchly pro-Arab."
A sworn affidavit by Ghassan Quassem, for 17 years a senior officer with BCCI, states: "British weapons secretly destined for Abu Nidal were financed through BCCI offices and shipped under export documents that Marc Rich knew to be phony. My role at the bank was to handle the Nidal account. I later became a spy for the CIA and MI6."
With the coming election promising to be a knuckle-duster fight, there is a real possibility that Rich may once more step back into a spotlight he never welcomed. Nor the Clintons.
Rich received one of 140 pardons Clinton granted during his final hours for what was a rogue's gallery. The clutch of shady characters included a heroin dealer.
But it was the odious figure of Rich who has left a permanent stain on Clinton's presidency - and raises questions now.
Rich played a key part in supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the economic rape of post-Soviet Russia.
His former wife, the Manhattan socialite, pleaded his cause by throwing money at the Clintons - even giving Bill a saxophone.
A hint of ClintonÃÂs feelings for Rich is contained in a book proposal he has entered into with Knopf, the New York publisher, for $10 million.
In an outline for a chapter headed "How a Man Gets What He Really Wants," Clinton writes: "Sometimes people who seem to have very little in common can discover what they have in common."
Was he referring to Rich?
Certainly the billionaire is not quite as rich as he was two years ago. In March 2001, British Customs officers at Gatwick airport seized $1.9 million of RichÃÂs money.
The money was seized under UK laws designed to "prevent the movement of money from suspected drug trafficking."
Last week in Zug, Rich refused to answer questions about his intelligence links - or his connections to Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran.
Having renounced his American citizenship, he now travels on Spanish and Israeli passports. He has dual nationality with both countries. Until recently, he also held a Bolivian passport.
The power for a president to grant a pardon stems from the Constitution. This states that the president ìmay grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States.
A president can issue a pardon for "any federal crime for any reason and no reason - before or after conviction."
The Clinton pardon stopped the prosecution in their tracks. Post-pardon Rich is free to return to the United States without fear of prosecution - except possibly in the case of compromised national security.
There is no precedent for that - and Rich is unlikely to provide one. But his links to Mossad remain a ticking time bomb for Hillary.
[url]http://www.americanfreepress.net/10_07_03/Clintons__Pardoned/clintons__pardoned.html[/url]
2005-10-31 18:40 | User Profile
Great thread folks! :thumbsup:
Rainmondo says it's time to deep six V.P. Cheney. This would only help if you also tossed out all the neocon Izzy First dual loyalists too, which means the chance of this happening are slim to none. Until one sees the last one of these beady-eyed, rat-tailed koshercons taking the El-Al redeye flight to Tel Aviv, we should not hold our breaths.
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Ditch Cheney: [url]http://www.etherzone.com/2005/raim103105.shtml[/url]
2005-10-31 20:38 | User Profile
Paul Craig Roberts looks to the GOP old guard to get us out of the present mess.
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[url]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/051030_libby.htm[/url]
October 30, 2005 Libbyââ¬â¢s Indictment: The Start Of A Counterrevolution?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to vice president Richard B. Cheney and assistant to the president, has been indicted for a cover up.
As US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald made clear at the October 28 press conference announcing Libbyââ¬â¢s indictment, he believes Libby "went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on."
By obstructing Fitzgeraldââ¬â¢s investigation, Libby has prevented Fitzgerald and the grand jury from finding out who leaked the name of the covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame, and why.
Libby did not lie, commit perjury, and obstruct justice for no reason. As Fitzgerald made clear, these are serious crimes. For a high government official to commit such crimes, the crime being covered up must be very serious indeed.
Those who have been following Bushââ¬â¢s invasion of Iraq know what that crime is. They also know who are the guilty parties.
The crime is the falsification of intelligence in order to deceive Congress and the American people. The Bush administration could not have invaded Iraq unless Congress and the American people believed the US was in dire danger from Saddam Hussein. Forged documents purporting to show uranium sales to Iraq and false intelligence reports from Iraqi exiles allied with neoconservative officials in the Bush administration served as the basis for the false claims about weapons of mass destruction and "mushroom clouds" made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condi Rice.
The Bush administration neoconservatives who assembled the "intelligence" knew that it was false. The neoconservatives had their own agenda. They used the terrorist attacks of September 11 to turn the Bush administration to their agenda. As the leaked top secret British government Downing Street memo made clear, the agenda was to invade Iraq, and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
There was a conspiracy among neoconservatives holding high positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, the Vice Presidentââ¬â¢s office and the National Security Council. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, described the conspirators as "a secretive, little-known cabal . . . made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld." [The White House cabal, LA Times, October 25, 2005] Wilkerson says that the secret workings of this furtive cabal took foreign policy and decisions about war out of the normal government channels.
By creating false documents and false threats, the neoconservatives pushed the US into an invasion of Iraq as the opening step in their plan for a wider war that would remake the Middle East.
Libby lied to the grand jury in order to protect this conspiracy.
Fitzgerald has stated that his investigations are not over. There are indications that Fitzgerald is aware that more is involved than the blown cover of Valerie Plameââ¬â¢s CIA counter-proliferation operation. Fitzgerald is on the trail of the conspirators who have committed high treason by taking America to war on false pretenses.
Facing 30 years in prison, will Libby talk in exchange for a lighter sentence? Will members of the cabal come forward to save themselves before other members of the conspiracy seize the opportunity to turn stateââ¬â¢s witness?
Now that there is blood in the water, media executives will not be able to continue to muzzle reporters. Democrats might find some backbone. Republicans might realize that they are facing a far worse crisis than Watergate.
Will the unindicted co-conspirators at Fox News, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal editorial page, New York Post, and Washington Times learn the Judith Miller lesson, or will they continue to serve the conspiracy that hijacked US foreign policy and deceived the country and, perhaps, President Bush himself?
Will neoconservative strongholds such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Heritage Foundation continue to back the agenda of a cabal that deceived our country into a disastrous war of aggression?
Unless America has lost its soul, Libbyââ¬â¢s indictment is the first step in the unravelling of a criminal conspiracy of high treason. Fitzgeraldââ¬â¢s continuing investigation could serve as the counter-revolution that overthrows the neo-Jacobin coup engineered by the neoconsevative cabal.
President George W. Bush seems determined to take himself down with his sinking administration, declaring in the face of strong public opposition to the ill-conceived Iraqi war that he will accept nothing but "complete victory" in what he characterized as the first great war of the 21st century.
Despite his failure as president, Bush might survive the housecleaning with a deal that leaves his father and Brent Scowcroft in de facto control of the White House. The elderly members of the old Republican establishment are all that remain of the GOPââ¬â¢s credibility.
2005-10-31 21:03 | User Profile
BK, [QUOTE]Despite his failure as president, Bush might survive the housecleaning with a deal that leaves his father and Brent Scowcroft in de facto control of the White House.[/QUOTE] I believe that in the background this is occuring.
2005-10-31 22:16 | User Profile
October 31, 2005 Edition > Section: Editorials > Printer-Friendly Version Pardon Libby
New York Sun Staff Editorial October 31, 2005 URL: [url]http://www.nysun.com/article/22258[/url]
What do I. Lewis Libby, the White House aide who was indicted on Friday in a case involving the leak of a CIA officer's identity, and Martha Stewart, the lifestyle guru specializing in pies and pillows, have in common? Both were charged under a federal statute that is dangerously broad. There's a popular misconception that Stewart was involved in insider trading and that Mr. Libby was involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame. But neither Mr. Libby nor Stewart were charged with those underlying crimes. The federal criminal charges in both cases were brought at least partly under Title 18, Section 1001 of the United States Code. That provides for a fine or up to five years in prison for anyone who "knowingly and willfully" makes any materially false statement or representation "in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States."
So Mr. Libby's indictment sent us scrambling back to our copy of Justice Ginsburg's concurring opinion in the 1996 Supreme Court case Brogan v. United States, in which she warned of "the sweeping generality" of Section 1001's language. She wrote, "The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator - aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case - will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial." She wrote, "the Department of Justice has long noted its reluctance to approve S1001 indictments for simple false denials made to investigators."
Yet that is, it appears to us, the essence of what is charged in the indictment of Mr. Libby. Mr. Libby had been put in that bind by his own president, who, having sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, contravened it by insisting that, in the face of a special prosecutor, his aides spurn one of its most famous protections. The Constitution has a provision - part of the Fifth Amendment - that says no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Yet President Bush said, as he did on January 1,2004,"I've told the members of the White House to totally cooperate."
Now, perjury is a serious crime, but we don't discount for a moment the possibility - we'd even say likelihood - that Mr. Libby was telling the truth. Or that he was misremembering, telling an inaccurate story that he didn't know was false. American jurisprudence requires us to presume him innocent. But it is also possible that Mr. Libby subordinated his own Fifth Amendment rights to his duty to obey the president's instructions "to totally cooperate." In any event, it takes a Washington Democrat to be hypocritical enough to be voting against Mr. Bush's judicial nominees for the sin of being insufficiently like Justice Ginsburg, while at the same time rushing to hail a federal prosecutor for bringing charges against a White House aide under a statute that Ms. Ginsburg criticized for its "sweeping generality."
This prosecution, in any event, is an assault on the presidency. If Ms. Plame didn't want her identity out, she shouldn't have gotten her husband a secret mission and then allowed him to wage a public campaign against the president's foreign policy. The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself. He has accused Mr. Bush of falsely leading America to war. Mr. Bush had claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Wilson drank tea in Niger for a week and said that Mr. Bush's claim was not true. But even after Mr. Wilson's objection, the July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's comment was "well-founded." In a July 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Roberts, Hatch, and Bond said of Mr. Wilson, "The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."
The way out of this for Mr. Bush is contained, also, in the Constitution, in Article II, which states the president "shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." The Founder's Constitution, that great compendium of backup material on the Constitution, quotes George Mason as commenting, "The President of the United States has the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason, which may be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt." The point is not that Mr. Libby or any one else in this case trifled with treason but rather that the Founders knew precisely the defensive uses to which the pardon power they were handing the president could be put.
As these columns were being put to bed, Matt Drudge was reporting that the special prosecutor is hatching a plan to try to force Vice President Cheney to testify in open court. The editors of these columns spent much of the 1990s warning that the office then occupied by Kenneth Starr was, though he himself was an honorable man, unconstitutional - and we cited Jefferson's warning against permitting the president to be haled in court, lest he be dragged, as Jefferson warned, "from pillar to post." Certainly the vice president ranks for the same principle. So by our lights the right move would be for Mr. Bush to shut down this entire prosecution with a blanket pardon. He would not only be protecting his loyal staffer, he'd be protecting the office of the presidency itself from those who all along in this case have wanted to undercut the president's powers in a time of war.
October 31, 2005 Edition [url]http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=22258[/url] ============ It's not Mort Zuckerman, is it?
2005-11-01 01:22 | User Profile
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