Larry C Johnson at No Quarter defends the facts about Joe Wilson, but also exposes the craven lack of integrity of Christopher Hitchens and Fred Hiatt, Smearing the Wilsons and Sliming America
While Richard Armitage may have had no malicious intent, the same cannot be said for Cheney, Libby and Rove. They knew exactly what they were doing. According to The Washington Post, during the week of July 6, 2003, “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists.” Sometime after Novak’s column appeared, Rove called Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” and told him that Mr. Wilson’s wife was “fair game.”
And we have the document released by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in United States v. Libby, that provides a copy of notes Cheney had written in the margins of Mr. Wilson’s July 6 op-ed. In a court filing, Fitzgerald stated that the notes demonstrated that Cheney and Libby were “acutely focused” on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House’s handling of the Niger intelligence. Those notes became the basis for Republican National Committee talking points circulated and repeated by Ken Mehlman and others.
I think Larry is too quick to dismisses the Armitage leak as not having malicious intent. What in practical terms did Armitage hope to achieve by discussing Wilson or Plame at all. Armitage was Deputy Secretary of State during President George W. Bush’s first term. I must have been absent the day they made it OK for a grown adult, a former official of the U.S. government who damn well knows better to go around gossiping about CIA agents. If it was no big deal that Armitage do so, where has he been the last few years. Regardless of whether Armitage is a tottering fool or not makes no difference to the fact that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were both sources of the leak for two reporters and Libby lied about it.
Probably every generation reaches a point where it declares in one way or other that back in the day things were better; people were more moral, more honest, friendlier, less promiscuous, etc. Adults having recollections of youth frosted over with a warm nostalgia that never was. Patriotutes and V-Girls (Victory Girls)
The Youth,
In the middle of fathers and boyfriends leaving home, mothers going to work to replace the dwindling manpower, teenage girls were left to their own devices. Largely ignored because they were female and deemed unable to work in industry (work laws had been relaxed for boys) delinquency went up by eight percent for boys and an incredible thirty-one percent for girls in 1942.
Illegitimate Children,
Of the 5.3 million British infants delivered between 1939 and 1945, over a third were illegitimate – and this wartime phenomenon was not confined to any one section of society. The babies that were born out of wedlock belonged to every age group of mother, concluded one social researcher
Abortion is nothing new,
Abortionists appear to have been in great demand during the war. One official British estimate suggests that one in five of all pregnancies was ended in this way, and the equivalent rate for the United States indicates that the total number of abortions for the war years could well have been over a million.
STD’s were not invented by the sexual revolution of the sixties,
‘Good-time girls of high-school age are the army’s biggest problem today as a potential source of disease’ announced a 1943 report from the base surgeon of large mid-western army airfield. The report concluded, ‘While mothers are winning the war in the factories, their daughters are losing it on the streets.’
The Challenge to Illegal NSA Spying. The challenge for patriotic bloggers is to do a post about the NSA and the illegal warrantless wiretapping of Americans during the coming week and send an e-mail, fax, or card etc. to your senators reminding them that the president of the U.S. is not above the law and it is their job to represent you and the constitution, not the president.
If you’re a conservative you have something in common with Afghani war lords, you just love W. Bush, Afghan opium cultivation up 60 percent
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s world-leading opium cultivation rose a “staggering” 60 percent this year, the U.N. anti-drugs chief announced Saturday in urging the government to crack down on big traffickers and remove corrupt officials and police.
The record crop yielded 6,100 tons of opium, or enough to make 610 tons of heroin — outstripping the demand of the world’s heroin users by a third, according to U.N. figures.
The Long Goodbye 