Bush’s commuting of Scooter Libby’s sentence has put us back to square one with the Cult of Bush. The still made argument that Libby should not have been convicted because Valerie Plame wasn’t covert, General Hayden, the current Director of the CIA confirmed that Plame’s identity was classified. Plame confirmed that her identity was covert in her testimony before Congress.If her testimony was false and Republicans had the slightest evidence to the contrary then where is the investigation and charges of contempt of Congress for lying under oath. Echoing other conservative commentators, Mike Rosen of Newsradio 850 KOA has falsely asserted on numerous occasions that CIA agent Valerie Plame was not covert when her identity was leaked to the media in July 2003.
The unclassified summary of Plame’s employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”
Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Old news that has been well covered before. I’m not angry that the Bush Cult continues to lie about Plame’s covert status and claim that no crime has been committed. I’m disturbed by their capacity for the denial of reality. Sure some of the dead enders are just throwing up dust to obscure the facts – all for the good of the cult of course, but many actually believe what they are saying and writing. At that point we’re not talking about political differences of opinion, we’re talking about reality versus a dangerous physiological mindset. You can’t engage in debate with someone who is getting a sunburn and denies the sun exists. In a better world, much less a perfect one debaters put all the facts on the table and sought things out. Rational thoughtful Americans cannot do that with the cultish modern Right. Then there is the Armitage angle that keeps popping up, sorry for quoting myself,
Regardless of what Armitage said or when he said it, that in no way made it legal or justifiable for Libby to lie to the grand jury.
If Armitage’s revelations mattered Libby’s defense team would have used them. They didn’t matter, Libby lied under oath and his only motive for lying was to cover-up a crime, to protect Cheney and probably Bush and Rove. It’s a little dated because of the cultural frames of reference, but the late Walter Matthau was in a movie called A Guide for the Married Man (1967). Walter Matthau’s character asks his friend and adviser Edward L. ‘Ed’ Stander (Robert Morse) on cheating what to do if you’re caught, Ed replies ” Deny. Deny. Deny.” The episode in the movie is a little surreal with a woman catching her husband red handed with another woman. The husband just denies everything anyway, gets dress, the other woman leaves and he sits down to read the newspaper and smoke his pipe. The wife stands there dumbfounded. Part of the Bush Cult is dumbfounded, the other part are just malicious liars intent on denying their complicity. There is something of the Holocaust denial psychology at work – the unholy Right can do no wrong. Even if they did it was for the good of the cause – see Iran-Contra, Reagan, North and Poindexter
The Iran arms-for-hostage-deal was also illegal–or so Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger thought. At a December 7, 1985 White House meeting, Weinberger argued the Iran missile deal was wrong and criminal, according to his notes of the session. Weinberger pointed out to Reagan that selling missiles to Iran would violate a U.S. embargo on arms sales to Iran and that even the president of the United States could not break this law. Nor, Weinberger added, would it be legal to use Israel as a cutout, as was under consideration. Both Secretary of State George Shultz and White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who were each present, agreed that a secret weapons deal with Iran would be against the law. Reagan, though, insisted on proceeding, noting he could answer a charge of illegality but not the charge that he had “passed up a chance to free hostages.”
With Bush and his supporters the same mentality is at work only magnified.
This guy has done more or at least been more constructive in the fight against actual terrorism then the Bush Whitehouse, I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST SO HARD IN BALLS THAT I TORE A TENDON
A HERO cabbie who took on the Glasgow Airport terror suspects told yesterday how he booted one of them in the privates.
This a British tabloid report so the facts might be stretched a bit.
A Declaration The President Ignores
Today, of course, much of the world thinks that the United States has traded places with George III’s British Empire. We are the global hegemon, and since Sept. 11, 2001, we have become infamous the world over for eschewing the law of war in the name of patriotic self-defense. At Guantanamo, in shadowy secret CIA prisons, at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, leaders in the White House, the Justice Department, and the intelligence agencies have disowned the laws of war as unacceptable constraints on the pursuit of national security.
The tragedy of the post-Sept. 11 American assault on the laws of war is that it seems to have been not only shameful but self-defeating. Disrespect for what the declaration called “the Opinions of Mankind” has fueled anti-American sentiment and spurred terrorist recruitment in North Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Illegal interrogation tactics seem to have produced disappointingly little intelligence. And extraordinary renditions to secret prisons have disrupted the cooperation of many of our most important allies in the war on terrorism, producing arrest warrants against U.S. intelligence agents in Germany and Italy. Patriotism at the expense of the laws of war seems to have gone badly awry.
Good article that includes examples from our early history, ideals, and laws all of which the modern right-wing movement has done their best to destroy. Sure the Bin Ladens has cause some damage and hardship, but the lasting damage to the institution of American democracy can only be done by the fringe ideologues that have co-opted the traditions of real Republicanism.
The Long Goodbye 