Ticomaya wrote:[We're talking about blind faith in the CIA ... It appears you're willing to rely on the CIA's expertise and authority, but only when it's convenient to you.
Hmmm... doesnt that argument bounce right back to you? If you believe the CIA when it comes to Gitmo, but not when it comes to Plame, arent you doing the same thing?
Mission Implausible
Ann Coulter (archive)
July 13, 2005
Karl Rove was right. The real story about Joseph C. Wilson IV was not that Bush lied about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa; the story was Clown Wilson and his paper-pusher wife, Valerie Plame. By foisting their fantasies of themselves on the country, these two have instigated a massive criminal investigation, the result of which is: The only person who has demonstrably lied and possibly broken the law is Joseph Wilson.
So the obvious solution is to fire Karl Rove.
Clown Wilson thrust himself on the nation in July 2003 when he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times claiming Bush had lied in his State of the Union address. He said Bush was referring to Wilson's own "report" when Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
But that is not what Wilson says he found! Thus, his column had the laughably hubristic title, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." (Once I couldn't find my car for hours after a Dead show. I call the experience: "What I Didn't Find in San Francisco.")
Driven by that weird obsession liberals have of pretending they are Republicans in order to attack Republicans, Wilson implied he had been sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney. Among copious other references to Cheney in the op-ed, Wilson said that CIA "officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story" that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, "so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."
Soon Clown Wilson was going around claiming: "The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there."
Dick Cheney responded by saying: "I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson. I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back." Clown Wilson's allegation that Cheney had received his (unwritten) "report" was widely repeated as fact by, among others, the New York Times.
In a huffy editorial, the Times suggested there had been a "willful effort" by the Bush administration to slander the great and honorable statesman Saddam Hussein. As evidence, the Times cited Bush's claims about Saddam seeking uranium from Niger, which, the Times said, had been "pretty well discredited" - which, according to my copy of "The New York Times Stylebook" means "unequivocally corroborated" - "by Joseph Wilson 4th, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the CIA to look into the issue."
So liberals were allowed to puff up Wilson's "report" by claiming Wilson was sent "by the CIA." But - in the traditional liberal definition of "criminal" - Republicans were not allowed to respond by pointing out Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, not by the CIA and certainly not by Dick Cheney.
So important was Wilson's fact-finding mission to Niger that he wasn't paid and he produced no written report. It actually buttressed the case that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger, though Wilson was too stupid to realize it. His conclusion is contradicted by the extensive findings of the British government. (I'm not sure, but I think that's what Bush may have been referring to when he said, "the British government.") One could write a book about what Joe Wilson doesn't know about Africa. In fact, I'm pretty sure someone did: Joe Wilson.
About a year later, a bipartisan Senate committee heard testimony from a CIA official that it was Wilson's wife who had "offered up" Wilson for the Niger trip. The committee also discovered a Feb. 12, 2002, memo from Wilson's wife gushing that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines [not to mention lots of French contacts], both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."
Wilson's response to the production of his wife's memo was: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
Wilson's report was a hoax. His government bureaucrat wife wanted to get him out of the house, so she sent him on a taxpayer-funded government boondoggle.
That was the information Karl Rove was trying to convey to the media by telling them, as described in the notes of Time reporter Matt Cooper: "big warning"! Don't "get too far out on Wilson."
Democrats believe that because Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, the White House should not have been allowed to mention that it was she who sent him to Niger. But meanwhile, Clown Wilson was free to puff up his apocryphal credentials by implying he had been sent to Niger on an important mission for the vice president by the CIA.
Despite the colloquialism being used on TV to describe the relevant criminal offense, the law does not criminalize "revealing the name" of a covert operative. If it did, every introduction of an operative at a cocktail party or a neighborhood picnic would constitute a felony. "Revealing the name of" is shorthand to describe what the law does criminalize: Intentionally revealing a covert operative as a covert operative, knowing it will blow the operative's cover.
Rove had simply said Wilson went to Niger because of his wife, not his skill, expertise or common sense. It was the clown himself who outed his wife as an alleged "covert" agent by saying he was not recommended by his wife, and thus the White House must have been retaliating against him by mentioning his wife.
Wilson intentionally blew his wife's "cover" in order to lie about how he ended up going to Niger. Far from a serious fact-finding mission, it was a "Take Your Daughters to Work Day" gone bad. Maybe liberals shouldn't have been so insistent about that special prosecutor.
Quote:Mission Implausible
Ann Coulter (archive)
July 13, 2005
Maybe liberals shouldn't have been so insistent about that special prosecutor.
Ticomaya, typical response when one finds the ground falling under them. They drag out hate monger for hire, Ann Coulter to keep them from falling in the pit.
Declasse!
BBB
Perhaps you're missing the point: Rove will not be convicted of violating any section of Title 50, Chapter 15, Subchapter IV of the USCA based upon the CIA's determination that it's "possible" a crime may have been committed. Nor does such an assertion from the CIA mean that Valerie Plame is a "covert agent" as defined in 50 USC 426.
nimh wrote:Ticomaya wrote:[We're talking about blind faith in the CIA ... It appears you're willing to rely on the CIA's expertise and authority, but only when it's convenient to you.
Hmmm... doesnt that argument bounce right back to you? If you believe the CIA when it comes to Gitmo, but not when it comes to Plame, arent you doing the same thing?
I've never said the "suspected terrorists" in Gitmo are guilty because the CIA said so.
Quote:Perhaps you're missing the point: Rove will not be convicted of violating any section of Title 50, Chapter 15, Subchapter IV of the USCA based upon the CIA's determination that it's "possible" a crime may have been committed. Nor does such an assertion from the CIA mean that Valerie Plame is a "covert agent" as defined in 50 USC 426.
The first part is speculation, as you don't know if Rove will or not be convicted on Title 50 or not.
The second part is incorrect because, I'm sorry, but I take the CIA's assertion that an agent is 'covert' over your assertion that she is not.
Why? Because they are the experts in this matter and frankly you don't know any more about it than I do. So I defer to authority.
Ticomaya wrote:nimh wrote:Ticomaya wrote:[We're talking about blind faith in the CIA ... It appears you're willing to rely on the CIA's expertise and authority, but only when it's convenient to you.
Hmmm... doesnt that argument bounce right back to you? If you believe the CIA when it comes to Gitmo, but not when it comes to Plame, arent you doing the same thing?
I've never said the "suspected terrorists" in Gitmo are guilty because the CIA said so.
But you're one of the ones who believes they are, right, or am I confusing you with someone else?
KARL ROVE'S LAWYER SCREWS UP.
Word Blossom
The New Republic
by Ryan Lizza Post date: 07.14.05
Issue date: 07.25.05
In at least one Washington law firm this July, the summer associates are earning their keep. Their boss is one of the lawyers involved with the Rove-Plame scandal, and he's keeping them busy with a surprisingly thorny task: Tracking the public comments of Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney. Over the last two weeks, Luskin has flummoxed Washington's Fourth Estate with spin and legalisms. He has embarrassed reporters who ran with the cleverly worded denials he dished out. He has contradicted himself, sometimes within the same news article. He may have accidentally paved the way for Matt Cooper's Wednesday grand jury testimony about Rove. In short, he has made life difficult for those summer associates. "Every day," says the lawyer involved in the case, "I have my associates put together a chronology of the things Luskin is saying about Karl Rove. He's just all over the place. Even in the last few days, they are not consistent."
Every Washington scandal eventually shifts from the political realm to the legal realm, a moment when those being investigated retreat from public view and their lawyers step forward. It is a make-or-break moment for the Beltway defense attorney, and one of the reasons that people like Luskin relish such high-profile cases. But Luskin is stumbling out of the gate. Not since William Ginsburg, Monica Lewinsky's hapless first attorney, has a lawyer had such an inept public debut. Legal veterans of scandals past are scratching their heads. "He's publicized his client more than his client might like," says one of the lawyers central to the Lewinsky drama. "I've been surprised by the disclosures. I don't know of any strategy behind it, and a lot of people are looking at it the same way."
Over his 25-year legal career, Robert Luskin has defended a colorful cast of characters, including a drug kingpin, several figures on the fringes of the Clinton scandals, and, most recently, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But scoring Rove was a coup. Luskin is an unlikely choice for a Republican, let alone Rove. In fact, during the 1990s, a wide swath of the conservative movement spent a good chunk of its time trying to destroy his reputation. For the last ten years, Luskin has served as the in-house prosecutor for the Laborers' International Union, where he has been charged with fighting corruption. The right was miffed that the Clinton administration let the Laborers clean house on their own rather than under the tutelage of the Justice Department, as was done with the Teamsters. One gadfly conservative organization, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), turned discrediting Luskin into its own personal crusade. They produced a highly unflattering 13-page report that set off a cascade of critical stories and editorials in the conservative press. Under the headline "Luskin's Ties to the New England/Patriarca Crime Family," the report documented a fishy episode wherein Luskin was forced to return $245,000 in legal fees that he received from a client named Stephen A. Saccoccia, who was sentenced to 660 years in prison for laundering South American drug-cartel and mob money. A U.S. attorney, accusing Luskin of "willful blindness," reasoned that, when Luskin started getting paid with solid gold bars (he ultimately received 45 of them, worth $505,125) and wire transfers from Swiss bank accounts, he should have known the payments were from illicit sources, especially since his client's crimes involved gold bars and wire transfers from Swiss bank accounts.
Many of the other anti-Luskin criticisms concerned alleged conflicts of interest stemming from his defense of several clients wrapped up in Clinton-related scandals. Luskin soon became a target of The Washington Times, Investor's Business Daily, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and The American Spectator, each arguing a version of the NLPC line that he was ethically unsuited for his job at the Laborers' Union.
But, by the end of the '90s, Luskin had established himself as a top-tier defense attorney. He abandoned his boutique law firm for the gilded hallways of Patton Boggs. Still, big-name Washington lawyers say he's not really part of the small clique of attorneys that seem to pop up during every investigation--people like Jacob Stein, Abbe Lowell, Plato Cacheris, Robert Bennett, and Reid Weingarten. "Let's just say that I haven't been in a case where he represented anyone," sniffs a member of Washington's legal royalty.
Luskin has represented Bush's strategist for months, but it was only in July, when the extent of Rove's role in the Plame case emerged, that the lawyer became a Beltway star. Previous legal celebrities, such as Ginsburg, became famous for their addiction to the cameras. Luskin has become famous for his word games. It is no surprise when a lawyer resorts to technicalities and evasions to defend his client. What sounds like an absurd defense and bad politics in the public arena may make perfect sense inside the courtroom. But Luskin's comments seem to be legally inept as well.
The Harvard alum and Rhodes scholar first started getting chatty with reporters back in December. He told the Chicago Tribune that the only way for the prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, to establish a pattern of wrongdoing by the Bushies was for him to drag reporters into the grand jury. "I don't see how you can conduct a leak investigation in a sensitive way," he said, sounding oddly detached from the case for someone whose client's fate was at stake. "You have to talk to everybody." Perhaps he was just sucking up to the prosecutor, but it seemed bizarre for Rove's attorney to publicly endorse a prosecutorial strategy that was tightening the noose around his client's throat.
Luskin then went virtually silent for seven months. But, on Saturday, July 2, Newsweek posted an online story naming Rove as the source Cooper had kept secret for two years. In the piece, Luskin first unveiled Rove's new defense. The strategist "never knowingly disclosed classified information," and "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA," Luskin insisted. The first statement was standard legal obfuscation. The arcane statute making it a crime to blow a CIA operative's cover emphasizes that the deed must be done knowingly. Luskin's second statement seemed like a blanket denial. But, on July 9, when Newsweek revealed an e-mail between Cooper and his editor stating that Rove mentioned Joe Wilson's wife, rather than Valerie Plame, the press realized that it was actually a weasely Clintonism.
But, before that revelation, Luskin tried to snow every reporter he came across. In a July 3 story, he told The Washington Post, "Karl didn't disclose Valerie Plame's identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else. ... Who outed this woman? ... It wasn't Karl." Maybe Luskin thought he was being technical and legalistic, but it's hard to see this statement as anything but a lie. For instance, one could say, "Karl Rove's lawyer accepted 45 gold bars worth $505,125 from a South American drug cartel." The statement does not actually mention Luskin's name, but even Luskin would have to agree it identifies him.
Luskin fed versions of the Rove-didn't-identify-Plame line to the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, but, on July 6, he made what seems to have been a mistake. Cooper was headed to prison last Wednesday, but, when his lawyer picked up that morning's Journal, just one sentence after Luskin's now-familiar fib was a bonus quote: "If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it's not Karl he's protecting." Cooper and his lawyer seized on that statement as evidence that Rove was willing to release the reporter from his pledge of confidentiality. In a phone call, Luskin acknowledged to Cooper's lawyer that the reporter was free to testify. If Luskin had kept his mouth shut, Cooper would have gone to prison and Rove might never have had to worry about him.
This episode launched an entirely new series of Luskinisms. Cooper publicly announced that his source had granted him consent to testify. Reporters naturally called Luskin to find out whether Rove was that source. No way, said Luskin. Rove had "not contacted Cooper about this matter," Luskin assured the Los Angeles Times. Get it? Rove didn't talk to Cooper. Their lawyers talked. What's bewildering about Luskin's evasion is that there was no legal rationale for it. After all, the prosecutor in the case knew exactly what had happened. When finally questioned by The Washington Post about this slipperiness, the lawyer was mum: "I'm not going to comment any further."
"I" might not have commented anymore, but "Luskin" continued to. In the course of one interview with the Los Angeles Times, Luskin both refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of Cooper's e-mail to his editor and used its contents as evidence of Rove's innocence.
Next, in the same article, there was Luskin's curious statement that Rove "was sharing what he knew but with the specific understanding it would not be disclosed." Luskin emphasized this important point by noting that, in the e-mail, which, according to him, may or may not be real, Cooper said he was speaking to Rove "on double super secret background," a phrase that Luskin apparently believes is an actual level of confidentiality taught at the Columbia School of Journalism rather than a jokey reference to the movie Animal House. (Dean Wormer famously put the Delta boys on double secret probation.)
Luskin has, in fact, developed a whole new strategy based on the double super secret background nature of the Cooper-Rove interview, a strategy that rests on the fact that Luskin doesn't quite get Cooper's sense of humor. On Tuesday, the lawyer earnestly defended Rove in an interview with National Review Online. "Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin told reporter Byron York, ironically the same journalist who once trashed Luskin in a 1997 American Spectator piece. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background." Call it the Dean Wormer defense.
I called Luskin to ask him about all this. But he never called me back. After his first two weeks in the spotlight, he doesn't seem to be talking to the press as much anymore, not even, it appears, on double super secret background. At least that will make life easier for those summer associates.
parados wrote:The CIA has asserted that there are terrorists who committed crimes.
The CIA has asserted that someone outed an undercover agent
Both are assertions based on facts known to the CIA
The CIA has not to my knowledge claimed that Rove commited a crime nor have they claimed that everyone at Gitmo is a terrorist.
Your argument fails because there is a difference between claiming a crime was committed and claiming someone committed that crime. I compared apples to apples you want to compare apples to oranges.
I fail to see a material distinction. You assert that we ought to trust the CIA when they say a law may have been committed, but not trust them when they say a particular person may have committed that crime. Why is that?
Either: (A) you trust the CIA and don't question the factual basis for their conclusions, or (B) you trust the CIA but do question the factual basis for their conclusions, or (C) you don't trust the CIA and question the factual basis for their conclusions.
Which describes you with regard to the Plame matter? With regard to the terrorists at Gitmo?
I'm not seeing this as comparing apples to oranges. We're talking about blind faith in the CIA ... It appears you're willing to rely on the CIA's expertise and authority, but only when it's convenient to you.
Back for more abuse I see, Fox.
Can you prove that this is what 'every' major news source is saying? I doubt it.
Perhaps that's because, as someone who has been watching the news a lot lately, I've seen some decidedly different stuff being written and said about this case than what Coulter is saying.
Why, I almost dare you to ask me for links; in fact, you can name pretty much any non-right wing nut job news source you want and I'm sure I can find a contradictory article or two to what that idiot Coulter is saying.
I also love the fact that Coulter refers to him as 'Clown' Wilson every time. I saw her on Hannity last night and she did the same thing 5 times. I mean, grow the f*ck up, seriously, Ann!
You should be embarassed that she holds the same positions as you do, and use that as a starting point to re-examine your life....
Cycloptichorn
The big difference is the known facts.. We know that the CIA asserted that a covert agent was revealed.
Provide your source of the CIA claiming everyone in Gitmo is a terrorist, preferably written on CIA letterhead.
Quote:The big difference is the known facts.. We know that the CIA asserted that a covert agent was revealed.
We know this is a fact? We have heard a high ranking CIA official say it? or has it been quoted with an inference that this was the intent? From what I've been reading from numerous sources, there is considerable question about that at this time.
Each one has his own set of facts supporting that conclusion, and no I don't know what those facts are. But the decision to detain them should be made upon an articulable set of facts, not merely because the CIA thinks they should be held indefinitely.
