DrewDad wrote:I know...
"My side won! My side won!"
Er... aren't we all on the same side? America's side? Winning the election is just the job interview.
And when you want the country to do well, you hope the best candidate for the job wins. I'm thankful neither Gore or Kerry won, because I think they would have been disastrous.
While I'm sure you don't agree with me, I've learned to live with your disagreement.
How, exactly, would things have been worse if Kerry or Gore had won?
Specifically.
Cycloptichorn
It would be virtually impossible to do worse than Bush. Al Sharpton would have done a much better job than Bush.
ADMINISTRATION
Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks
By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, April 6, 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court [PDF] on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.
Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the President through the Vice President" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate.
Policy Council: Sponsored Links
Position papers, expert contacts and other resources from Policy Council members are available below.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the President through the Vice President" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was "unique in his recollection," the court papers further said.
Libby also testified that an administration lawyer told him that Bush, by authorizing the disclosure of classified information, had in effect declassified the information. Legal experts disagree on whether the president has the authority to declassify information on his own.
The White House had no immediate reaction to the court filing.
Although not reflected in the court papers, two senior government officials said in interviews with National Journal in recent days that Libby has also asserted that Cheney authorized him to leak classified information to a number of journalists during the run-up to war with Iraq. In some instances, the information leaked was directly discussed with the Vice President, while in other instances Libby believed he had broad authority to release information that would make the case to go to war.
In yet another instance, Libby had claimed that President Bush authorized Libby to speak to and provide classified information to Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward for "Plan of Attack," a book written by Woodward about the run-up to the Iraqi war.
Bush and Cheney authorized the release of the information regarding the NIE in the summer of 2003, according to court documents, as part of a damage-control effort undertaken only days after former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged in an op-ed in The New York Times that claims by Bush that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger were most likely a hoax.
According to the court papers, "At some point after the publication of the July 6 Op Ed by Mr. Wilson, Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate supervisor, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife."
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA officer at the time, and Cheney, Libby, and other Bush administration officials believed that Wilson's allegations could be discredited if it could be shown that Plame had suggested that her husband be sent on the CIA-sponsored mission to Niger.
Two days after Wilson's op-ed, Libby met with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and not only disclosed portions of the NIE, but also Plame's CIA employment and potential role in her husband's trip.
Regarding that meeting, Libby "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance... to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller" because Vice President Cheney believed it to be "very important" to do so, the court papers filed Wednesday said. The New York Sun reported the court filing on its Web site early Thursday.
Libby "further testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," the court papers said. Libby "testified that the Vice President had advised [Libby] that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose relevant portions of the NIE."
Additionally, Libby "testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then counsel to the Vice President, whom [Libby] considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."
Addington succeeded Libby as Cheney's chief of staff after Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 28, 2005 on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice in attempting to conceal his role in outing Plame as an undercover CIA operative.
Four days after the meeting with Miller, on July 12, 2003, Libby spoke again to Miller, and also for the first time with Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper, during which Libby spoke to both journalists about Plame's CIA employment and her possible role in sending her husband to Niger.
Regarding those conversations, Libby understood that the Vice President specifically selected him to "speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson," the court papers said. Libby also testified, Fitzgerald asserted in the court papers, that "at the time of his conversations with Miller and Cooper, he understood that only three people -- the President, the Vice President and [Libby] -- knew that the key judgments of the NIE had been declassified.
"[Libby] testified in the grand jury that he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms. Miller, other key officials-including Cabinet level officials-were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson's trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003." It is unclear from the court papers what the January 24, 2003 document might be.
During those very same conversations with the press that day Libby "discussed Ms. Wilson's CIA employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time)," the court papers further said.
Although the special prosecutor's grand jury investigation has not uncovered any evidence that the Vice President encouraged Libby to release information about Plame's covert CIA status, the court papers said that Cheney had "expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife."
Cheney told investigators that he had learned of Plame's employment by the CIA and her potential role in her husband being sent to Niger by then-CIA director George Tenet, according to people familiar with Cheney's interviews with the special prosecutor.
Tenet has told investigators that he had no specific recollection of discussing Plame or her role in her husband's trip with Cheney, according to people with familiar with his statement to investigators.
Two senior government officials said that Tenet did recall, however, that he made inquiries regarding the veracity of the Niger intelligence information as a result of inquires from both Cheney and Libby. As a result of those inquiries, Tenet then had the CIA conduct a new review of its Niger intelligence, and concluded that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had in fact attempted to purchase uranium from Niger or other African nations. Tenet and other CIA officials then informed Cheney, other administration officials, and the congressional intelligence committees of the new findings, the sources said.
Six days after Libby's conversation with Cooper and Miller regarding Plame, on July 18, 2003, the Bush administration formally declassified portions of the NIE on Iraqi weapons programs in an effort to further blunt the damage of Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration misused the faulty Niger intelligence information to make the case to go to war. It is unclear whether the information that Bush and Cheney were said to authorize Libby to disclose was the same information that was formally declassified.
One former senior government official said that both the president and Cheney, in directing Libby to disclose classified information to defend the administration's case to go to war with Iraq and in formally declassifying portions of the NIE later, were misusing the classification process for political reasons.
The official said that while the administration declassified portions of the NIE that would appear exculpatory to the White House, it insisted that a one-page summary of the NIE which would have suggested that the President mischaracterized other intelligence information to go to war remain classified.
As National Journal recently disclosed, the one-page summary of the NIE told Bush that although "most agencies judge" that an Iraqi procurement of aluminum tubes was "related to a uranium enrichment effort", the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."
Despite receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
The former senior official said in an interview that he believed that the attempt to conceal the contents of the one-page summary were intertwined with the efforts to declassify portions of the NIE and to leak information to the media regarding Plame: "It was part and parcel of the same effort, but people don't see it in that context yet."
Although the court papers filed Wednesday revealed that Libby had testified that Bush and Cheney had authorized him to disclose details of the NIE, two other senior government officials said in interviews that Libby had asserted that Cheney had more broadly authorized him to leak classified information to a number of journalists during the run-up to war with Iraq as part of an administration effort to make the case to go to war.
In another instance, Libby had claimed that Bush authorized Libby to speak to and provide classified information to Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward for "Plan of Attack."
Other former senior government officials said that Bush directed people to assist Woodward in the book's preparation: "There were people on the Seventh Floor [of the CIA] who were told by Tenet to cooperate because the President wanted it done. There were calls to people to by [White House communication director] Dan Bartlett that the President wanted it done, if you were not co-operating. And sometimes the President himself told people that they should co-operate," said one former government official.
It is unclear whether Libby will argue during his upcoming trial that these other authorizations by both the President and Vice President show that he did not engage in misconduct by disclosing Plame's CIA status to reporters, or that he considered these other authorizations giving him broad authority to make other disclosures.
Fitzgerald has apparently avoided questioning Libby, other government officials, and journalists about other potential leaks of classified information to the media, according to attorneys who have represented witnesses to the special prosecutor's probe. Outside legal experts said this might be due to the fact that other authorized leaks might aid Libby's defense, and because Fitzgerald did not want to question reporters about other contacts with Libby because of First Amendment concerns.
In a Feb. 17, 2006 letter to John D. Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., wrote that he believed that disclosures in Woodward's book damaged national security. "According to [Woodward's] account, he was provided information related to sources and methods, extremely sensitive covert actions, and foreign intelligence liaison services."
Woodward's book contains, for example, a detailed account of a January 25, 2003 briefing that Libby provided to senior White House staff to make the case that Saddam Hussein had aggressive programs underway to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
Two former government officials said in interviews that the account provided sensitive intelligence information that had not been cleared for release. The book referred to intercepts by the National Security Agency of Iraqi officials that purportedly showed that Iraq was engaging in weapons of mass destruction program.
Much of the information presented by Libby at the senior White House staff meeting was later discarded by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and then-CIA Director George Tenet as unreliable, and would not have either otherwise been made public.
One former senior official said: "They [the leakers] might have tipped people to our eavesdropping capacities, and other serious sources and methods issues. But to what end? The information was never presented to the public because it was bunk in the first place."
In the letter to Negroponte, Sen. Rockefeller complained: "I [previously] wrote both former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet and Acting DCI John McLaughlin seeking to determine what steps were being taken to address the appalling disclosures in [Woodward's book]. The only response that I received was to indicate that the leaks had been authorized by the Administration."
-- Previous coverage of pre-war intelligence and the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas. Brian Beutler provided research assistance for this report.
While Bush has the power to declassify, he cannot negate the constitutional provision on treason. Undoubtedly, he and his cohorts provided aid and comfort to our enemies.
Cycloptichorn wrote:How, exactly, would things have been worse if Kerry or Gore had won?
Specifically.
Cycloptichorn
Specifically because Gore and Kerry would have been the President.
Sheesh!
Cyclo wrote:
How, exactly, would things have been worse if Kerry or Gore had won?
Specifically.
Cycloptichorn
You're not going to get any answer worth much; they base their opinion on the "fear of the unknown." They just ignore the fear of the present occupant of the white house; killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. If that isn't "fearful," I don't know what is.
And another icredible idiotic hypothetical which cannot be proven( because it did not happen) is that, according to the Tories in the Eighteenth Century, the USA would have been much better off under the rule of the King of Great Britain.
Another Bush LIE: "the United States is transparent."
See Glenn Greenwald:
Quote:Snapshots of the U.S. under the Bush administration
Several articles and events over the past couple of days provide a thorough picture of what the U.S. is becoming, and has become, under the Bush administration:
Increasingly, there is simply no role for courts to review the President's actions, nor for citizens to challenge the legality and constitutionality of those actions. A month or so ago I wrote about the administration's rapidly increasing use of the "state secrets privilege" -- once a rarely invoked weapon used by the Government to prevent litigation from exposing critical national security secrets, but now something which the Bush administration routinely exploits to prevent any legal challenge to its behavior. As lawyer Henry Lanman details in Slate today:
Never heard of the "state secrets" privilege? You're not alone. But the Bush administration sure has. Before Sept. 11, this obscure privilege was invoked only rarely. Since then, the administration has dramatically increased its use. According to the Washington Post, the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press reported that while the government asserted the privilege approximately 55 times in total between 1954 (the privilege was first recognized in 1953) and 2001, it's asserted it 23 times in the four years after Sept. 11. For an administration as obsessed with secrecy as this one is, the privilege is simply proving to be too powerful a tool to pass up.
The Bush administration has now invoked this doctrine in virtually every pending legal proceeding devoted to challenging the legality of the warrantless NSA eavesdropping program - all but assuring, yet again, that no court can rule on the legality of that program. The administration also just used the same tactic to compel dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who alleges -- with the support of German prosecutors -- that the U.S. Government abducted him, drugged him, flew him to multiple different torture-using countries as part of the administration's "rendition" program, only to then release him after five months when the U.S. realized it had abducted the wrong person. There is no dispute about the accuracy of El-Masri's allegations:
This year, German investigators confirmed most of Masri's allegations, which have received extensive publicity in Europe.
In December, during a joint news conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Rice had admitted the mistake.
But no matter. The Bush administration believes that its actions -- like the court of the British King -- are above being scrutinized by some lowly federal court or subjected to principles of law intended only for plebeians. As courts almost always do, the Federal Judge in El-Masri's case deferred to the administration's "state secrets" claim and dismissed the lawsuit. The Bush administration used the same maneuver last year to compel "dismissal of a lawsuit by a Canadian citizen who claimed that he was taken to Syria by U.S. officials for detention and was tortured."
So the Bush administration goes around the world abducting other countries' citizens and torturing them. It then claims that the legality of its actions cannot be judged by anyone -- even American federal courts -- because American national security would be harmed if its actions were subjected to such review. Under the circumstances, it is so very difficult to understand why the rest of the world mocks, ridicules, and scoffs at the Bush administration's lectures to the world about principles of freedom and democracy, along with the administration's belief that it can even invade other countries around the world in order to impose what it understands to be "freedom and democracy."
Yesterday, President Bush gave a speech in Chicago on immigration and the "war on terror," and took questions afterwards. In response to a question about Venezuela and Bolivia (where the new leftist Government has begun nationalizing oil and gas resources, including breaking contracts with and expelling Latin American companies), the President issued this lecture to South America:
I am going to continue to remind our hemisphere that respect for property rights and human rights is essential for all countries in order for there to be prosperity and peace. I'm going to remind our allies and friends in the neighborhood that the United States of America stands for justice; that when we see poverty, we care about it and we do something about it; that we care for good -- we stand for good health care.
I'm going to remind our people that meddling in other elections is -- to achieve a short-term objective is not in the interests of the neighborhood. . . . I want to remind people that the United States stands against corruption at all levels of government, that the United States is transparent. The United States expects the same from other countries in the neighborhood, and we'll work toward them.
Thank you very much. I'm concerned -- let me just put it bluntly -- I'm concerned about the erosion of democracy in the countries you mentioned.
Who has less credibility to deliver these sermons to the world than George Bush? The stories of the U.S. abducting people, torturing them, and then blocking any judicial review of its behavior are read around the world. Photographs from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are ingrained in the minds of anyone around the world with a television set, as is the Bush administration's insistence that it is unbound by the Geneva Conventions and legal prohibitions on the use of torture. The threat by Alberto Gonzales over the weekend to imprison American journalists was reported prominently in international newspapers, as are stories of the U.S. Government eavesdropping on its own citizens in secret, the creation of secret Eastern European prisons, and the general lawlessness which has prevailed in this country since September 11.
In Brazil last week, an organized crime faction in São Paolo launched a wave of extremely violent, terrorist-like attacks on the city's police stations, banks, hospitals, and transportation systems, killing scores of police officers and creating havoc in that city for days. In response, the São Paolo Police engaged in what appears to be all sorts of reprisals against the gangs, including summary executions and indiscriminate killings of male youths in the gangs' principal neighborhoods.
The ensuing debate among Brazilians almost invariably emphasized the need to avoid giving into the emotional temptation to engage in extreme behavior, violate human rights, and abandon any principles of restraint in responding to the gang attacks. And, by far, the most commonly cited example of the dangers of those temptations is the manner in which the U.S. responded to the 9/11 attacks -- by torturing people, invading countries with no connection to the attacks, and generally abandoning the principles and values which had previously defined the country's sense of justice. When one wants to illustrate the hazards of abandoning all restraint in the face of an outrageous act, the U.S. is the example which now most readily springs to minds around the world.
As we lecture the world about the need for transparency and democracy, and as we continue to proclaim that our foreign policy is based principally on the objective of spreading our ideas about democracy to other countries -- even by military invasion, if necessary -- the U.S. has become a symbol of human rights abuses and anti-democratic measures around the world. We have squandered almost every molecule of moral credibility which we justifiably possessed for most of the 20th Century, particularly since World War II. In so many ways during the last five years, we have become a country which engages in those very practices which always characterized other countries, the ones we were grateful not to live in because they failed to protect the liberties and principles which defined the United States.
A detailed profile in this week's U.S. News & World Report of David Addington, Dick Cheney's top advisor who is a sightly more extreme version of John Yoo, provides the perfect snapshot which conveys why this has all happened:
Whether or not he became the de facto leader of the group, as some administration officials say, Addington's involvement made for a formidable team. "You put Addington, Yoo, and Gonzales in a room, and there was a race to see who was tougher than the rest and how expansive they could be with respect to presidential power," says a former Justice Department official. "If you suggested anything less, you were considered a wimp."
The crux of the Bush administration for the last five years has basically been a competition of contrived, cheap manliness where the winner is he who can wage the most aggressive and fundamental war on American principles of government which have defined our country since its founding. Vesting increased power in the Commander-in-Chief and compiling ever-increasing powers of secrecy have been the only two principles with any recognized value. Those most steadfastly loyal to those two objectives have flourished and consolidated power. As a result, the role of the judiciary and the Congress in our system of government has never been smaller, while the power of the President has never been greater. And the greatest enemy of the administration are checks and balances of any kind -- whether from Congress, the courts or the media.
BernardR wrote: . . . Who Is Lying About Iraq?
Norman Podhoretz . . . .
[blah, blah, blah] . . . [o]f all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration . . . .
[blah, blah, blah] . . . All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam's stockpile of WMD.
BR, a/k/a Mortrat:
Your counter-commentary boils down to Clinton (bad) and Bush (good) even though he wasn't telling the truth because, gosh darn, the incompetent warmonger thought he was telling the truth.
The "good faith" defense (gee, I thought I was telling the truth) to intentional deception doesn't apply when the deceiver could have, through due diligence, ascertained the truth if he wanted to do so.
We have overwhelming evidence that Bush cherry-picked and shared information that appeared to support his war agenda and ignored and buried all other information that discredited his war agenda.
Bush was determined to make war against Iraq and he made it happen with his lies.
Is Bush a LIAR? Yes he is.
Case closed.
Too bad I can't make that whole post my signature. Maybe that way some people would be forced to read and remeber what it says. Too bad that in a week, C.I. will be posting the same sewage from the same sources and claiming "It's all a lie! ZOMG!!!11!"
McG, Your claim that what I posted are lies doesn't cut it. Show us what claims are lies. Your sweeping declaration that they are lies doesn't work with people who can think.
Tom Sawyer's white-washing of the fence is fiction, and so is your charge that what I posted are lies. Grow up!
Yep. Due diligence was definitely on vacation during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion.
Would that we could sue, like stockholders.
Thank you BernardR. Most of it I had heard, but much forgotten, so thanks for refreshing my memory. The reason I have intuitively known the Democrats are wrong on all of this is because I followed the news as it happened. Researching all of this and participating on a forum like this, I can only devote a relatively small amount of time, so I thank you BernardR for the article that reminds us of all of this.
I have said it before but I will say it again, the campaign to spin Bush as a liar and rewrite history has to be one of the dirtiest political tricks I have ever witnessed in my entire life. War is not fun. We should not all agree to send our young men there, then half the politicians turn tail, all for political gain, while claiming they were duped. Sorry, it doesn't wash for some of us. Our memories are too clear. When you have politicians that vote for a war, then turn around and stab the president in the back, and the country in the back, nobody should have any use for them. They are worse than the worst. And the willing accomplices in the media are just as responsible for this political trick.
Okie, take a pill and go to bed.
okie wrote:Thank you BernardR. Most of it I had heard, but much forgotten, so thanks for refreshing my memory. The reason I have intuitively known the Democrats are wrong on all of this is because I followed the news as it happened.
What a coincidence, I followed all of this as it happened too. I remember thinking, this sounds exaggerated, it doesn't ring true, why is Iraq suddenly a priority, and why is invasion necessary? What about all the years of sanctions and bombings? Just because Iraq can't provide evidence that the weapons were destroyed, doesn't mean they weren't. But mostly, I remember thinking they wouldn't find anything when they got there. Those of us who thought this whole thing stunk to high heaven from the getgo are not attempting to rewrite history, we are attempting to remind the rest of you of it. Tall claims were made to justify the ultimate sacrifice. We are/were talking about war, invasion, and occupation. Death and destruction ought not to be initiated so that we can achieve an unreasonable standard of certainty about whether or not some two-bit dictator has chemical weapons that he can't reach us with anyway.
And you make a huge mistake, okie, when you assume that it's only Democrats who think we were, at the least, misled. If the president was misled too, that's too bad, but he has all the power, the resources, and the obligation to get it right -- before committing our resources and the lives of our soldiers and the lives of Iraqi's who could give two shits about our war of terror, to war and occupation. As if only partisans can tell when they're being sold a load of crap.
