President Bush: Is He a Liar?

I rest my case.

Make no mistake that this was a bold-faced lie. No doubt about it. BUT, it was a lie for a reason. To protect a top-scret security program used to collect data on terrorists and related activities.

People have their noses bent out of shape about it though because they feel violated. I can understand that. I don't want unwarranted intrusions into my life by the federal government either. BUT, on the other hand, I don't talk to terrorists and if they care about what I need to buy at walmart during lunch, then so be it. Just keep it a secret dammit!

McG, After admitting Bush told a "bold face lie," you had to go and apologize for Bush's breaking of our laws.

If you understand anything about the FISA law, he could wiretap almost anybody, and get court approval up to 72 hours after the fact.

You Bush Apologists just don't "get it."

Anyone (other than Tico, who has actually had to guts to take a stand on the matter) care to address the "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union Address?

Anyone?.... Bueller?.... Bueller?...

It is fun to see the big-time quibbling by the A2K Bush supporters. One even says that he had to lie to fool the terrorists. Wow, I bet that tricked them. Of course, Bush could have kept quiet rather than lie.

McG writes


I know I sound like an apologist for the President, but I've raked him over the coals on other issues enough lately I think to be able to defend him a bit on this issue.


I do think the President was dismayed that the media and then his enemies in Congress outed a classified program critical to national security. And I think he was making a conscious effort to not talk about it when that unfortunate statement about wiretapping was made. I am not at all convinced his intent was to lie about it. I think his intent was to not to talk about it. Once he had a chance to collect his thoughts and think about what to say about it, he was very clear and articulate that the government was not tapping into the country party line or your obligatory weekly call to Aunt Hortense.

I think we all know he is terrible at extemporaneous explanations, and everybody should give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

You seem to have the attention span and memory capacity of a goldfish. It has been addressed MANY, MANY times already. Go look it up.

Fox now talks about Bush's "intent" after so many missteps, lies, and incompetence. With a wife like you, I can do no wrong. LOL

Is there not a distinction between the court ordered wire-tapping, which is a more detailed focus on a certain individual after they are virtually confirmed to have very suspicious terrorist connections? This is what I would call the final phase of investigating terrorist communications.

Contrast this with an NSA program that simply looks at phone record patterns to find the suspicious ones, this I would call an initial phase. And this program is even up in the air as to whether it is even being done and how. Then what I will call a second phase that may include more specific sets of numbers and individuals but not yet focusing in on the most suspicious. This second phase may include roving and somewhat unspecificly targeted wiretaps rather than what is involved with the more specific final phase monitoring of definite suspects, which I mentioned first. This second phase is one that does not lend itself well to obtaining jillions of court orders in order to accomplish, and it is this activity for which Congress needs to examine and amend the laws to accomodate along with the necessary safeguards of oversight. The current laws are not adequate.

The distinction between roving wiretaps, if you can call them wiretaps, and final targeted and more detailed wiretaps with court orders, Bush simply fumbled the semantics and words. Whether it was a bold faced lie or not, I do not know that. If I am way off base in my general characterization and analysis of what is going on here in terms of wiretaps and the NSA, I would like to hear it.

I'm still waiting for a citation to the statement in which Bush says that Iraq had a direct role in 9/11. You can post that any time now.

McG, a terrorist would get no solace that his phone was tapped pursuant to a SECRET warrant, as opposed to no warrant. Give us a break.

Bush clearly lied to America.

Hey, way to show you have no understanding of how the program probably worked. Good job!

Thank you.

Libby Told Grand Jury Cheney Spoke of Plame
Vice President May Be Called as Witness

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 25, 2006; A01

Vice President Cheney was personally angered by a former U.S. ambassador's newspaper column attacking a key rationale for the war in Iraq and repeatedly directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then his chief of staff, to "get all the facts out" related to the critique, according to excerpts from Libby's 2004 grand jury testimony released late yesterday by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Libby also told the grand jury that Cheney raised as an issue that the former ambassador's wife worked at the CIA and that she allegedly played a role in sending him to investigate the Iraqi government's interest in acquiring nuclear weapons materials. That issue formed the basis of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's published critique.

In the court filing that included the formerly secret testimony, Fitzgerald did not assert that Cheney instructed Libby to tell reporters the name and role of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. But he said Cheney's interactions with Libby on that topic were a key part of the reason Libby allegedly made false statements to the FBI about his conversations with reporters around the time her name was disclosed in news accounts.

"The state of mind of the Vice President as communicated to defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about Ms. Wilson's employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue," he said.

The prosecutor also left open the possibility that Cheney will be called as a witness at Libby's trial, scheduled to begin next year, and denied an assertion last week by Libby's lawyers that Cheney would not be called.

Fitzgerald was appointed in late 2003 to investigate the disclosure of Plame's name to the media after the CIA complained that it was an illegal act because she was an undercover officer. His probe has led to a series of disclosures about efforts by the White House to rebut Wilson's published critique, but no official has been directly charged with leaking Plame's name.

Instead, Libby was accused of making false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury, mostly based on his statements that he did not confirm Plame's employment at the CIA and alleged involvement in Wilson's trip when he was talking with two journalists. Libby has denied wrongdoing and said in court filings that he may have forgotten what he said to the journalists because of the press of other business.

Fitzgerald, in contrast, has sought to build a case that Libby was preoccupied with the task of rebutting Wilson's July 2003 column, which accused the White House of twisting intelligence to support its invasion of Iraq -- and that this preoccupation stemmed from Cheney's intense focus on Wilson's assertions. While yesterday's filing largely concerned a side issue -- whether Libby's attorneys are entitled to see more government documents -- it provided the first detailed look at what Libby told investigators about his interactions with Cheney on this issue.

According to the excerpts from testimony on March 5, 2004, Libby recalled that he and Cheney discussed Wilson's article on multiple occasions each day after it appeared. Cheney, Libby said, "often will cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife that he has" and "look at it, think about it."

That's what Cheney did with the column, Libby said, because Cheney saw it as attacking his credibility. "He wanted to get all the facts out about what he had or hadn't done, what the facts were or were not. He was very keen about that and said it repeatedly. Let's get everything out," Libby testified.

A previous court filing by Fitzgerald revealed that Cheney had annotated his copy of the column with this question about Wilson: "Did his wife send him on a junket?" Cheney's defense lawyers said in a subsequent filing that Libby had testified he never saw those annotations until the FBI showed him a copy. In Libby's actual testimony, as released by Fitzgerald, he said, "It's possible if it was sitting on his desk that, you know, my eye went across it."

An apparently key issue to be contested at trial is precisely when these conversations took place: Did they occur before or after Libby's discussions with reporters that included Plame's name? And did Libby have reason -- as his attorneys have asserted -- to forget some of what Cheney said about Plame and her employment at the CIA?

The grand jury excerpts record Libby as saying at one point that he did not recall Cheney asking about the Plame connection "early on . . . although he may well have." Libby also said that he did not recall such a discussion with Cheney before he heard Plame's name from reporter Tim Russert -- a conversation that Russert has disputed in his own testimony.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

I think the firing squad would be appropriate for the treasonous bastards who outed Plame.

cicerone, you keep switching subjects. You make allegations but when you are asked for proof, you go onto the next one.

P.S. I sympathize with Cheney. I'm glad he got the word out about Wilson and his little vendetta. By the way, for the umpteenth time, has Fitzgerald ever claimed a law was broken in outing Plame? To my knowledge, NO, so if your answer is no, quit wasting tax payers money on your worthless investigation Fitz. If yes, get it on please.

A firing squad would be too generous for a group that got us into an illegal war that's killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, over 2,400 of our soldiers, and some two billion every week this war is extended.

Tim McVeigh looks like a saint in comparison.

If he lied to a federal investigator, then it's a crime. Even if he's merely a witness in an entirely separate matter.

Fitz stated strongly that there can be no justice if people are permitted to lie. Thus, he intends to go after those, like Libby, who lied to investigators and the grand jury. It is hardly a waste of money.

BTW, there may still be indictments regarding outing a classified CIA employee.

C I and Advocate are so far behind on these issues, I wonder if we should take up a collection to buy them a newspaper subscription?