American Pie 3: Cheney puts his staff in it
Cheney OK'd leak in CIA case
"No comment" is a good response to hear from our current administration. It means they haven't had time to think of a good lie, or semi-truth, yet.
And that's the response from Dick Cheney's and Scooter Libby's lawyers and White House spokeslemming Scott McClellan on the report that Cheney gave approval for Libby to leak Valerie Plame's identity, who was an active CIA agent at the time, in order to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for pointing out that we had no justification for starting the war in Iraq.
When Bush stated in 2003 that he would seek out and punish anyone who leaked national security information, he was just telling the people what they wanted to hear. He didn't really mean it. Kinda like when he said he'd reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He was just generalizing.
At least that's what his Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the day after dubyas State of the disUnion address last week.
Such is the case in the Valerie Plame case. Bush vowed to bring to justice anyone who was involved in outing the CIA agent, which is a treasonable offense. When Scooter Libby was indicted, he changed it to punishing anyone who broke the law.
Judging from this administration's more-than-loose interpretation of the law regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), it's got to be pretty hard to break the law when you can bend it into an unrecognizable form.
Now that his number two man, Dick Cheney, is implicated, the law will become a shadow of its former self - vaguely reconizable as a law, yet totally unrelated to its intent, which was supposed to prevent jeapordizing national security by revealing our covert agents, and therefore placing agents and entire operations at risk.
How's that for jeapordizing up the war on terra, just to cover their backsides?
Why was there no surveillance on these activities? Obviously it posed a risk to our national security. Is it because there were no parties that were officially tied to Al Qaeda operatives? What about Bush? Didn't he have personal friends in the Bin Laden family? Surely the web of surveillance covered this relationship. And if not, why not?
To the unitiated, this may seem curious. But to anyone who understands the policy of self-preservation, its obvious how the commander-in-chief can limit the scope of the investigation to exclude any embarrassing illuminations. Kinda like how members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the country, without being questioned, immediately following 9/11, that horrendous event that our illustrious leader is so prone to exploit whenever he needs to inflame fear in order to divert attention from his illegal and immoral activities.
So now we wait to see where the administration goes from here. Do they try to portray the traitorous activities of the VP as patriotic actions (anyone who's against the war is against America), or as justifiable actions against the enemy (dissent = aid and comfort to the enemy)?
It'll be interesting to see how they twist this one to say that it was anything but illegal and traitorous. But they've done it before.
And that's what's scary.
"No comment" is a good response to hear from our current administration. It means they haven't had time to think of a good lie, or semi-truth, yet.
And that's the response from Dick Cheney's and Scooter Libby's lawyers and White House spokeslemming Scott McClellan on the report that Cheney gave approval for Libby to leak Valerie Plame's identity, who was an active CIA agent at the time, in order to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for pointing out that we had no justification for starting the war in Iraq.
When Bush stated in 2003 that he would seek out and punish anyone who leaked national security information, he was just telling the people what they wanted to hear. He didn't really mean it. Kinda like when he said he'd reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He was just generalizing.
"It was an example"
At least that's what his Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the day after dubyas State of the disUnion address last week.
Such is the case in the Valerie Plame case. Bush vowed to bring to justice anyone who was involved in outing the CIA agent, which is a treasonable offense. When Scooter Libby was indicted, he changed it to punishing anyone who broke the law.
Judging from this administration's more-than-loose interpretation of the law regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), it's got to be pretty hard to break the law when you can bend it into an unrecognizable form.
Now that his number two man, Dick Cheney, is implicated, the law will become a shadow of its former self - vaguely reconizable as a law, yet totally unrelated to its intent, which was supposed to prevent jeapordizing national security by revealing our covert agents, and therefore placing agents and entire operations at risk.
How's that for jeapordizing up the war on terra, just to cover their backsides?
Why was there no surveillance on these activities? Obviously it posed a risk to our national security. Is it because there were no parties that were officially tied to Al Qaeda operatives? What about Bush? Didn't he have personal friends in the Bin Laden family? Surely the web of surveillance covered this relationship. And if not, why not?
To the unitiated, this may seem curious. But to anyone who understands the policy of self-preservation, its obvious how the commander-in-chief can limit the scope of the investigation to exclude any embarrassing illuminations. Kinda like how members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the country, without being questioned, immediately following 9/11, that horrendous event that our illustrious leader is so prone to exploit whenever he needs to inflame fear in order to divert attention from his illegal and immoral activities.
So now we wait to see where the administration goes from here. Do they try to portray the traitorous activities of the VP as patriotic actions (anyone who's against the war is against America), or as justifiable actions against the enemy (dissent = aid and comfort to the enemy)?
It'll be interesting to see how they twist this one to say that it was anything but illegal and traitorous. But they've done it before.
And that's what's scary.
posted by Wyld Card at
6:41 AM
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