Utopia 2025Fitzgerald made it clear, from the very start of his press conference, that Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA officer was CLASSIFIED.
CLASSIFIED.
He also made it clear that Libby leaked the info to Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, and lied about it.
Clear enough, wingnut bastards? OK. Great.
CLASSIFIED.
And lying about it is a serious crime, not a “technicality.”
“Truth is the engine of our justice system.”
-Patrick Fitzgerald
Stolen from This Modern World.
On many political web sites I frequent, both liberal and conservative, I find time and time again liberals patiently explaining obvious truths to clueless/venal righties. Then they do it again. And again. These liberals are beginning to resemble friendly Labrador retrievers who will bring the tennis ball back indefinitely, until they finally collapse in exhaustion.
Some of the truths we have to explain over and over:
-Valerie Plame was a NOC.
-Bill Bennett and some random liberal crank are not the same thing.
-Saddam didn’t try to get tons of uranium from Niger for his non-existent nuclear program.
-Protest and celebration are not the same thing.
-If perjury was a crime then, it’s not a “technicality” now.
-The Flight 98 memorial is not a secret Muslim plot.
This game of Whack-a-Mole with patently obvious truths reflects badly on both sides. The right willingly believes as many falsehoods as necessary to keep their heads from exploding with cognitive dissonance (think “Scanners”). But even worse, the left takes the bait – again and again and again.
Stop taking the bait.
Democratic Underground is right: Cheney is vulnerable, which is the only reason the Washington Post could see fit to write “Vice President for Torture.”
The DU poster put it succinctly, and correctly: the man is a monster.
On a side note: it was odd last night to see the fictional female U.S. President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) dealing with one of those perfect hypotheticals that pro-torture people love throwing around: you have a suspect in custody with specific knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks, and no time for traditional police work. It’s Dick Cheney’s wet dream, frankly. And they played all the angles by having the President call for doing everything short of torture, while the evil Attorney General ordered torture behind the President’s back. So they got the results of torture (the amazingly correct intel), while keeping the President’s hands clean. Neat trick.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (wait for it…..R-Texas) believes that perjury (lying to a grand jury) is a “technicality.”
Funny how Republicans spent the 90s screaming about the “rule of law” until they were blue in the face when it came to Bill Clinton, but when it’s Dubya and his cronies, perjury is a “technicality.” Nice.
To be fair, Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, while Rove and Libby lied about exposing a covert CIA operative in time of war. Not the same thing at all!
The blowjob is worse, of course.
“Won’t someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”
-Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons
Cheney cabal hijacked U.S. foreign policy
I love the word “cabal.”
Senators say Miers’ answers “incomplete to insulting”
Harriet’s making friends wherever she goes these days.
Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
Was there any doubt the President knew all along what was happening? No.
Texas court issues warrant for DeLay
I admit my love for schadenfreude.
No quorum for Santorum
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
In a comment thread on Balloon Juice about the Frontline report on U.S. use of torture in the Iraq war:
I just finished watching Frontline and all I can say is I am sure glad that we ignored the Geneva Convention because without doing so we never would have found those stockpiles of WMDs.
Oh.
“You’d think after five years they’d start running out of ways to suck.”
-Atrios commenter
You’d think so. But you’d be wrong.
The left-wing media is positively giddy over the prospect of multiple indictments on the Plame investigation, thought by many to be widening out into an investigation of the selling of the Iraq war by the Bush administration. But I confess I can’t get excited about this. They’ve weaseled out of so much over the last five years, why should this be any different? And if they do get out of it, it’ll just be another cudgel to beat their opponents over the head with. “Look at what those damn liberals did! Criminalization of politics!” etc. etc.
I’m in another of those periods where none of it seems to matter. Go ahead, put Jerry Falwell on the Supreme Court. Imprison Muslim Americans in concentration camps. Invade China. Elect a four-slice toaster to be President. At this point, I just don’t care.