Pat Roberts, Congenital Liar

[deminks]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/pat-roberts-congenital-li_b_5897396.html

Does Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican from Kansas, live in Kansas? That's the issue that's tripped him up as he runs for reelection. But I have known for a decade where he really lives. Like Dorothy, he is no longer in Kansas anymore. Like Oz, he is a charlatan. He lives in a land of lies and deception of his own making.

(snip)

Roberts' habit of playing fast and loose with the truth may come as a surprise to Kansans, but not to those who followed his performance during the George W. Bush administration as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. His behavior as a senator has been a study of deception in the conduct of the nation's business that borders on dereliction of duty. Rather than diligently overseeing the activities of the intelligence community, the mandate of the committee, Roberts abused his position to cover up the administration's egregious lies and misdeeds that took us to a disastrous war, as well as to slander those who brought inconvenient facts to the attention of the public. For years, he was nothing more than Dick Cheney's poodle. He protected those elements of the CIA following the Bush-Cheney orders on torture, as the soon-to-be published Senate torture report under Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) will make clear. It was Roberts who let it all happen. It was Roberts who aided and abetted the assault on the reliability of the intelligence community. It was Roberts who failed his duty, besmirched the honor of the Senate and undermined the nation's values.

On a personal note, it should be remembered that Roberts wrote the dishonest and libelous "Additional Views of Chairman Pat Roberts" to the Senate Report on the Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Not only did he attempt to divert attention from the lies spewed by the Bush-Cheney administration as well as his own abject failure of leadership of his own committee; he also clearly tried to influence a federal investigation into the criminal betrayal of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, my wife.

(snip)

Instead, Roberts opted to use the report and his additional comments to defend the Bush-Cheney White House by defaming me and trying to sabotage the investigation into the leak of Valerie's identity. Predictably, proving that even a blind pig can sometimes find the acorn, a Wall Street Journal editorial from the period seized on his calculated slander to pressure the Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald to "fold up his tent."

(snip)

In this election season, with the hyper-partisan Kansas Secretary of State and the panicked Republican Party doing everything they can to save Roberts from the consequences of his lies, Kansans are correct to question the integrity of their senior senator. I learned a decade ago that he has none.

(end snip)

Thank you, Ambassador Wilson. We must never forget what Roberts has done.