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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:03 PM
Original message
Bush is JUST like OJ
OJ said he'd go after the "real killers."

Then, he went to play golf.

Bush said he'd go after the "real leakers."

Then he went on vacation.

The only difference between them is Bush is a traitor for exposing Valerie Plame and her network at Brewster, Jennings & Assoc as well as their counterproliferation work. Then bullying all who opposed him into doing what he wants, probably through illegal wiretaps, and then starting an illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Afghanistan, too, for that matter.



Margaret Carlson , who was a columnist and deputy Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.

Bush's Search for Leakers Leads to His Mirror

by Margaret Carlson

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, former chief of staff and close confidante to the vice president, looked into the maw of a grand jury and disgorged words that few thought could be squeezed out of him.

Libby told the grand jury, according to court documents obtained by the New York Sun, that he was authorized by President George W. Bush, through Vice President Dick Cheney, to spill classified information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. This Libby did, on July 8, 2003, over drinks at the St. Regis Hotel, a few blocks north of the White House.

At the time, the Bush administration was shaken by revelations undermining its carefully constructed justification for going to war with Iraq. The latest blow had come two days earlier from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who wrote an op-ed piece disputing the White House claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. Wilson had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the intelligence reports on which the claim was based.

To strike back, the president wanted to reveal to the one reporter who had proved her willingness to serve as an administration scribe the section of the National Intelligence Estimate that said Saddam had ``probably'' tried to secure such fuel.

No Denials

By not denying Libby's bombshell, the White House last week more or less confirmed that the person the president swore would be punished for leaking classified information was himself, and that his oft-stated wish to find the leaker, in a bad parody of O.J. Simpson, had been achieved.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&sid=aA0KoKrk5.Ec&refer=columnist_carlson



Crazy Monkey
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Sydnie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:07 PM
Response to Original message
1. Kick n/t
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:13 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. You know, Smirko IS psycho.
The little turd from Crawford holds either a psychopathic personality or a sociopathic one

Perhaps, both.



Is George W. Bush Psychotic?

Posted by Dr. Robert D. Fischer under Politics

EXCERPT...

Psychosis Defined:

But, what precisely does the term “psychosis” mean?

Psychosis, in psychological language, is a condition in which a person isn’t in contact with reality like most people.
Psychosis can take many forms, it can include:

• Having beliefs that aren’t based on reality (delusions)
• Sensing things that aren’t really there (hallucinations)
• Living in a private (separate and imaginary) reality
• Having problems thinking clearly
• Having problems speaking in clear, meaningful sentences
• Not realizing that there is anything wrong with oneself (lack of insight)
In psychiatry there are a number of disorders that come under the general title of the psychoses. They all differ in symptoms, but all are joined in the fact that the person is in someway not experiencing reality like most people.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/simplepsych/psychosis.html>
Now, let’s compare George W. Bush’s public behavior with the symptoms above.

1- Delusions: Channeling God

Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, quotes other Republicans who have concluded that Bush believes – or at least gives the impression he believes – that his judgments are directed by God.

“I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do,” said Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official in the first Bush administration. “He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.”

Believing that you are a messenger of God is a classical example of a delusion.

CONTINUED...

http://www.mgx.com/blogs/2005/12/21/is-george-w-bush-psychotic/



Most importantly: Thanks for the kick to the backsides of the BFEE, Sydnie!

Smirko McCokespoon
Project P.U.L.L. graduate
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Sydnie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:39 PM
Response to Reply #2
9. You know Octafish, I vote for both
I think he is more than a psychopathic personality or a sociopathic one, I think he has gone around the bend completely. AT least with Nixon, those around him KNEW he was batshit crazy and took measures to see that he was somewhat contained when it really started to go south. But with his beyotch ... they don't think there is anything wrong with his thinking or his actions. They drink of the koolaid that he serves just as they did in Jonestown, without a thought for what the next hour might bring.

I was listening to his answers this morning and couldn't believe that no one had "taken him down", one way or another. Whether it be the generals who do what they think is right instead of what he tells them (thinking Iran here too) or the general public finally crying out in one loud voice "I CALL BULLSHIT" (which I think time has come for that too), something is going to come to a head and when this boil begins to errupt, nothing is going to be able to contain it.

Why hasn't poppy sat him down for the talk yet? Or has he? Is that why we don't see too many photo-ops with the former and the current together anymore?

Tell me, how are we to stop him? We have more people waking up everyday yet he lectures other countries that they need to listen to their people while he tells us that he makes the decision no matter what public opinion says. How does he reconcile those two statements in his own head? What are we to do when the royal meds aren't working anymore and he doesn't CARE that he's naked?

I love your mind Octafish. I wish I had the intelligence that you carry in your little finger for myself. I have so much to learn (you can teach this older dog a new trick or two) and I so enjoy learning it from the likes of you (and a few other really well informed and insightful DUers too).

Thanks for sharing the fountain of knowledge with all of us.
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iconoclastic cat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:15 PM
Response to Original message
3. I want to name my next band, "The Real Killers."..........nt
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:22 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. CIA officials see ‘huge’ effects of leak
Like the moniker for the band, iconoclastic cat!

Here's more on the really big killer:



CIA officials see ‘huge’ effects of leak

Rivalli Republic
October 12, 2003

WASHINGTON – It’s just a 12-letter name – Valerie Plame – but the leak by Bush administration officials of that CIA officer’s identity may have damaged U.S. national security to a much greater extent than generally realized, current and former agency officials say.

Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush critic Joseph Wilson, was a member of a small elite-within-an-elite, a CIA employee operating under “nonofficial cover,” in her case as an energy analyst, with little or no protection from the U.S. government if she got caught.

Training agents such as Plame, 40, costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called “legends,” including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas.

Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, whose name has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, formerly the agency’s chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis.

SNIP...

“This is not just another leak. This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent’s identity,” said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who’s now a prosecutor in Royal Oak, Mich., and who also did CIA training with Plame.

CONTINUED...

http://foi.missouri.edu/iipa/ciaofficials.html



FYI: Marcinkowski is a REPUBLICAN, proving there are good Republicans. Not enough...but, they exist.

BAD REPUBLICAN
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never_get_over_it Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:16 PM
Response to Original message
4. I actually thoiught of OJ this weekend and how he said he
would never stop until he found the killers - and I use to say look in the mirror buddy

the difference between OJ and the leaker in chief is that the leaker is about 100,000 times more deadly.....
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:30 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. Outing Brewster, Jennings & Assoc. may've harkened Chimpageddon
The NAZI Bush is mad. How else can he live with himself being to blame for ONE death, let alone hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost...due to him.

Now comes word the guy wants to go after Iran. Gee. It so happens that's one of those places where Valerie Plame and her cohorts were working to keep nukes OUT.

Why a messianic moron would want to throw a monkey wrench in there is beyond logic. It's simply Satanic or psychotic.



Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: February 13, 2006

The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

SNIP...

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_working_on_0213.html



This guy's loony never_get_over_it. He means us harm. And the planet.

MURKIN PSYCHO
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Hutzpa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:25 PM
Response to Original message
6. Pathetic!! n/t
Edited on Mon Apr-10-06 10:26 PM by spokane
:eyes:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:39 PM
Response to Reply #6
10. Pathetic in that Bush is a traitor and a mass murderer?
I don't exactly know what OJ is, other than the guy most likely to have committed a double homicide.

Here's some more on what I mean about the giggling psychotic and his supporter, Bob "Deep Throat's Friend" Woodward, here hard at blowing out the fuse of the Plame leak on Larry King Alive?:



Woodward & Washington's 'Tipping Point'

By Robert Parry
November 19, 2005

EXCERPT...

Woodward’s Advice

Yet, on the eve of Libby’s indictment, Woodward was offering advice to Fitzgerald via CNN, that it would be best if the prosecutor left well enough alone.

“I don’t see an underlying crime here and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know, maybe this is not one to go to the court with,” Woodward said.

Three decades after Woodward helped expose Richard Nixon’s corruption, the former Watergate hero sounded like a flack tossing out Republican spin points.

Though Woodward’s hostility to Fitzgerald’s investigation raised some eyebrows at the time, Woodward’s behavior looks far more self-interested now after his admission that he indeed did have “blockbuster” information about the Plame case.

In elaborating on the chronology later, Woodward said he contacted his source in late October for an article on the leak case and they discussed Woodward's notes showing the source mentioning Plame in June 2003. That prompted the source to go to Fitzgerald, which in turn forced Woodward’s hand.

... (Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2005)

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/111805.html



MR. DANGER MAN
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JohnnyRingo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:37 PM
Response to Original message
8. That's a low blow to OJ
Even if OJ was guilty of murder, it was only two people.
In fact, it was two phoney rich people who I probably wouldn't have liked to begin with. Nothing about those murders changed my life.

Now President Dumbass on the other hand......
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:48 PM
Response to Reply #8
13. Everything about those murders changed your life
in ways connected to the Bush/IraqWar connection that Octafish has reminded us of. Maybe you are too young to remember life before 1991-92.
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tabasco Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:55 PM
Response to Reply #8
14. Your comments on those murder victims is sickening.
Check your humanity.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:57 PM
Response to Reply #8
15. Bush reminds me a LOT of Nixon...
And I mean that in the nicest way.

Regarding OJ: Yeah. I'm sorry to have lowered his image to that of the madman currently with his finger on the nuke-yoo-lar trigger.

Even though, compared to hundred thousand or a million people, two is a tiny number, we must remember one thing. Each human life represents a universe of possibilities and wonder. Irreplaceable. Indispensible. Invaluable. Infinite.

And yes, while OJ wasn't found guilty of murder in court, his behavior reminds me of someone.



Bush, Wiretaps & Watergate

By Robert Parry
April 6, 2006

Sen. Russell Feingold’s motion to censure George W. Bush for warrantless spying on Americans has conjured up ghosts from Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal of three decades ago. But both sides in today’s dispute have misconstrued some the lessons from that earlier case of illegal wiretapping.

In Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on March 31, Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean spoke in support of Feingold’s motion to rebuke Bush, with Dean citing his own Watergate-era conviction for obstructing justice as an example of what can happen when a President goes outside the law.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., defended Bush by saying the Watergate case had no relevance to Bush’s decision after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to brush aside legal requirements for warrants in bugging Americans suspected of communicating with foreigners allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.

Trying to highlight the differences, Graham questioned Dean about whether he thought breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in 1972 was “legal.” Dean snapped back that neither he nor Nixon had authorized the break-in.

“You’re showing you don’t know that subject very well,” Dean told Graham.

“That’s why you went to jail!” Graham fumed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/040506.html



Now, to separate right from wrong and Reich from free...

Lindsey Graham's ex-CIA. And he's a BFEE stooge.

I know other ex-CIA. And they're loyal to the U.S. Constitution.

War Criminal
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tblue37 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 09:06 AM
Response to Reply #8
23. Ron Goldman was a waiter.
Rich people usually are not waiters.

Nicole Brown Simpson was a waitress when she met OJ. She did not come from wealth. She also was the mother of two small children--and the evidence suggests she was a devoted and loving mother.

I doubt that she would be my cup of tea, either, as a person, but her murder (and Ron Goldman's) are still horrifying. The numbers are smaller (two vs. hundreds of thousands), and in that sense I agree that Bush's effect is much worse, but I actually think he and OJ are equally horrific as people, and that if killing hundreds of thousands of people seemed like something that would stroke his ego or satisfy whatever other impulses he had, OJ would be happy to arrange for it, just as Bush was. Evil acts flow from evil character. Our misfortune is that Bush is in a position where those evil acts can be magnified by extraordinary power. (And let us not forget Chaney's role in all of this.)
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JohnnyRingo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 01:06 PM
Response to Reply #23
31. OK...You're right
Edited on Tue Apr-11-06 01:10 PM by JohnnyRingo
I just remember how offended I was at the media circus at the time....A formula that's been replicated time and again since. (or attempted to)
The day Marcia Clark walked into the courtroom with a hollywood makeover should have been the last day cameras were allowed to roll.

Though I seem overly insensitive to the tragedy that was Nicole and Ron, I feel a celebrity murder story doesn't warrant 45 minutes of coverage on the hour....For months on end.

I guess my feeble point was that this was a turning point when Headline News met Entertainment Tonight and we as an audience should shun such coverage and focus on the news that impacts our lives more directly.

Comparing OJ to a man who has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands is a lopsided study indeed, but it's the focus on sensationalism that allowed him to get away with it.

Sorry if I offended.
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oasis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:40 PM
Response to Original message
11. "Selective portions of the NIE were released to a single reporter. That's
Edited on Mon Apr-10-06 10:57 PM by oasis
not a declassification, that's a leak." Jeffrey H. Smith, former CIA general counsel.

Bush is a lying hypocrite of the first order.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 11:12 PM
Response to Reply #11
16. Libby's Secret Target: It Wasn't Just Wilson
Fitzgerald has the whole kit-n-kaboodle dead to rights.

And the BFEE knows it.



Libby's Secret Target: It Wasn't Just Wilson

Petty-Larseny.Blogspot.com
Saturday, April 08, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, wasn't just out to sink the credibility of Joseph Wilson when he met with New York Times Reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. He had another target, too.

We've known for a while that Miller agreed to falsely attribute the information Libby fed her to a "former Hill staffer." But the new filing by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, as revealed by the New York Sun, makes clear not only that Libby specifically requested to be identified as a "former Hill staffer," but, according to Fitzgerald:

In fact, on July 8, defendant spoke with Miller about Mr. Wilson after requesting that attribution of his remarks be changed to “former Hill staffer.”

Changed. Intriguingly, Fitzgerald never identifies what attibution Libby previously requested. Was it "White House insider"? "Senior White House official"? "A knowledgeable source in the executive branch"?

Why a "former Hill staffer"? Why not a former Defense Dept. staffer? Or a former State Dept. staffer? He's worked for both. If Libby wanted the intelligence on Iraq to be seen as credible, why not attribute it to one of them, either of which would be closer to the source of the information than the Hill?

CONTINUED...

http://petty-larseny.blogspot.com/2006/04/libbys-secret-target-it-wasnt-just.html



So...Scooter wanted to blame Congress? Who'd a thunk that, except those very sheep who continue to get sheared.

We need to spread the word far and wide to keep them from going out like Hitler and the rest of the crazies.

Ah'm goin'
ta jail!
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 09:11 AM
Response to Reply #16
24. Imagine if Fitzgerald was DOJ attorney on BCCI instead of Robert Mueller
Mueller, the coverup king for the BFEE, rewarded by Bushboy with FBI director. I hope Fitz brings Mueller down, too.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 03:02 PM
Response to Reply #24
35. Agree, blm. Lower than Mueller is Freeh.
Feh to Freeh.

Feh two to Rolince and Maltbie and Frasca. And all the FBI who heard and knew and did nothing.
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Berserker Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 10:45 PM
Response to Original message
12. I have thought of
this administration as the OJ administration for years. All you have to do is keep saying over and over the same thing and some people will start to believe it no matter how far out it is. "If the glove don't fit we must acquit" say it over and over. Plant the shit in the peoples brains it will grow.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-10-06 11:27 PM
Response to Reply #12
17. Think Progress has some food for thought...
ThinkProgress nailed the WaHoPo for blowing up Bushler:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/09/post-mangles-facts/

Here's their update on the situation:



White House Uses Washington Post Editorial To Defend Bush Leak

This weekend, the Washington Post wrote an editorial defending President Bush’s smearing of Joseph Wilson. The Post editors mangled the facts and failed to note — as their political writers did — that Bush deceptively leaked intelligence information despite knowing it had been disproved months before. (Read a thorough debunking of the editorial).

One might be tempted to dismiss the effect that a mere 575-word editorial can have on the public debate. But it is already being peddled peddled by the White House to misinform the public. Here’s the product of the White House’s efforts –

Kelly O’Donnell, NBC White House correspondent, this morning on MSNBC:

To further support the White House view that the president was simply acting within his legal authority — he is able to declassify material at any time — the White House today is circulating some favorable editorials saying what the president did was perfectly fine and they also say what was disclosed was historical in nature and that it had no harmful effect on national security.

Joseph diGenova, former Reagan administration lawyer, on NPR this morning:

I think the Washington Post said it best on Sunday when it said that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

CONTINIUED w. LINKS...

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/09post-mangles-facts/page/3/



My problem's always been knowing:

"If they can control what you think, they can control what you do."

BFEE turd
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Binka Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 04:30 AM
Response to Reply #17
21. They Used The Same Tactic Prior To Iraq Invasion It Won't Work This Time
Judith Miller was fed disinformation which she wrote about in the NY Times, then Cheney would use her article as proof that the invasion was necessary. Standard CIA rope a dope. IMHO it will not work this time. The camel has finally made his way into the tent and it will be damn near impossible to get it out. Bush and the "pimp my war" crew are FINISHED!
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oasis Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 02:40 AM
Response to Original message
18. Excellent article kick. Margaret Carlson tells it like it is. (eom)
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 11:50 AM
Response to Reply #18
25. The Gang that Couldn't Leak Straight
From today's Counterpunch, light from a law school dean...



A Modified, Limited, Hang-Out of Slanted, Partially Declassified Information ...

The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight


By LAWRENCE R. VELVEL
Counterpunch April 11, 2006

In a court filing by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, it has now become public that, according to Scooter Libby, George Bush authorized the Vice President's chief of staff in July 1993 to disclose previously highly confidential information -- to leak this information -- in order to help make Bush's case for war. The information is said to have come from a supersecret 90 page document called a National Intelligence Estimate. The leaked information is a particular part of the Estimate which supported going to war, though one gathers that other parts, that were not released, were contrary in import and did not support going to war.

Because Bush is said to have authorized disclosure of -- leaking of -- a part of the report which supported his decision for war, the claim is being made that it was not unlawful for Libby to have told one (or more?) reporters about the information. The President, it is said, has broad authority to declassify information, and did so here. What is more, it is said that this was opined to Libby by a true creep, Cheney's right wing wacko lawyer, David Addington, whom Libby regarded as an expert on national security law. And, as a general matter, both now and previously the media, with the exception of a recent editorial in The Times, seems to have automatically swallowed the notion that a high level official with power over classification can authorize disclosure on the spot, as it were, of previously classified information: the issue arose a while back, when it was thought Cheney might have been the one who authorized disclosure regarding Valerie Plame and Bush's action was not yet publicly known.

There is one point which jumps out at me, even though the (incompetent) media has so far been blind to it. Does the governing rule really provide, is it intended to provide, can it truly be lawful for it to provide, that the President can, on the spot, authorize disclosure of previously classified information that supports his position, while withholding disclosure of classified information which opposes it, even information in the very same document or conceivably on the very same page? Is this what classification is really all about? Is this what it is supposed to accomplish or is intended to accomplish? Why am I dubious? Why do I think that, at least as embodied in law, as opposed to the evil chicanery that is an every day matter in Washington, this is not the purpose of classification and must be, indeed, a horrible abuse of it? -- in all justice probably a literally criminal abuse of it.

SNIP...

When Bush authorizes leaks, his henchmen say, it is in the national interest--even if it involves efforts to mislead Congress and the people into an insupportable war.

But when others do it, the henchmen say, it jeopardizes national security--even if it involves whistleblowing on secret spying on American citizens, or whistleblowing on the CIA's abominable use of secret prisons overseas.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/velvel04112006.html



Thanks for the kick to the pants of the BFEE, oasis!

STUPID TRAITOR
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Swamp Rat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 02:43 AM
Response to Original message
19. Leaker-In-Chief
:D



I just love Octafish threads! :)

:kick:

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 11:57 AM
Response to Reply #19
26. Heh heh heh! Bush's Final Jeopardy...
Love that image, Swamp Rat! Truly speaks volumes. All TRUE!



Love the ties. Love the hats. Loathe the slouch. And the mugs.


Bush's Final Jeopardy

There's really just one question the media should be asking about the President's involvement in the CIA leak affair -- and it's a doozie.


By Elizabeth de la Vega, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 11, 2006.

The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared Thursday in the form of a revelation buried in papers filed in federal court by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, now under indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, told the Grand Jury Fitzgerald convened that President Bush had -- via Vice President Cheney -- authorized him to disclose selected information from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, which he did during a private breakfast meeting at the St. Regis Hotel on July 8, 2003.

On Friday, in a press conference that bore a striking similarity to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, President Bush's spokesman Scott McClellan dutifully responded to reporters' questions about the disclosure. No, the increasingly robotic McClellan said, the White House will not comment on an ongoing case. But, he assured the assembled journalists, the President can declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. So, McClellan implied, it would have been perfectly legal for the President to have taken this action, which he could not, of course, comment on because this was an ongoing case (and so on).

Thus has begun a debate in our media whose starting questions usually run along the lines of: "Is what the President did legal?" or "Does the President have authority to declassify information at will?" (Given the President's failure to deny Libby's allegation, it has largely been accepted as true.) The answer to those questions has generally been: Yes, the President -- as chief executive -- has the authority to declassify information at will.

But it is not only in the TV game show world of Jeopardy! that the correct answer to a problem depends on the question asked. And, as it happens, those are simply not the right questions.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/34752/



PS: Thank you for the kind words, Swamp Rat. Wouldn't do it if it weren't for you and the rest of the good folks who give a damn and deserve to live in a free America, again.

I'm a leaker.
I said a funny.
Heh heh heh.
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nicknameless Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 04:06 AM
Response to Original message
20. Sociopath who is totally disconnected from humanity.
Desensitized by life experience (psycho, misanthropic family) and drugs (legal & illegal).

Arm-chair diagnosis ;)
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 12:03 PM
Response to Reply #20
27. Agree with you 100 percent, doctor. So does Kurt Vonnegut...
From "In These Times"...



Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

By Joel Bleifuss | 1.27.03

EXCERPT...

My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we’ve lost reason to hope?

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

CONTINUED...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_100_4_0



Such a family.



TOTAL NUT
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 05:23 AM
Response to Original message
22. The morning that the
police first questioned OJ, I remember drinking coffee with one of my uncles. He was a retired BCI Senior Investigator, who had served as Governor Rockefeller's head of security years before. "Guilty as hell," he said. I said that OJ was entitled to a presumption of innocence. He gave me a fascinating lesson on body language, and while it is not something that is always 100% accurate, it frequently is.

Watching Bush yesterday, I noted how his head lowered, and his shoulders were raised, when the topic of the Plame leak came too close. He was reacting physically to the attention that was directed at him, attempting to protect himself from our focus.

Watching him, I thought about my late uncle, and heard his voice: "Guilty as hell."
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 12:17 PM
Response to Reply #22
29. Cops know how crooks act better than most... Same for CIA analysts
Appreciate the NYSP Bureau of Criminal Investigations and the good things they have done. Your uncle must have had some great stories.

FMI: Did he ever mention Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA who went after BCCI?

Regarding the Bush Crime Family:



Blowing Cheney's Cover

Ray McGovern April 10, 2006

When you invest so much effort into tangling the web—in this case, corrupting intelligence analysis in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq—it becomes hard to know when to stop. Vice President Dick Cheney went to inordinate lengths, including 10 visits to CIA headquarters, to ensure that that crucial NIE on weapons of mass destruction was alarmist enough to scare Congress into authorizing war. And when the evidence turned out to be flimsy, Cheney had a back-up plan: The CIA made me do it.

Ever since their exaggerated claims about Iraq’s possession of WMD turned out to be baseless, the Bush administration’s defense has rested on blaming the government’s intelligence analysts. But one of the great revelations from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s court filing last week is more evidence that the White House—not the CIA—distorted intelligence on Iraq. It was then-chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, acting on orders from Cheney, who presented evidence of Iraq seeking nuclear weapons material to reporters as a “key judgment” from the NIE, when in fact it was a subject of debate in the intelligence community.

The White House plan to scapegoat the intelligence community about Iraq—aided by eager-to-please CIA Director George Tenet—worked beautifully. But only for a while. The plan faltered once it became clear there were no WMD and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson blew the whistle on the centerpiece report used to deceive Congress and conjure up the specter of a mushroom cloud. That report conveyed the cockamamie story about Iraq seeking uranium in the African country of Niger, in which Cheney took uncommon interest.

Cockamamie? Easy to say in retrospect, you say. No, it was easy to say from the outset. And that is why CIA analysts in early 2002 threw it into the circular file, where it deserved to be—for several good reasons. For starters, the government of Niger does not control the uranium mined there. Rather, it is tightly controlled and monitored by an international consortium led by the French. CIA analysts all agreed that the notion that Baghdad could somehow siphon off some of that uranium and spirit it back to Iraq was preposterous.

CONTINUED...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/10/blowing_cheneys_cover.php



A moron of many hats:

Liar
Crook
Thief
Gangster
Murderer
Warmonger
War Criminal
George W Bush
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 12:06 PM
Response to Original message
28. bushitler is a jerk... da da da da da da da ... whistle while we work.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 12:21 PM
Response to Reply #28
30. I love a good story...
From



White House Memo

With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight


By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT April 11, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 10 — From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.

The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "

SNIP...

Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but also to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Mr. Fitzgerald's account of what was happening in the White House in the summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration's narrative, which suggested that Mr. Wilson was seen as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered by disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Mr. Bush relied.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/washington/11leak.html?ei=5094&en=ac4fcddd3dd28b1e&hp=&ex=1144814400&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1144760413-kTNu6XQ4/9c8ztS6d5YiLw



NAZI NUTJOB
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 01:50 PM
Response to Reply #30
32. OMG SO DO I!
WWWHOOOOODAMNWHOO!
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 02:53 PM
Response to Reply #32
33. Do you know Dr. Bauer? He divides knowledge into 'maps' & 'stories.'
Dr. Bauer says we use text to convey two kinds of knowledge: Maps and Stories.



Two Kinds of Knowledge: Maps and Stories

HENRY H. BAUER
Chemistry & Science Studies
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061 02/2
J

Abstract—The most reliable knowledge is map like: "If you do this, then that will always follow." But such knowledge carries little if any inherent human meaning. Most meaningful is story like knowledge, which teaches about morals and values; but about that, agreement cannot be forced by demonstration. Failure to distinguish between the meaningfulness and the re¬liability of knowledge helps to make arguments intractable. It would be very useful always to ask about a bit of claimed knowledge, "Is this more like a story or more like a map ?"

PDF to full article:

http://www.henryhbauer.homestead.com/2kndsweb.pdf



While I don't agree with everything he writes, the guy, IMO, is a genius. And I respect his right to think any effing way he wants.
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 03:21 PM
Response to Reply #33
36. Have not heard of him but he sounds interesting.
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npincus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 02:57 PM
Response to Original message
34. OMG- he cut Laura's head off????
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Lisa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-11-06 03:24 PM
Response to Original message
37. though * didn't win the Heisman Trophy (n/t)
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Apr-12-06 08:44 AM
Response to Reply #37
38. But he did win the SAFOMA award.
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