Letters to the Editor

• Do their trunks grow when they lie?

  [Read the article: The Libby lobby's pardon campaign]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Do their ears twitch when they obfuscate?

  You use the word junket as if it were bad. The government sends reporters on junkets all the time. Sort of like saying "Hey, you should go look at the new whatchamacallits at Wal Mart. In fact, I'll drive you there myself because you need to see them and tell your friends". Using the bad connotations we have of the word from years of hearing about congressmen going on tax payer funded junkets to the great golf courses of the world to smear the opposition is disengenuous and bad debate, and we know you want nothing more than honest debate, Elephant.

  What Cheney was pissed off about (because there is no question that he told Libby to go after Wilson, only if he knew Plame was covert) was that Wilson's report undermined a key piece of disinformation the administration had used to justify the war. The weakest piece, since every intelligence agency in the world that had seen the documents that supposedly showed that Iraq was buying uranium from Nigeria (CIA included, along with the British, French, and Italians) had determined that they were not just forged, but badly forged.

  Possibly CIA thought that if they sent a former ambassador to Nigeria, and he reported that the uranium deals were fictitious, they could stop the stupidest war in the history of western civilization before it started since the administration would be aware that the knowledge was out there, in the hands of people who could write letters to the editor about it. They severely underestimated the administrations determination to punish Iraq for crimes it did not commit in the face of any fact. One thing we do know is that CIA maintains that Plame did not arrange the junket, and no one has been able to contradict that. Another is that at least 4 documents outlining what Wilson found were in government hands before the war started.

  So, we are once again back to what I will call Elephantman's Conundrum - because you are the only person who seems to have difficulty with this concept. I will type slowly.

  Obstruction of justice charges can not rely on charges, indictments or convictions pertaining to the underlyng crime because the investigation into that crime was obstructed.

  Is any of this getting through? Your argument is that Libby is innocent of obstruction because Cheney was never charged, when Cheney was never charged because Libby obstructed justice. Rather than punish Libby for obstructing justice, you would reward him for being good at it.

  As for why Libby wasn't charged with outing Plame, try this on for size. The identity of covert operatives is need to know, under the law. Libby had no need to know. Therefore, the actual crime was committed by whoever told him about Plame's position - likely Cheney or Rove. And no one should have ever told Rove. You can't be punished for revealing a secret you aren't supposed to have in the first place because you never undertook the obligation of keeping it, for example a reporter who gets grand jury info can't be punished for reporting it because the crime was committed by whoever leaked it in the first place.

  No one was ever charged with divulging the information to Libby because he lied (constantly) about where he got it. Libb wasn't charged because it was information he shouldn't have had. If this wasn't the White House they would have just arrested and charged everybody and waited for the weak link to reveal itself. But while you can do that with corporations and private citizens, you can't just arrest the President, Vice President, White House Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Director of the CIA... Everyone who could have legally gotten the information would have been arrested under other circumstances, with apologies given to those who upheld their obligations afterward.

  You are a shining example of how low this country has sunk, placing party politics and ideology above loyalty, integrity, and patriotism. Protecting the government is not the same as protecting the country, but you don't seem to understand that.

  Permalink Saturday, June 9, 2007 04:54 AM