Let’s go through this again
Hey fellas, have you heard the news…
So it seems that Libby says that Cheney told him that Bush told Cheney that it was okay to leak Valerie Plame’s name. Let’s examine the various conclusions this leads us to:
- When Bush had said before that he wanted the investigation to end so we would know the facts what he meant to say was, “I know the facts but I’m not going to reveal them at this time.”
- When Scott McClellan said previously, No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States, what he meant to say was, “The president knows what happened but is being hush-hush for now.”
- When Joseph Wilson insisted that his wife’s exposure was an act of political retaliation that ended her career the decision to endanger her life and end her career came from the President.
- When Bush said, I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business, he, at that point, knew that he was lying.
Of course, maybe Libby was lying. So that’s perjury. But isn’t he already charged with that?
Here’s some speculation:
- Cheney didn’t talk to Bush about declassifying this information… Cheney, by virtue of releasing the info to Libby, went over the President’s head! And then lied about it!
- The President forgot he did it in the first place!
- Libby is, in secret, a Democrat who hates America and doesn’t support our troops and that’s why he is attacking the President!
Of course, the CIA isn’t doing such a good job at protecting the names of employees anyway… and maybe we should take a look at that?
April 19th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I go with your last statement. I read somewhere that Plame’s own neighbors knew she worked for the CIA. And then she goes overseas as some innocuous wife of a diplomat? Yeah, right. As if anyone with any sense couldn’t figure out she was still employed for the CIA when in Africa.
If her neighbors knew, then why is this whole ‘leak’ thing any kind of news? To me, it is no news at all.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
It’s a matter of the source and scale. Who’re you going to believe in matters of super secret spy stuff: someone’s neighbor or the aide to the Vice President of the United States? How many more people listen when the aide talks than the neighbor? It’s that kind of thing that makes the leak things news… IMHO. ( =
I try to be very concious of the whole “security vs. liberty” debate so I’m not sure that the CIA should be disappearing agents or people who know about them… so that’s my first solution out the window. I don’t know what else to do, though…
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:42 am
I understand what your saying, but my point is how do we know that the reporter didn’t find out about Plame another way and only corroborate it with the aide? I can’t imagine that any story for the press is done linearly. Information is collected over a period of time.
I just can’t be that outraged when her supposed ‘secret’ status was not all that secret after all. Exactly what was illegal here? Maybe I just don’t understand the whole chronology of events that led up to Plame’s outing in the news.
The other thing you have to remember that so much of this is politically motivated. Plame’s husband was no fan of the Bush Administration. He pushed the issue when it wasn’t headline news…and guess what? It became headline news! How is this keeping his wife safe?
April 24th, 2006 at 8:47 am
I think even that corroboration breaks the law since any government entity (employees, say) had to keep her identity confidential. That’s the core of it.
And, yeah, it’s absolutely politically motivated on both sides! That’s what makes me so sick of all this… I think Plame’s husband did the right thing (Iraq did not purchase “Yellocake” from Niger and we had to know) but then this whole thing devolved into some political mess where we’re really showing our best characteristics. / =
May 4th, 2006 at 7:35 am
And now this shows up in the news:
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002462623
Somehow I just don’t feel any sympathy for this woman and her husband. This “leak” really did her career a world of good, didn’t it?