There’s a great Joseph Wilson chronology over at the ‘Sweetness and Light‘ blog…definitely worth a read, even if you don’t accept his premise (that Wilson himself outed his wife). It does place Wilson’s views in an interesting arc, however…
There’s a great Joseph Wilson chronology over at the ‘Sweetness and Light‘ blog…definitely worth a read, even if you don’t accept his premise (that Wilson himself outed his wife). It does place Wilson’s views in an interesting arc, however…
Clifford May has long contended that Wilson blew Plame, and of course the first writer to call her a covert agent by name was David Corn.
This is a case study in selective outrage. Making a hero out of a scumbag opportunist like Wilson makes it a case study in BDS, as well.
Next post down refers to antiwar protestors as “terrorist supporters.”
Think I’ll pass on this one.
“…..interesting arc….” I guess….. if you define “interesting” as the type of slander, inuendo, selective editing of chronology, faulty logic and general hack job such as that dished out by your rabid denialist Bush worshipping friends at Sweetness and Light……oh that’s right….that’s your style as well.
Oh well……where would one even begin to address the putrid moronic sloppiness of S&L’s defense of the Bush admin’s treasonous behavior regarding Plame, the endangerment of the WMD non-proliferation work she and her teammates performed on behalf of the citizens of the country and our safety and, more generally, the lies Bush and pals proliferated inorder to lead us into a quagmire in Iraq? BTW: believe it or not there really are issues more important than your general obession with hatred of liberals/democrats.
I would like to examine but one of the many fallacious arguments made – or implied – by S&L; the idea that Wilson himself “admitted” that Iraq had WMD and should be attacked for this and, that, Wilson should therefore not be able to honestly be upset that Bush stated the same (and then acted to invade). This is a variant of the flip flop label that was placed on Kerry by the same sort of people.
S&L is construing “WMD” to denote nuclear weapons when convenient to its argument. Everyone knows that WMD is a vague and somewhat useless term that is also used to include bio/chemical weapons. Everyone knows that Iraq did have chemical weapons in the past and many believed that Iraq probably had them at the time of the build up to war. So Wilson would have been following conventional (though incorrect) beliefs when he alluded to Saddam’s possession of “WMD”. There was also an effort on Saddam’s part, in the past, to obtain nuclear weapons. Hence the reason that Wilson would have asserted that Saddam had some sort of nuclear program. Also the reason that Wilson and other thinking people wanted to delay the decision to invade or not until the inspections had run their course.
Wilson, however, given his limited stature in high security governmental affairs at the time in question would not have known the extent or nature of the evidence in possession of the US gov’t; only that our government was stating that it “knew” what and where the weapons were.
His initial outrage arose when he realized that the sole “evidence” of nuclear weapons programs that would lead us to war was based on what he had debunked (as well as other debunked nonsense like the aluminum tubes).
Of course, I don’t expect that you will be able to follow this logic because it isn’t convernient to you.
I can’t let this one pass either….the notion that Dick Army is a mindless gossip…..geez, the guy was a SEAL (I think) and Vietnam combat vet and has worked at the highest levels of inside politics and national security and there he is not knowing when to keep his mouth shut concerning national security?????? If true it’s pretty damn pathetic and you would think he’d be frog marched out of Washington in disgrace.
Finally, the suggestion that Wilson outed his own wife is absoluetly as baseless as it is ridiculous. Mind you it was the CIA that sent this case down legal avenues. If Wilson had done this to his own wife the CIA would have aimed right him and not the Bush admin. – and I doubt he and his wife would still be standing side by side together.
Anyhow, it’s always good to know that somenone will have your back no matter what you do, lying to grand juries, outing covert agents for petty political revenge, lying the country into an unwinnable war, “supporting” the troops by placing them in rat infested holes after they’re wounded in said war and generally diminishing their VA benefits…………..great stuff! Keep up the good work!
There’s a great Jewish History chronology over at National Stormfront, even if you don’t accept their their premise that a Jewish Conspiracy is the root of all evil.
I’m a little sorry that avedis was so angry at this post, although I don’t blame him, and I commend to your attention his analysis of the utterly dishonest conflation of nuclear weapons with WMD in general (including battlefield-level chemical weapons which even I thought Saddam might have). After something like that, it isn’t really worth the line-by-line examination for other lies. You know you’re dealingwith someone dishonest.
It is time to start talking about the insanity of Bush Devotion Syndrome, an increasingly fact-challenged philosophy meant to avoid admitting that, yes, we really did somehow get this doofus as our President and, yes, he really did stick us in Iraq with no good way out.
Seems like a tortured attempt to pick, choose, and distort Joseph Wilson’s history and views. What’s the point? Is this supposed to be an argument that the administration wasn’t out to destroy Joe and Valerie? Changing the subject won’t change what actually happened.
Smitty – if you’re talking about ANSWER, then I’ve gotta agree…
avedia – touch a nerve? nice straddle on “oh, THOSE WMD…” but the reality is that CBW was certainly an issue prewar, and there was a pretty common consensus that a) Saddam had CBW; and b) he’d use it if there was war. The question of his nuke program was open, but as the Senate report notes, Wilson came back from Niger and reported that he’d been told that Iraqis had come to Niger to open commercial contacts, and that his Nigerian contact believed that they were interested in uranium ore.
…and Andrew, if the chronology is interesting and useful – and accurate – does the provenance trump everything else? Does the fact that Arianna would love to see Bush impeached mean her commentaries on the GOP are useless?
Wilson is playing politics, and has been all along. Scooter was a tool for having lied about what he did, and deserves what he’ll get (although it’s amusing to compare his penalty with Berger’s); this whole issue is a political tempest in a security teacup.
A.L.
AL, in all seriousness I am concerned that some fellow Americans (you included) are not concerned that the administration was playing foot loose and fancy free with the identity of a CIA nuclear proliferation expert and the operations in which she was involved.
Certainly leaks were coming out of Cheney’s office. Certainly Bush didn’t bat an eye lash over this. Despite his assurance that culprits would be identified and appropriately dealt with, nothing was done by Bush. Nothing. Maybe Bush asked and Cheney, Rove, Libby et al lied and denied. This too is a disturbing scenario, albeit for other reasons. The whole thing stinks from a perspective Bush administration handling of it perspective.
Even if we were to accept (for argument’s sake) for a moment the absurd proposition that Wilson outed his own wife, that still doesn’t excuse the behavior of adminstration personel who would have been exacerbating and perpetuating the compromising of national security. Even if you want to say the cat was already out of the bag (and there’s no real evidence to conclude that it was), the Bush admin’s behavior remains at best crass, but very potentially criminal. If someone has robbed a bank and dropped a sack of money on the way out, you don’t get a pass to pick it up and run away with it.
Hit a nerve? Sure. I have two children in the service (one an Army Ranger). It pains me to think that some little puke with the oh so adult nick name of “scooter” would get them killed because it was, at the moment, politically expedient to reveal the details of a covert mission…………..because that it what we are talking about here.
You know, AL, the subsequent article at Sweetness and Light describes Valerie Plame as a “pretend spy”. The “evidence” was that she had an affair with a married man. Ah, James Bond only picks virgins? And she told Wilson she was a spy—maybe not smart, but not in any way evidence that she was “pretend”.
It’s BDS. Bush Devotion Syndrome. You string together a sequence of non sequiturs (has affair: can’t be real spy) and at the end you have proof of Bush nobility and Democratic perfidy and treason.
This may be my own bias, but I don’t think the Huffington Post and Daily Kos are publishing anything that’s so totally illogical. By now defenses of Bush are starting to read, in structure, like defenses of Creationism, collections of “evidence” of only internal validity, e.g. atheist==Kerry donor==unreliable.
I don’t see anything of particular interest in the so-called timeline except Wilson’s support of Kerry’s campaign and Wilson’s increasing anger at the insistence of the Administration to keep referring to a nuclear threat that it should have known did not exist. (Would you like a timeline about the Aluminum Tubes fraud, with the Administration hanging on to a bogeyman fantasy to the bitter end?) And its only in the world that you’ve joined that Wilson’s support of the Kerry campaign really matters. For the other 70 percent, and growing, of the country, Democrats can be patriotic, too.
Can anyone here think of a legitimate reason that outing Valerie Plame would improve national security? Did it disrupt an Al Qaeda network? Stop an arms trans-shipment to Iraqi insurgents? Of course not. The purpose of the Plame leaks was illegitimate, although perhaps you do not agree. It was to establish that You don’t cross the Elephant.
In its many deviations from established practice, the Bush Administration manifests the appearance of omniscience. Who has WMD; who is an enemy combatant; who should be tortured; who should be wiretapped; who should be investigated for corruption, all to be left in the hands of the Decider. No wonder anyone like Joe Wilson who dared to pull the curtain back (or is it, who dared to turn over the rock) had to be destroyed.
His initial outrage arose when he realized that
Are you His Excellency the Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson? If not you’re talking out your ass.
If true it’s pretty damn pathetic and you would think he’d be frog marched out of Washington in disgrace.
Still dreaming of frog marching?
But folks are supposed to be impressed by your intelligence and objectivity. Right?
Finally, the suggestion that Wilson outed his own wife is absolutely as baseless as it is ridiculous.
What do you figure she was doing at the breakfast with Kristoff? Trying out her French maid outfit?
Good freakin grief. The left is loser st00pid on this subject.
Let’s go here:
Certainly leaks were coming out of Cheney’s office.
Certainly? What leaks exactly?
Certainly Bush didn’t bat an eye lash over this.
He didn’t? You had someone watching him the whole time for blinking?
For heaven’s sake get a frickin grip on yourself
I think you’d have to ask Richard Armitage (from the State Department that opposed Bush’s Iraq plan) these questions if you’re genuinely interested in the answers, since he’s the one that “outed” her.
Or, you could continue to ignore reality and pretend that the “outing” was done as part of a vast conspiracy by the White House.
As usual, a passel of serious charges. No evidence.
(But hey, maybe if you’re lucky Lucy Ramirez will show up to provide you some typewritten documents detailing how Armitage was acting on super-secret orders directly from Bush.)
Wilson and his wife are people who have no bearing on life. They simply do not matter in any way to any thing that ACTUALLY matters in the universe.
ten thousand years from now, none of us matter.
grow a brain.
For the next 18 months we are going to go through a knockdown, drag out fight for control of the Republican Party. IMO, the group presently in power cannot be allowed to win that power struggle. They are not conservative. They are extremely short sighted and play fast and loose with the Constitution.
I will not vote in the next election if anyone who has the slightest whiff of Bush or the Neo-Cons is nominated by the GOP. I would think that the Republican Party would have much higer standards than has been shown by this Administration.
Hey, Shad, catch the Libby trial? He was pretty busy at OVP letting everyone know about Plame. But then, the smartass remark about Armitage is just a backhanded admission that you, too, can’t think of any way that burning Plame helped national security.
Just catching up – in reverse order:
AJL – Armitage is pretty clearly the guy who outed Plame,per Fitz’s investigation. Why the sarcasm?
TOC – yes, but that’s not my problem. I’m relatively disinterested in who runs the GOP, right now I care about who runs the Democratic Party.
AJL – yes, if Bush’s office had outed Plame, you’d have a point – but they didn’t. How does that change your view? Look I see all kinds of problems in the Bush administration. But the chaff that’s being thrown up doesn’t go to those problems and both distracts from solving them and makes me wonder about the seriousness of the critics at anything but bashing Buah on anything they remotely can (see the chaff on the US Attorney firings – go read Patterico on this, he’s got a meticulously researched set of posts).
avedia – again, assuming that Bush’s core staff had outed Plame, yes, you’d have a point. Since they didn’t, I’m not sure how to react. Yes, they took swipes at Wilson, but Wilson was publicly politicking on these issues, and so fair game. Wilson was also incredibly mendacious about pretty much everything he said that I’ve been able to check (see Niger), and Plame didn;t do much better in her testimony the other day.
But they’re selling books, and got a movie deal, so I guess that makes it OK…
A.L.
Well, at least the wingnuts here are not saying she wasn’t covert anymore – kinda hard when Hayden himself says it – the head of the CIA.
That article is a joke, right?
there is nothing – nothing at all – in that article about Wilson outing his wife, just a lot about Wilson being very active, making a lot of noise about his views.
Oh, and yes, he has a wife.
AL, it’s too bad you think that the adiminstration shopping Valerie Plame’s identity to so many journalists, without concern about her status, is of no consequences. Even if it had been Armitage alone, a responsible administration would have utilized DAMAGE CONTROL on the identity of an agent.
Instead of shopping her identity all over town.
Not to mention, the news that there never was an investigation of the security breath.
But, it truly is clear to watch the rigid ideology at work. So keep dismissing, let your ideological blindness ignore clear facts.
to let you know though, at this point, you really are the Black Knight in Holy Grail, your arms are gone, one or two legs are gone, and you keep bumping up against King Arthur (the truth), saying “get back here! Plame is nothing! Listen to me!!”
Amusing, but a bit sad.
“AL, it’s too bad you think that the adiminstration shopping Valerie Plame’s identity to so many journalists…”
Exactly.
Maybe Armitage was the first to expose Plame; maybe not (BTW why hasn’t the “party of personal responsibility” done anything about this inexcusable tongue wgger?). That is just the story that those involved in the outing are telling.
What is important, AL, is that your heros perpetuated and worsened the exposure of Plame. There is no doubt that Libby and Cheney both bandied about Plame’s name and true occupation with reporters. It is a matter of record. You seem to want to completely overlook or excuse this point.
Did the CIA issue a statement stating that since Armitage had talked to a reporter that it was ok for anyone and everyone to begin talking to reporters about Plame? Of course not. Did Cheney’s office check in with the CIA to ask about Plame’s status and whether or not it would be oK to blab to reporters? Of course not. They probably knew what the answer would be.
“Even if it had been Armitage alone, a responsible administration would have utilized DAMAGE CONTROL on the identity of an agent.”
Again, exactly right. It was not Armitage’s leaking that necessarily blew the cover. It was Libby’s leaking that first resulted in public exposure of Plame.
So, AL, find another peg to hang your hang your hat on.
I am genuinely interested in why you would excuse the behavior of Cheney’s office, yet go sifting through Wilson’s life looking for opportunities to smear his character. Blind partisanship? How does such a syndrome develop in a man?
Correction: “It was Libby’s leaking that first resulted in public exposure of Plame.” should read, “It was Rove’s leaking that may have first resulted in…..”
Why was Rove – a man who should not have access to such classified information – discussing Plame’s ID with reporters at a time when that ID was still classified?
Why? What possible honest national interests could have been furthered by this activity?
Why do you excuse Rove?
AL: Defending OVP on the grounds that Armitage was also leaking is like defending Clinton’s Clenis on the grounds that Monica wasn’t a virgin. What exactly is the logic? Avedis is echoing my question: what contribution to national security did all this outing of Plame, whether by Armitage, Libby at Cheney’s direction, Rove, or anyone else make to national security?
As for Patterico, there’s something pathetic about how we have to drag the horse to water and make him drink. Yeah, he sees something off in a Senator and Congressman going after Iglesias; that one looks suspicious. But the Washington State USA, McKay, where the m.o. is the same, he doesn’t even seem to mention. Every single accusation has to be proven without reference to the Administration’s pattern and practice in the other cases. We send people to the gas chamber on circumstantial cases weaker than what Patterico (and you, by extension) call the Democratic Spin on top of the teeny number of cases it would be just too retarded to confute (although Patterico’s commenters are still willing to try).
No reverence for Bush & team here; but neither am I willing to watch two guys in a bar fight, both gouging and biting away and then offer one credibility when he says “that guy’s fighting dirty!!”. There’s enough mud for everyone here, and if either side has a sense of shame, I can’t see it.
A.L.
_”Why do you excuse Rove?”_
Shouldn’t you be asking the special prosecutor that question? Maybe because he didnt break any laws?
Off the track: Wasn’t Plame like 20 scandals ago? Can we get on to the new stuff? Still waiting for a good debate on attorneygate…. Or there was a great 60 minutes episode on Haditha….
20 completely empty scandals.
SPQR is right. Breaking laws is not necessarily a “scandal” unless one cares about what the public thinks, or better yet, if one can continue to keep the public ignorant of them.
I don’t quite see the bar fight the same way. One guy is fighting with his fists (ignoring David Broder’s request that for bipartisanship he should fight with one hand tied behind is back) versus another guy fighting with brass knuckles, bicycle chains, and broken bottles.
Let’s take a few small issues. How about the Administration’s claim that David Iglesias’s managerial skills were inadequate as he left his deputy in charge during an absence without mentioning that the absence was his Navy Reserve service. I thought WoC and the GOP were Mr. Support the Troops. Turns out that’s just Mr. Support Bush’s Iraq Mess, doesn’t it? Then there’s the Right Wing Talking Point flood-the-zone on “Clinton fired US Attorneys” without any mention that this was expected at the change of party in 1992. Clinton fired all of two USAs in the middle of their terms and one of those was later convicted of a crime. (And then there’s that sneaky change that Bush’s interim appointments, unlikely anyone else’s, didn’t need Senate confirmation.) And even the Administration admits that the USA for Arkansas was sacked so that a Rove-trained attack dog could be put in (without confirmation hearings). I could suggest that this was the better to dig up dirt on former Arkansan Hillary Rodham Clinton, but under the WoC rules of evidence, that would just be Democratic spin about a routine coincidence.
The problem is that throughout the attorney purge, as throughout much of the Plame investigation, today’s Democratic spin turns into tomorrow’s acknowledged fact. But no matter how often this happens, you’re willing to credit the latest crap coming from the Administration, not least their allegation that Democrats do the same thing. No, they don’t.
Democratic spin turns into tomorrow’s acknowledged fact.
I’m sorry I haven’t been paying close enough attention. On what day did it become acknowledged fact that Richard Armitage was actaully Karl Rove? Or, if that part hasn’t been established, when did someone prove that Armitage was an administration attack dog desperate to discredit a critic?* When was it established that anyone violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? Hell, has it even been shown convincingly that Plame was “covert” within the meaning of the act?
So, AJL, forgive me if I’m not willing credit the latest crap coming from the opposition.
USA firings: more or less fair than travel office firings? I don’t really care enought to think about it.
*(What’s wrong with discrediting a critic, anyway? If he’s an unprofessional self-aggrandizing lying sack of $(&#, why shouldn’t he be discredited?)
My point, I guess, is that this debate has become boring. Trenchlines have been drawn, and nobody’s going to cross them anymore. Either you beleive that this was a Pollitical move by this Administration to silence their critics at the expense of the CIA, or you beleive that this was a move by the CIA/Wilson to discredit the Bush white house. No new “facts” are going to come up which will change anybody’s mind.
Maybe if Joseph “Samuel Jackson” Wilson is suddenly wanted dead or alive by the goverment, and Patrick “Kevin Spacey” Fitzgerald has to suddenly get him out alive and expose Dick Cheney’s schemes through a police bullhorn a La “The Negotiator”, something will change. Until then it won’t.
In the meantime, it doesn’t really matter. Iraq is going to hell wether or not the goverments case for war was valid. Wether or not Wilson’s trip exposed “accurate” information, it turns out that he was correct: there are no WMD’s.
Why are we wasting time on this?
alchemist, I guess we are wasting time because people continue to claim without basis that Wilson’s brazen misrepresentations and exaggerations of his own trip was “correct”.
So what? At this point in time does it make any difference? If everyone suddenly wakes up tomorrow and thinks he’s a liar, does that change anything? Maybe there’s a little pollitical vindication for the pro-Iraq crowd, but our countries greatest concern is the state of Iraq today, not what may have been true 5 years ago. Libby, Wilson, Plame, they don’t affect anything anymore.
_”Either you beleive that this was a Pollitical move by this Administration to silence their critics at the expense of the CIA, or you beleive that this was a move by the CIA/Wilson to discredit the Bush white house.”_
I happen to believe both. I actually think most people do- the fault line is which of these you believe acted improperly. Is it more wrong to knife the White House you are supposedly working for in the short ribs using your organizations levers and some slimy tactics- or to respond by burning the people who were doing it?
That characterization shows my own biases i dont doubt, but at the end of the day it scares me more to have a branch of government trying to undermine our elected political leadership than it does an elected political leadership outing a spook who is using her position for partisan advantage.
Rob, you really can’t see the difference between a U.S. Attorney and a travel agent??? You now write for Colbert?
#29
Mark,
_Is it more wrong to knife the White House you are supposedly working for in the short ribs using your organizations levers and some slimy tactics_
That is a debatable opinion, if fact, outright false. You must remember that some elements of the CIA – the parts we are talking about – had been attempting to REMOVE the stuff about uranium and Niger, for over a year.
“To quote Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/monthly/2007_03.php
_They knew Saddam didn’t have a nuclear program. They knew he didn’t have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn’t have drones. They knew._
And THAT was what the CIA was fighting against. The fact that higher-ups in the administration kept inserting BOGUS THREATS, to pimp the invasion of Iraq.
Threats that had already been discounted.
Myself, I don’t mind the pushback against an administration – take a look how disastrous the invasion and occupation of Iraq has ended up being.
“To quote Democracy Arsenal”:http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2007/03/a_new_standard_.html
_Adelman’s answer left me a little stunned, a little outraged but mostly just sad._
_Basically, he explained that when he first supported the war he viewed the establishment of a government similar to that of the Philippines or South Korea to be a positive outcome. They aren’t perfect democracies but they’re pretty good._
_By 2004 he decided that an outcome like Jordan was the best we could hope for. By 2005 his standard had become Egypt. And Now? Wait for it… Wait for it…_
_Syria!!!_
_Yes ladies and gentlemen. The Neocon democratization plan for the Middle East. Replace oppressive Baathist dictatorship with slightly less oppressive Baathist dictatorships._
_At this rate by 2008 we’ll be hoping Iraq turns out like Chechnya. And by 2009 we’ll settle on the ultimate solution. Afghanistan_
So yeah, I definitely do NOT, given the information we have, define the guys who attempted to get out the information about the false intelligence regarding nuclear threats and bio labs, “knifing the White House”. I just don’t.
_”That is a debatable opinion, if fact, outright false. You must remember that some elements of the CIA – the parts we are talking about – had been attempting to REMOVE the stuff about uranium and Niger, for over a year.”_
Pleading incompetance which leads to conspiring is hardly a defense. The evidence indicated Iraq _did_ seek Uranium from Niger. The CIA sent Wilson under the pretext of finding out if Iraq was _seeking_ Uranium. Wilson came back and launched a public nonsequitar claiming he had debunked the myth that Iraq _bought_ Uranium. That was never the allegation, and everyone involved new it. Wilson and his cabal used a sneaky distortion of his mission to try and derail the White House.
_”They knew Saddam didn’t have a nuclear program. They knew he didn’t have mobile bio labs. They knew he didn’t have drones. They knew.”_
Which was odd because their boss at the CIA was claiming the intelligence that Hussein _did_ have a WMD program was a quote “slam dunk”. And here you will note Drum using the Wilson method of taking the general into the specific to make a case in a way no-one was making.
_”And THAT was what the CIA was fighting against. The fact that higher-ups in the administration kept inserting BOGUS THREATS, to pimp the invasion of Iraq._”
The problem was the CIA didnt recognize what the rest of the universe understands- they are completely incompetant. The fact that a stopped clock happens to be right twice a day doesnt excuse what they attempted in retrospect. It isnt the CIA’s job to knife the White House just because they dont agree with what the WH is doing- ESPECIALLY if the WH is using intelligence from other agencies and nations. That smacks of turf protecting for its own sake.
_Adelman’s answer left me a little stunned, a little outraged but mostly just sad._”
Did Kenneth Adelman even work for this admininstration? What does he have to do with it? If we are building strawmen based on the opinions of given individuals with little power- can i take Dennis Kucinich as the voice of liberal strategy?
The White House and administration was knifing the american people, by transparently selling the war in Iraq using bogus facts. So I don’t blame the parts of the CIA who attempted to get the TRUTH out to the american people. Selling swampland in Florida, is not the proper use of the Presidency and the administration.
And George Tenet saying “slam dunk”, was political chicanery. Why do you think that he was given a Medal of Freedom? Because he signed off on the trumped up threat analysis, even though it was pre-falsified.
There is a reason Powell, in one report, threw down the threat assessment part of his speech to the U.N, saying “this is bullshit!”.
Because he knew as well.
Look, what would YOU do – if you knew THIS was where we would be – at this point – and you were magically put in a WMD analysts body 4 years ago – and so you KNEW the threat was being trumped up. Would you stay silent? Or would you see it as your DUTY to get out the CORRECT and TRUE information?
What would you do?
Hmmm… I wonder what the civil service act says about the difference between U.S. Attorneys and travel agents?
I’d hazard that the travel agents have MORE civil service protections than the U.S. Attorneys, seeing as the U.S. Attorneys serve at the President’s pleasure. Bill Clinton would certainly agree, seeing he had a batch of dismissals 10 times larger than Bush’s latest.
hypocrisyrules,
You have been repeating that for years, unfortunately the facts do not support your view of events – and never have.
Lurker-do you really think that Clinton’s dismissals of US attorneys was equivalent to Bushes? Clinton’s choices still needed to be vetted by (a Republican-dominated) Congress, while Bushes did not, thanks to what is now clearly a sneakly little provision in the Patriot Act that Bush nor his supporters seem to have no argument with, despite the fact they were pushed through on the pretense of “national security”. Feh.
To believe what you are saying, you need to ask yourself whether Clinton could have done what Bush is now doing. Since the answer is “no”, one wonders whether you are aware that your assertion is a naked effort at “dismissal by false equivalence”?
To think that “serving at the President’s pleasure amounts to any kind of defense of unseemly and corrupt acts is laughable.
AJL,
Yes, I can see the difference. US attorneys are prominent lawyers who can easily get very high-paying jobs to replace their old ones without bothering to update their resumes–because everyone in their district knows who they are.
Travel agents just can’t do that sort of thing. They work for years to get to where they are, and then they get canned to make way for cronies.
Maybe Bush has done something really awful here, but I don’t see it yet. 95% of the prosecutions that were ongoing will continue. Some number might end, and some new ones might be restarted. But you have a long way to go to prove that this is anything that imperils the Republic.
The travel office firings were just a scummy thing to do.
Rob-Really? 95% of the prosecutions that were ongoing would continue? Even if this dubious assertion were true, you seemingly fail to consider the benefit of delaying them until after an election. Because that is what this is all about, it seems to me: use the courts to sow suspicion in Dems while supressing Republican malfeasance, real or perceived. That the suspicion of wrongdoing seems more credble for Republicans than Dems only inflates the depravity of attempting to subvert the justice system for purely political reasons.
And I don’t give a damn about the false equivalence assertion that Dems have “done it in the past”. You get caught doing a crime and your defense is not improved by claiming that you are only one among many guilty parties. Even though the Dems prosecuting this issue may not be derived from a Lilywhite lineage, they are doing the necessary work of the people, as set out in our system of laws. Attempting to bend them by playing politics once again only serves to subvert the system to serve the narrow interests of a small minority of politicians and government insiders who do not deserve to be placed above the law.
Lurker, how many US Attorneys did Clinton fire in the middle of their terms? Stop repeating stupid prepared talking points, OK? Mid-term firings motivated by dissatisfaction with investigation into corruption and non-investigation of spurious claims of voter fraud are not comparable to the routine rotation at change of Administrations.
Rob, the evidence is now coming out that Carol Lam was fired because of her continuing investigation into Republican corruption (those of us who grokked the Bush Administration didn’t need a lot of evidence). I guess if that’s one of the that five percent of the cases that gets dropped, no biggie, right, Rob?
AJL, if what you and Dem politicians say is true, then there is indeed cause for outrage. But…as I pointed out above, today’s Dem spin isn’t always tomorrow’s established fact, so I’m reserving judgment for the time being.
I start from the premise that the President (regardless of party) can fire his appointees if he feels like it, and place the burden on the complainers to show that he shouldn’t. You apparently start from a different premise; that’s your right, but you haven’t even bothered to argue it.
I made up the 95% number but considering that the VAST majority of USA activities are about drugs, guns, and immigration (with a leavening of child porn), very few cases are affected by the politics at the top.
I’m seeing that all this “confusion” over whether the WH did anything wrong here is perhaps an effort to deflect attention away from the underlying problem: Obstruction of Justice. That’s a crime, and since there’s more than enough evidence to initiate an inquiry into this, let’s see it happen. That Rob and all seem to be demanding facts be proven beforehand is simply not the way it has ever been done before. That’s what investigations are all about.
Get ’em all up to the Hill to testify before Congress, I say, and let’s get some real answers to these questions. From what I can see at the moment, it doesn’t look good for Bush or his WH.
Here’s Kevin Drum’s take on it:
“Look: the only serious argument that Purgegate is a scandal is related to the reason for the Pearl Harbor Day massacre. If seven U.S. Attorneys were fired that day for poor performance, that would be fine. If they were fired for insufficient commitment to Bush administration policies, that would be fine too. But there’s considerable reason to believe that at least some of them were fired because either (a) they were too aggressive about investigating Republican corruption or (b) they weren’t aggressive enough about investigating Democrats.
That’s it. That’s the argument. David Iglesias: Didn’t bring indictments against some local Democrats prior to the 2006 election. John McKay: Failed to invent voter fraud cases that might have prevented a Democrat from winning the 2004 governor’s race in Washington. Carol Lam: Doing too good a job prosecuting trainloads of Republicans in the wake of the Duke Cunningham scandal. Daniel Bogden and Paul Charlton: In the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired. And this all comes against a background that suggests the Bush Justice Department has initiated fantastically more investigations of Democrats than Republicans over the past five years.
All of this, combined with the “volleys of lies” coming at us machine gun style from one Bush administration figure after another, strikes me as a pretty good reason to be deeply suspicious.”
I’m not saying no investigation should occur. I’m saying I won’t get all huffy about it until something other than Democrats “connecting the dots” in a way favorable to them politically comes out. Anyone can make up reasons they think someone else did what they did, that doesn’t make those reasons true.
(And the WA election was unquestionably fishy. That’s my home state and I voted in that election absentee, and watched its aftermath pretty closely. Maybe not indictment-fishy, but fishy enought to merit an investigation.)
Rob-just because the Dems are the ones connecting the dots (as is their job as the party in control of Congress) and they reflect unfavorably on Republicans (and by your implication, favorably for the Dems) that does not mean they are “made up” as you imply they could be. Ironically, you are accusing the Dems of doing what the Republicans are being accused of. While there is something to be said for “bipartisan cynicism”, there is already ample independent evidence out there if you care to look for it….if not, it will never rise to the level you seem to have arbitrarily set before triggering the “huffy” response. All too often, however, those of a particular mind-set will dismiss even the most blatantly obvious fact if it doesn’t conform to their pre-determined conclusions or if they set a different threshold for each political party.
All too often, however, those of a particular mind-set will dismiss even the most blatantly obvious fact if it doesn’t conform to their pre-determined conclusions
Interestingly, I think that’s a fine description of Joe Wilson’s supporters, on this very thread and elsewhere. They probably think its a fine description of me.
If there is a case to be made that the firings were wrong, you’ve got to start digging into the minutae of the cases under investigation and not under investigation, comparing these USAs to the other 85 or so, blah, blah, blah. I work in the legal system, OK? Things are almost never what the press says they are, and even when they are, they are usually misunderstood by laymen.
It would shock me if you could honestly say you had done the necessary legwork. I am quite confident AJL hasn’t, althouh I know his commenting well enough to take it more seriously than most. Kevin Drum has only “considerable reason to believe” things for which he provides no evidence, only innuendo. I have “considerable reason to believe” that if you got Harry Reid in a good headlock, he could do little more than spout talking points his staff had written.
A circumstantial case can convict, but not if it’s being made by Democrats.
Word on the street is that Horatio Sanz has been reluctant to sign-on as Joe Wilson. Don’t understand why he wouldn’t jump at the chance.
I think the part you’re failing to address, Rob, is the suggestion that you and others here may be setting a higher threshold for Republicans than Dems WRT this so-called “legal minutae”.
Wei,
It’s possible. Since no two administrations are identical, it’s hard to tell. And of course, even if someone does have different standards for each side, it’s not necessarily unjustified; if you mistrust one side and trust the other, it makes sense to judge them differently. Drum is quite obviously doing so with his “machine gun of lies” remark. If you were a juror in a trial, would you evaluate the sworn testimony of a clergyman differently from someone with multiple convictions for fraud?
As I said, I start with the presumption that the President can do as he pleases with his appointees, so he gets the benefit of the doubt right off. So far I see speculation about his motives with very little actual evidence (as opposed to what Drum calls evidence, which is actually speculation about motives). There’s also some circumstantial evidence, which if combined with speculation about his motives, might add up to something. But since there is every reason to think that evidence has been cherry-picked and shaded, and no indications of a more thorough analysis, it adds up to very little indeed.
Maybe I could plunge into the issue and come to a failry confident conclusion, but the level of effort for me to move another 5% closer to certainty is far more than I have time for. That leaves those of you trying to convince me it’s an outrage to do the work. Which, I’m afraid, you aren’t doing very well at all.
#35 SPQR,
I would be happy if that was the case, and more than willing to admit it.
“But it is not the case”:http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010031.php
_Why This Matters: The available evidence indicates a systematic campaign to suppress inconvenient facts pertaining to the British uranium claim, so that the Bush and Blair administrations could continue to deceive the public by portraying the British claim as credible. This allowed the Bush administration to recover some ground in the aftermath of the Joseph Wilson op-ed._
_Additionally, the Bush administration was playing an intel-of-the-day game wherein they used the US NIE, or Wilson’s trip or the British intel on any given day to prop up their case even though they had admitted that Bush’s 2003 SOTU claim was not based on the NIE claim or Joseph Wilson’s trip (see the Postscript of this other post). As readers may recall, the CIA had considered the British claim to be bunk and had told the WH as such no later than October 2002. The White House admitted that Bush’s 2003 SOTU speech referred to the British because the CIA did not want the WH to use the uranium claim from the NIE. Hence, the WH made the argument that it didn’t matter what former Ambassador Wilson or the NIE said because Bush had only referred to the British uranium claim. Yet, in the aftermath of Wilson’s op-ed, the WH was secretly and deceptively reeling out “supporting” evidence from the NIE (and Wilson’s trip) to the Wall Street Journal editorial page and other outlets (including the NYT’s Judith Miller) – “evidence” that the WH separately admitted in public was NOT the basis of Bush’s SOTU statement. This was, in other words, an elaborate fraud._