Neo Liberal Democrats

Once again, Blogger has chosen to place my new post in the order I started writting it, instead of in the order I posted it. My newest post is here:

Neo Liberal Democrats

An Inconvenient Hype…..

In MSM stories about human caused Global Warming, {AGW}., over and over, we are told that “the science is solid, the facts are beyond dispute, and everyone who hasn’t been paid off by the oil companies agrees”.

Except, now, the New York Times ?

Yes the article starts off with praise for al Gore, and ends with it as well. But…in the middle, there is some rather disturbing…what’s come to be called “Global Warming Denial”. As though denying AGW was the same as denying the holocaust. You know, not only ignorant, but morally repulsive as well.

Yet there it is, in The Times…
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From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype
New York Times Science section

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

“He’s a very polarizing figure in the science community,” said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. “Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore.”

“An Inconvenient Truth,” directed by Davis Guggenheim, was released last May and took in more than $46 million, making it one of the top-grossing documentaries ever. The companion book by Mr. Gore quickly became a best seller, reaching No. 1 on the New York Times list.

Mr. Gore depicted a future in which temperatures soar, ice sheets melt, seas rise, hurricanes batter the coasts and people die en masse. “Unless we act boldly,” he wrote, “our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes.”

Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president’s work may hold “imperfections” and “technical flaws.” He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

“We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore.

While reviewers tended to praise the book and movie, vocal skeptics of global warming protested almost immediately.

Richard S. Lindzen, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has long expressed skepticism about dire climate predictions, accused Mr. Gore in The Wall Street Journal of “shrill alarmism.”

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark long skeptical of catastrophic global warming, said in a syndicated article that the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, had refrained from scaremongering.

“Climate change is a real and serious problem” that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. “The cacophony of screaming,” he added, “does not help.”

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said on a blog that Mr. Gore’s film did “indeed do a pretty good job of presenting the most dire scenarios.” But the June report, he added, shows “that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years.”

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore’s claim that the energy industry ran a “disinformation campaign” that produced false discord on global warming.

Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

http://tinyurl.com/2ykrv7
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Colmar:

Just so we’re clear, I edited the above, taking out half of the article that quoted people saying “al Gore is right”, and only posted the “skeptics” part. Not so much to dispute the AGW theory, although I do. But to make a different point.

Up to now, virtually everyone in the MSM has been presenting AGW as a proven point of science. “Skeptics” have been presented as few, and probably paid off by the oil companies. Now that liberal press consensus is starting to break up. When the N Y Times runs a two page article, and HALF of it is devoted to “denial”, that’s actually IS news.

But wait, there’s more….

The ultra liberal state owned British Broadcasting Corporation, { BBC}, has recently produced their own documentary. Incredibly, they have actually titled it:

"The Great Global Warming Swindle."

Here are some sample quotes from the intro:

"Yet as the frenzy over man made Global Warming grows shriller, many senior climate scientists say the actual scientific basis for the theory is crumbling."

"None of the major climate changes in the last 1,000 years can be explained by CO2...there have been times when we had 10 times as much CO2 as we have today."

Remember the recent IPCC report from the UN, the “unanimous” report that “AGW is a proven fact”? Yet the BBC shows Professor John Christy, whom they identify as “lead author IPCC” saying this:

I have often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the Global Warming issue that humans are creating a catastrophic change in the climate system. Well, I am one scientist, and there are many, that think that simply is not true.”

Several scientists comment on the fact that, contrary to media reports that the IPCC was composed entirely of the world’s top scientists, many of them were non-scientist governmental appointees.

In fact, they quote members of the IPCC as saying:

“those people who are specialists, and don’t agree with the polemic and resigned, and there have been a number that I know of, they are simply put on the author list, and they become part of this list of the worlds 2,500 top scientists”

Professor Paul Reiter, Pasteur Institute, Paris

As for the "unanimous" part:

“none of them are asked to agree, many of them disagree”

Professor Richard Lindzen, IPCC and MIT

A while back I posted on the differences between liberal media bias, misleading news reports, and outright lying. Regardless of what you may believe about AGW, if you watch this BBC documentary, you will see that virtually all of the media reports you saw about the IPCC were, in fact, a pack of lies.

This was NOT an exclusively Blue Ribbon Scientific panel. They did NOT agree on anything. And many of those who were most qualified disagreed and resigned, leaving the report to be written by a diverse group under pressure from their governments to confirm a mere theory as “fact”.

As that article the other day said:

“they know so much that isn’t so”

Thanks in great part to the MSM

And yet now, even the MSM is "cooling" on the AGW story.

Watch the whole video at the link below, and as you do, remember this is NOT coming from Fox, this is from the ultra liberal BBC….

http://tinyurl.com/yup95z

Neo Liberal Democrats

The other day I posted an article "Where are the JFK Democrats". Which basically said they have disappeared. Then I came across this Washington Post article that says they are merely biding their time, out of fear of being seen as pro-Bush.

Let's be clear, in the last paragraph of this next article, which I have omitted as I don't want to end with a conclusion opposite to my point, this author makes clear he is no neo-Liberal. He calls the US a hegamonic power that has "overplayed it's hand arrogently", foolishly seeking to impose a "global American peace".

He concludes "It isn't easy to offer a true alternative", and in fact he doesn't offer any such thing. He merely rants about:

ifluential special interests in this country that want an aggressive policy: globalizing corporations, the military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel lobbies, those who covet Middle Eastern oil

Oh well, at least he doesn't mention "ChimpyMcBushitler".

As I've said before, if you are against "globalizing corporations", try to go even one day without using their products. Or try to produce them on your own. If we were to simply halt all "global corporate" activity for one short year, 90% of the world's population would die. Just Google "democide in Cambodia" to see what I mean.

As a neo-Liberal myself, I fervently hope to see the US impose a "global American peace". Ironically, we did just that in WW2, and only the extreme paleo-conservatives and the far far leftists think we did the wrong thing then.

If we can make judicious use of American military power to prevent a nuclear war in the Middle East, with Shia Iran, the Sunni states, the Kurds and the Turks all battling for supremacy, and Israel struggling for survival, I'm all for it.

So who better to make this excellent analysis of Neo-Liberalism, than an ardent anti-neo-liberal. Bear in mind, this article was written by the author of:

A Pact With the Devil: Washington's Bid for World Supremacy and the Betrayal of the American Promise

Heh !
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It's Uphill for the Democrats
They Need a Global Strategy, Not Just Tactics for Iraq
Washington Post
By Tony Smith

The Democrats' victory last November obviously reflected popular sentiment against the war in Iraq, but nothing seems obvious now as Democrats try to exploit their new majority status in Congress.

Iraq had flustered the congressional Democrats because Democrats don't have an agreed position on what America's role in the world should be. They want to change the Bush administration's policy in Iraq without discussing the underlying ideas that produced it.

And although they now cast themselves as alternatives to President Bush, the fact is that prevailing Democratic doctrine is not that different from the Bush-Cheney doctrine.

Many Democrats, including senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, embraced the idea of muscular foreign policy based on American global supremacy and the presumed right to intervene to promote democracy or to defend key U.S. interests long before 9/11, and they have not changed course since. Even those who have shifted against the war have avoided doctrinal questions.

But without a coherent alternative to the Bush doctrine, with its confidence in America's military preeminence and the global appeal of "free market democracy," the Democrats' midterm victory may not be repeated in November 2008. Or, if the Democrats do win in 2008, they could remain staked to a vision of a Pax Americana strikingly reminiscent of Bush's.

Democratic adherents to what might be called the "neoliberal" position are well organized and well positioned. Their credo was enunciated just nine years ago by Madeleine Albright, then President Bill Clinton's secretary of state: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further into the future." She was speaking of Bosnia at the time, but her remark had much wider implications.

Since 1992, the ascendant Democratic faction in foreign policy debates has been the thinkers associated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Since 2003, the PPI has issued repeated broadsides damning Bush's handling of the Iraq war, but it has never condemned the invasion. It has criticized Bush's failure to achieve U.S. domination of the Middle East, arguing that Democrats could do it better.

Consider a volume published last spring and edited by Will Marshall, president of the PPI since 1989. The book, "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty," contains essays by 19 liberal Democrats.

"Make no mistake," write Marshall and Jeremy Rosner in their introduction, "we are committed to preserving America's military preeminence. We recognize that a strong military undergirds U.S. global leadership." Recalling a Democratic "tradition of muscular liberalism," they insist that "Progressives and Democrats must not give up the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad just because President Bush has paid it lip service. {sic} Advancing democracy -- in practice, not just in rhetoric -- is fundamentally the Democrats' legacy, the Democrats' cause, and the Democrats' responsibility."

In the volume, a Muslim American calls on us to prevail in the "cosmic war" with terrorism by winning "The Struggle for Islam's Soul." Stephen Solarz worries about Pakistan; Anne-Marie Slaughter would "Reinvent the U.N." Larry Diamond and Michael McFaul defend "Seeding Liberal Democracy." Kenneth Pollack, whose 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," was as influential as any single writing in urging the invasion of Iraq, presents "A Grand Strategy for the Middle East."

"For better or worse, whether you supported the war or not, it is all about Iraq now," writes Pollack. The goal of this Democrat who helped bring us Iraq? "The end state that America's grand strategy toward the Middle East must envision is a new liberal order to replace a status quo marked by political repression, economic stagnation and cultural conflict."

His problem with the Bush administration? "It has not made transformation its highest goal. . . . Iran and Syria's rogue regimes seem to be the only exceptions. The administration insists on democratic change there in a manner it eschews for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other allies. . . . The right grand strategy would make transformation of our friends and our foes alike our agenda's foremost issue."

This is not a fringe group. Many prominent Democrats are PPI stalwarts, including Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Evan Bayh, Thomas R. Carper and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, published a book last year, "The Plan: Big Ideas for America," co-authored by Bruce Reed, editor of the PPI's magazine Blueprint and president of the DLC.

Emanuel and Reed salute Marshall's "outstanding anthology" for its "refreshingly hardnosed and intelligent new approach . . . which breathes new life into the Democratic vision of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy." Not a word in their book appears hostile to the idea of invading Iraq.

Instead, the authors fault Bush for allowing a "troop gap" to develop (they favor increasing the Army by 100,000 and expanding the Marines and Special Forces) and for failing to "enlist our allies in a common mission." The message once again is that Democrats could do it better.

In fact, these neoliberals are nearly indistinguishable from the better-known neoconservatives. The neocons' think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), often salutes individuals within the PPI, and PPI members such as Marshall signed PNAC petitions endorsing the Iraq invasion. Weeks after "With All Our Might" appeared, the Weekly Standard, virtually the PNAC house organ, gave it a thumbs-up review.

And why not? The PPI and PNAC are tweedledum and tweedledee.

Sources for many of the critical elements of the Bush doctrine can be found in the emergence of neoliberal thought during the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War. In think tanks, universities and government offices, left-leaning intellectuals, many close to the Democratic Party, formulated concepts to bring to fruition the age-old dream of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson "to make the world safe for democracy."

These neolibs advocated the global expansion of "market democracy." They presented empirical, theoretical, even philosophical arguments to support the idea of the United States as the indispensable nation. Albright's self-assured declaration descended directly from traditional Wilsonianism.

Talking in the refined language of the social sciences about "democratic peace theory," neolibs such as Bruce Russett at Yale maintained that a world of democracies would mean the end of war. Neolibs such as Larry Diamond at Stanford also posited the "universal appeal of democracy," suggesting that "regime change" leading to "the democratic transition" was a manageable undertaking.

Anne-Marie Slaughter at Princeton asserted that "rogue states" guilty of systematic human-rights abuses or that built weapons of mass destruction had only "conditional sovereignty" and were legally open to attack. These views were echoed in the columns of Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Here was the intellectual substance of much of the Bush doctrine, coming from non-Republicans.

Dealing with Serbia in the 1990s cemented the neocon-neolib entente. By Sept. 11, 2001, these two groups had converged as a single ideological family. They agreed that American nationalism was best expressed in world affairs as a progressive imperialism. The rallying call for armed action would be promoting human rights and democratic government among peoples who resisted American hegemony.

And so we may appreciate the Democrats' difficulty in their search for an exit strategy not only from Iraq but also from the temptations of a superpower.

Ironically, the neolibs are more powerful today in the Democratic Party than the neocons are among Republicans. Senior Republicans such as Brent Scowcroft, James A. Baker III and the late Gerald R. Ford seem more skeptical about an American bid for world supremacy than do comparable senior Democrats.

"I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford told Bob Woodward in 2004. But the former president doubted "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one of what's in our national interest. And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our national security."

There is a precedent for the Democrats' dilemma as 2008 approaches. When Richard M. Nixon ran for president 40 years ago, he, too, needed to formulate a policy that distinguished him from the unpopular war in Vietnam prosecuted by an unpopular Democratic administration. He promised that "a new leadership will end the war," hinting that he had a secret plan to do so. But it turned out that Nixon's "new leadership" was as committed to prevailing in Southeast Asia as Lyndon B. Johnson had been.

The early positions of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates illustrate their party's problem. The front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not moved from her traditional support of the DLC's basic position -- she criticizes the conduct of the war, but not the idea of the war. Former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama are more outspoken; both call the war a serious mistake, but neither has articulated a vision for a more modest U.S. role in the world generally.

It isn't easy to offer a true alternative...........

http://tinyurl.com/3yvosy
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Colmar:

The other day I posted that "most of the Dems aren't really against the War in Iraq. They are AT WAR WITH BUSH". And since they find it politically expedient to call it, as Hillary did, "Bush's War", they need to sound as if they are opposed to a war that they had been strong proponets of...before Bush did what they merely proposed.

It bothered me at the time that although I knew this to be true, it was based on a hundred different things I had read, seen, or heard in various media sources, and hence I couldn't document my point. So I heartily thank Tony Smith for doing it for me. Even if the last thing he wanted to do was bolster this Neo-Liberal blog.

So you may be saying, sure, maybe Clinton and Lieberman think this way, but not the real progressives, like for instance al Gore. I was going to post this on it's own, but it fits perfectly here:

al Gore: Stay The Course In Iraq
It's amazing how lucid one can be, when one is not running for office. Yes, even the Goaracle:
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What Gore Doesn't Say
BY ELI LAKE
March 6, 2007
The New York Sun

Mark what Vice President Gore is not saying. At a moment when embracing the retreat from Iraq appears a prerequisite for attaining his party's presidential nomination, the Tennessean so many in his party are now drafting as a nominee has stayed mum on the question of withdrawal.

As the rest of the Democratic field dares itself to embrace an American betrayal at ever sooner deadlines, Mr. Gore barnstorms the country to raise the alarm about the weather. When asked about withdrawing troops from the war he urged his party to vote against in 2002, he dodges the question.

In an interview December 6 with Matthew Lauer, the former vice president was asked whether, were he president, he would favor a withdrawal. Mr. Gore made sure to say that the war was a "car-wreck" and that military victory was impossible. But as for whether he would cut and run, he said,

"Well if I were president I would have the full flow of information and have and test each of these options."

So why is it that Hollywood's favorite Democrat would need more information to make a choice everyone in his party seems to have already accepted?

Look no further than Mr. Gore's September 23, 2002, address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, a speech that launched his transformation from goofy Columbia professor to anti-war hero. In it he said that one of the reasons he opposed the intervention, was because he did not trust President Bush to stay in Iraq once the Baathist state was dismantled.

"If we go in there and dismantle them — and they deserve to be dismantled — but then we wash our hands of it and walk away and leave it in a situation of chaos, and say, ‘That's for y'all to decide how to put things back together now,' that hurts us."

This, incidentally, is the inverse of how Senator Obama advertises today on the stump his early Iraq war opposition. Mr. Obama says today, "I believed that giving this President the open-ended authority to invade Iraq would lead to the open-ended occupation we find ourselves in today."

This may sound hard to believe in light of Mr. Gore's subsequent moveon.org speeches, in which he played to the passions of his camp's national security Sistah Souljahs, but Mr. Gore has long had some of the feathers of a hawk. That's right, Mr. Gore is a tag 'em and bag 'em tough guy, a former vice president who endorsed the rendition of terrorists for interrogation, not to mention the bombing of Serbia and Iraq.

When Mr. Gore was a senator, he asked his colleagues to demand the State Department hold Yasser Arafat accountable for ordering the murder of America's ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, in 1973. When he signed these letters to his colleagues, already some American Jews were beginning the secret negotiations in Norway that led to rehabilitation of Arafat's international reputation, a reputation enhanced by the Clinton administration's fixation with the Oslo process.

Certainly, Mr. Gore has a record that falls far short of perfect. On May 26, 2004, in his shrillest speech to moveon.org, he laced into Ahmad Chalabi, bringing up the outstanding conviction by a Jordanian military court for embezzling $70 million and the anonymously sourced stories at the time alleging the former Iraqi exile leader had passed secrets to the Iranians. Mr. Gore had to have known of Mr. Chalabi's connections with Tehran and the Jordanian charges in 2000, when, as a presidential candidate, he promised, in a letter to Mr. Chalabi, to help protect the democratic forces of Iraq.

It was Mr. Gore who in 1996 was sent to smooth the Iraqi opposition's feathers when the Clinton administration infamously failed to respond to Saddam's invasion of their northern Iraqi sanctuary. More often than not, at least throughout Mr. Gore's career, he has been closer than most modern Democrats to the Scoop Jackson and Harry Truman tradition.

Mr. Gore has been an idealist, a defender of Israel, and unafraid to deploy American force in the interest of noble American values. He voted for the first Gulf War, when there were far more leaders in his party who opposed it.

Today Mr. Gore basks in the adoring love of the activists who tried and failed to knock off his running mate in 2000, Senator Lieberman. Strategically it cannot be stressed enough that Mr. Gore's 30-year war against carbon emissions will end when we discover the alternative energies to bankrupt the Persian Gulf 's kings and ayatollahs.

Mr. Gore's record in public life aside, he is also a far shrewder politician than many are willing to admit. This Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Oscar winner must know that Americans — when faced in a presidential election with a choice between a dove and a hawk — have chosen the hawk every time since Johnson beat Goldwater.

Even in 1976, Jimmy Carter, who became America's most supine commander in chief, won an easy contest against a president who at the time was afraid to meet publicly with Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And at the end of the day, this may be the most inconvenient truth of all for those frantically trying to draft Mr. Gore to run for the White House.

http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=49860
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Colmar:

You know, this really straightens out a lot of confused thinking on my part. I kept wondering, how did I end up in the Republican neo-con camp, when I've been a life long Democrat ? And yes I know the saying:

If you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart
If you aren't a conservative in middle age, you have no brain

And while there is some truth to that, it doesn't mean you have to regress to a fundamentalist Christian paleo-conservative Blue meme level. It just means that when you hear about "universal health care", you now have the experience to think of the Department of Motor Vehicles, AmTrak, and Walter Reed Military Hospital, and ask yourself if you really want the government to be in charge of your health care......

So anyway, it's not that I've changed all that much after all, it's just that I have managed to escape from coming down with Bush Derangement Syndrome:

Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) is a political epithet invented by American political columnist and former psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer in a satirical article to describe complaints raised against the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his administration, associates, affiliates and supporters, especially those who subscribe to conspiracy theories, or who allegedly oppose any initiative put forward by the Bush administration merely because Bush supports it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome

Even if those positions are ones you very recently supported, you now must oppose them, simply because Bush supports them. Hence the problem for the moderate Dems. As neo-Liberals, as Tony Smith said, they are virtually indistinguishable from neo-Cons.

If only Bush were anti-military, they could be demanding an immediate invasion of Syria and Iran. But since he isn't, they can't. I'm seriously thinking of sending Bush an email suggesting that since the Dems are a majority in Congress now, Bush should propose:

raising taxes
withdrawing all troops from Iraq
raising the mimimum wage to $20/hour
telling North Korea and Iran it's ok to go nuclear
giving the terrorists at Gitmo Presidential pardons, and free tuition to their choice of Harvard, Yale or Stanford

As the BDSers raise howls of protest, and suggest the opposite, they could be joined by enough "rogue Republicans" to pass veto proof versions of bills to:

drill for oil in Anwar and off the Florida coast
require US troops to remain in Iraq for a minimum of 10 years
bomb Iran's nuclear sites
eliminate the estate tax
etc. etc........

Shhh, if it's going to work, it has to remain a secret, don't tell anyone. LOL

Where Are the JFK Democrats?
Forbes.com

Our 35th president, {Democrat} John F. Kennedy, was pro-freedom, pro-defense, pro-trade and a tax cutter. On taxes, JFK had this to say to the Economic Club of New York on Dec. 14, 1962:

"Our present tax system exerts too heavy a drag on growth. It siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power. It reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment and risk-taking."

No class warrior was JFK. He wanted cuts "for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and … invest more capital." The JFK tax cuts were enacted in February 1964 and touched off an economic and investment boom.

Where are the JFK Democrats today? The party's likely presidential candidate in 2008, Hillary Clinton (D--N.Y.), is not one of them. On taxes, Clinton had this to say:

"Tax cuts are not the cure-all for everything that ails the American economy.… We need policies that only all of us acting together through our government can make to set the stage for future prosperity."

Revealing her feelings about capitalism's lifeblood, profits, Clinton said this about oil companies at February's Democratic National Committee retreat:

"I want to take those profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund."

Note the action verb "take." Did she really say take? Go to YouTube.com, type in "Hillary on oil profits" and see for yourself. Scary.

Clinton is supported by 34% of likely primary-voting Democrats. Trailing her, at 26%, is Barack Obama (D-Ill.), whose U.S. Senate voting record is portside of Clinton's. Next is John Edwards, at 15%. The ex-trial lawyer's platform is one of clamp-down protectionism and soak-the-rich populism. If these three worthies stumble, look for Al Gore to jump in.

http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0326/037.html
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He then goes on to talk about New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson, who is truly pro-business.

Like JFK, Richardson is a tax cutter. He whacked New Mexico's top income-tax rate by 40% and capital gains by 50%. As FORBES wrote in 2004: "He knows the importance of free trade, having bucked his party a decade ago to support Nafta." In 2006 Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, rated Richardson's fiscal performance ahead of such Republican governors as Mississippi's Haley Barbour, Massachusetts' Mitt Romney, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida's Jeb Bush.

This is astonishing. Richardson is hugely popular in New Mexico. First elected governor in 2002, he won reelection in November with 69% of the vote. What makes that figure impressive is that New Mexico tilts only slightly Democratic.

Which caught my interest for a while. Until I found out that in the war against terrorism, {or as Rudi Guiliani recently put it, defending ourselves against the "terrorists who have declared war on us"}, Richardson is slightly to the left of Cindy Sheehan.

"Another one bites the dust." Sigh.......

The State of the Union

They know so much that isn't so
John Noonen
Town Hall.com

Sometimes I read liberal blogs. Not for education, of course. I suppose I read them as some sort of perverse method of reinforcing my convictions on the war. Ronald Reagan used to say "it's not that liberals are ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." It's a bit of wisdom that is most effectively illustrated by the left side of the blogosphere.

This war has become, by and large, an exercise in politics. "Warped Clausewitz" is a good way of framing it. In Clausewitzian theory, war is conducted by a trinity of the people, the military, and the government, all interconnected and functioning as a single-minded entity in pursuit of a single objective: victory.

Today the trinity is fractured. Some would argue that it fractured when we withdrew from Vietnam. But losing South Vietnam didn't have the same horrific implications as losing Iraq to Iran, nor did we have to worry about Saigon becoming the capital of a breeding-ground vacuum state.

And, we aren't conscripting a largely disgruntled pool of unwilling draftees to fight the war in Iraq like we did in Vietnam. All are volunteers. So why has 21st-century America shattered the trinity when we need it most?

True to Clausewitzian thought, the answer lies in the political realm.

Opposition to President Bush has become downright religious for some Americans—activists whose greatest fear is that victory in Iraq would be tantamount to justifying the whole invasion and occupation.

Thus leftist pundits erect pyramids of anti-war rhetoric, built on falsehoods, misconception, and doubt—constructs that serve as pillars of justification for a hasty retreat. None of it is built on sound military judgment or expertise, which should be a requisite for respected war punditry, but like Ronnie said, "they know so much that isn't so." And, there's nothing left-o'-center bloggers love more than to show off that knowledge.

Take Juan Cole for example. Cole is a prominent liberal blogger and a professor at the University of Michigan. Recently he reported on his blog, titled Informed Comment (without a hint of irony, no doubt), that the U.S. Air Force:

…launched a series of bombing raids on southeast Baghdad. This is absolutely shameful, that the US is bombing from the air a civilian city that it militarily occupies. You can't possibly do that without killing innocent civilians, as at Ramadi the other day. It is a war crime. US citizens should protest and write their congressional representatives. It is also the worst possible counter-insurgency tactic anyone could ever have imagined. You bomb people, they hate you.

Not if you're bombing the folks who are trying to kill you, as the Air Force is doing by targeting Al Qaeda Iraq with a healthy dose of precision-guided justice. Then people like you. A lot. In fact, an Iraqi blogger e-mailed me a photo that he took of a B-1 bomber running a combat air patrol over Baghdad, curiously wanting to know what it was, and whether or not it would help with the surge. That's right—Iraqis are so terrified of these bombing raids that they're outside taking pictures of the strike aircraft.

Prof. Cole is doing something that many anti-war bloggers do—pretending that they are someone they aren't, writing on a topic that that they know little about. Cole is a professor of Middle Eastern studies.... But his writing implies that he has some sort of expertise on counter-insurgency that trumps that of the career military officers who ordered the aforementioned air strikes.

You ask a career military officer and they'll tell you that using precision guided munitions is one of the best ways possible to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage, while still effectively negating a target. Ask Juan Cole and he'll make it seem like the U.S. Air Force is indiscriminately carpet bombing Iraqi neighborhoods for a giggle. "They know so much that isn't so."

On Monday, USA today front paged news that the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division and the 4th Stryker Brigade would be bypassing the usual pre-deployment counter-insurgency training at the National Training Center (NTC) so that they could more rapidly support the recent troop surge.

Blogger John Aravosis hyperventilated over this news on AMERICAblog, another popular blog opposed to the war in Iraq, suggesting that Iraq war supporters "hate the troops but love the war."

An informed commentator, well-versed in military knowledge and thought would rationally tell you that these two particular units are already seasoned veterans of the war, and come from home bases (Forts Campbell and Stewart) that boast two of the world's finest MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) facilities.

That is the reason that the Pentagon feels comfortable in accelerating their training. John Aravosis, not well-versed in military knowledge or thought, would have you believe that inexperienced kids are being heartlessly shipped into a meat grinder without proper training or equipment. "They know so much that isn't so."

These are two relatively benign examples from the liberal blogosphere, a place whose terrain cracks and oozes with emotionally driven hatred masquerading as political discourse. A place where the mere thought of victory in Iraq is downright blasphemous.

But they do effectively demonstrate how anti-war bloggers and pundits will try to second-guess and sabotage the Pentagon's every move by pretending to be military experts.

Surely Clausewitz never anticipated that an active percentage of his trinity would be working towards achieving the enemy's vision of victory, but perhaps that's the most compelling evidence that the trinity has fractured once and for all.

John Noonan has been published in The Washington Post, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and National Review, and was a contributor to the Encylopedia of World War I and World War II.

http://tinyurl.com/2ck7gv
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Perverse Libby trial was revealing
March 11, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

A couple of days ago, Shane Gibson, the Bahamian immigration minister, resigned. The Tribune in Nassau had published front-page pictures of him in bed with Anna Nicole Smith. Could happen to anyone. Riding high in February, shot down in March. And, in fairness to the minister, both parties were fully clothed. Indeed, Anna Nicole was more fully clothed than she usually was out of bed.

My point here is that this is a classic scandal in the Westminster parliamentary tradition: On Monday, you're blandly denying vague rumors; on Tuesday, they're all over the front page; on Wednesday, you're photographed alongside your long-suffering wife vowing to fight this outrageous slur; on Thursday, you're resigning to spend more time with your family and the prime minister issues a statement saying the nation will always be grateful to you for your long years of public service culminating in the passage of the Municipal Airports (Parking Lot Signage) Bill, and on Friday your successor is seated behind your desk already working on his own career-detonating scandal.

Washington doesn't seem to do things that way. In a Beltway political scandal, you appoint a special prosecutor who investigates it for years and the scandal metastasizes and morphs in bizarre fantastic ways. I'm not being especially partisan here. I thought Bill Clinton should have resigned when the blue dress showed up. But the months pass and instead he's testifying to the grand jury about his definition of non-sexual relations -- if the party of the first part is apart from the parts of the party of the second part while the party of the second part is partaking of the parts of the party of the first part, etc. -- and once you're arguing on that basis the very process is a mockery.

What's just happened to Scooter Libby is, I think, worse. In his closing remarks, Patrick Fitzgerald invited the jury to view a narrow perjury case as something epic: ''What is this case about?'' the special counsel mused. ''Is it about something bigger?'' Fortunately, he was musing rhetorically, and he had the answer on hand: ''There is a cloud over the vice president. . . . There is a cloud over the White House.''

Indeed. And what exactly is the cloud? Is it that the name of a covert agent was intentionally leaked in breach of the relevant law on non-disclosure?

No. On the alleged violation of Valerie Plame's identity, Fitzgerald was unable to produce not only a perpetrator but any crime.

Is the cloud then a more general murk? A politically motivated attempt to damage the white knight Joe Wilson as he sallied forth against the Bush dragon?

No. The man who leaked Valerie Plame's name was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and a man who dislikes Rove, Cheney and all their neocon warmongering works. The journalist he leaked it to -- Bob Novak -- was also opposed to the Iraq war. Neither Armitage nor Novak had any animus against Joe Wilson. On the contrary, they broadly share Wilson's skepticism on the threat posed by Saddam. There was no conspiracy, just Armitage gossiping like the gravelly voiced schoolgirl he's been for years.

When a prosecutor speaks about ''a cloud over the vice president's office'' and ''a cloud over the White House,'' he is speaking politically. There is no law about the amount of cumulus permitted over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The prosecutor is speculating on political capital -- reputation, credibility, the currency of politics. Once damaged, they're hard to recover. So, even if it's not within the purview of the jury, his question is relevant to the wider world: How did this cloud get there and stay there even though it had no meaningful rainfall?

Answer: Patrick Fitzgerald.

The prosecutor knew from the beginning that (a) leaking Valerie Plame's name was not a crime and (b) the guy who did it was Richard Armitage. In other words, he was aware that the public and media perception of this ''case'' was entirely wrong: There was no conspiracy by Bush ideologues to damage a whistleblower, only an anti-war official making an offhand remark to an anti-war reporter.

Even the usual appeals to prosecutorial discretion (Libby was a peripheral figure with only he said/she said evidence in an investigation with no underlying crime) don't convey the scale of Fitzgerald's perversity: He knew, in fact, that there was no cloud, that under all the dark scudding about Rove and Cheney there was only sunny Richard Armitage blabbing away accidentally.

Yet he chose to let the entirely false impression of his ''case'' sit out there month in, month out, year after year, glowering over the White House, doing great damage to the presidency on the critical issue of the day.

So much of the current degraded discourse on the war -- ''Bush lied'' -- comes from the false perceptions of the Joe Wilson Niger story.

Britain's MI-6, the French, the Italians and most other functioning intelligence services believe Saddam was trying to procure uranium from Africa. Lord Butler's special investigation supports it. So does the Senate Intelligence Committee. So Wilson's original charge is if not false then at the very least unproven, and the conspiracy arising there from entirely nonexistent. But the damage inflicted by the cloud is real and lasting.

As for Scooter Libby, he faces up to 25 years in jail for the crime of failing to remember when he first heard the name of Valerie Plame -- whether by accident or intent no one can ever say for sure.

But we also know that Joe Wilson failed to remember that his original briefing to the CIA after getting back from Niger was significantly different from the way he characterized it in his op-ed in the New York Times. We do know that the contemptible Armitage failed to come forward and clear the air as his colleagues were smeared for months on end. We do know that his boss Colin Powell sat by as the very character of the administration was corroded.

And we know that Patrick Fitzgerald knew all this and more as he frittered away the years, and the ''political blood lust'' (as National Review's Rich Lowry calls it) grew ever more disconnected from humdrum reality. The cloud over the White House is Fitzgerald's, and his closing remarks to the jury were highly revealing. If he dislikes Bush and Cheney and the Iraq war, whoopee: Run against them, or donate to the Democrats, or get a talk-radio show.

Instead, he chose in full knowledge of the truth to maintain artificially a three-year cloud over the White House while the anti-Bush left frantically mistook its salivating for the first drops of a downpour. The result is the disgrace of Scooter Libby. Big deal. Patrick Fitzgerald's disgrace is the greater, and a huge victory not for justice or the law but for the criminalization of politics.

http://tinyurl.com/3cexcf
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Colmar:

A civil war of "dis-information", where you dupe people into "knowing" what isn't so.

The "enemy of my enemy" is NOT your friend, as Hillary Clinton is finding out as Code Pink disrupts her speeches for not being far-enough-left on Iraq.

The Colin Powells and the Richard Armitages of the "realist" wing of the Republicans passively oppose Bush, while the Pat Buchanans on the far right actively and openly oppose him. Both groups cynically making common cause with the far left to oppose any policies that might lead to victory in Iraq.

The "enemy of my enemy" is NOT my friend.

One day the "realists" of the State department, the department of Justice, and the Pentagon will come to that sad realizaton. The "moderate" Dems, who made common cause with the far left nutroots, getting a "high" from visions of their power under a Dem President and a Dem Congress, will come to it too.

BUT TOO LATE, FAR TOO LATE....

Tehran's heroic women

Despite violent repression, the Iranian women's movement is defiant.
The Guardian UK
March 7, 2007

Why is much of the left and the liberal media ignoring the struggle for democracy and women's rights in Iran?

Tomorrrow - March 8 - is International Women's Day and the women of Iran are growing bolder and more defiant than ever. Last Sunday, a group of courageous women's rights activists staged a vigil outside the Engelab Court in Tehran. They held banners demanding: "We have the right to hold peaceful protests".

These gentle, unthreatening women - armed only with words, ideals and paper placards - were violently attacked by the police, on the orders of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. One woman had her head battered against the side of a police bus, shattering her teeth.

Another demonstrator, Nahid Mirhaj, accused the police chief of "using obscene words and describing us as 'misfits'."

The BBC correspondent in Tehran, Frances Harrison, says police and plainclothes security men arrested at least 32 women, including nearly all the leaders of Iran's women's movement. They were shoved into curtained buses and driven away. Unbowed, they are now on hunger strike in Evin prison, which is notorious for torture and deaths in custody. Their families and friends have begun a vigil outside the jail.

Human Rights Watch says that some of the arrested women have since been released, but confirms that 26 are still in detention.

Sunday's demonstration was the latest in a series. It was called in solidarity with five women activists who are on trial after they staged a peaceful rally last June against Islamic laws that discriminate against women - in particular the sexist laws on polygamy and child custody. The five activists in the dock are Nusheen Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmasebi, Shahla Entesari and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer.

For holding a peaceful protest, they are charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state, and taking part in an illegal gathering. Another four women's rights campaigners are awaiting trial on similar charges arising from the same protest last June.

Parveen Adalan, one of the women currently on trial, said her lawyer had not been shown any of the evidence against her, even though she has been interrogated five times by the police and intelligence agencies. "They didn't give them our documents to read, so we don't know what's happening," she told the BBC.

Human Rights Watch has condemned the five women's trial, arguing that they had been exercising their lawful right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

The Organisation for Women's Liberation in Iran is appealing for international solidarity: "We call upon all freedom-loving people to protest against the arrest of these women activists and to call for their immediate and unconditional release."

Last year's International Women's Day rally in Tehran was battered and dispersed by the regime. Over 1,000 women had gathered in Park Daneshjoo to demand equal citizenship. They were violently set upon by baton-wielding militia (the basiji), police, soldiers and special anti-riot squads from the Revolutionary Guards.

The liberal western media - including The Guardian - has mostly failed to report these women's protests and their bloody suppression. The left, too, ignores the heroic struggle of the women of Iran. Misogyny and police brutality are not okay in Britain, but apparently acceptable in Tehran. Why the double standards?

To mark International Women's Day in London, a public meeting entitled 'Women's Rights, the Veil, and Islamic and Religious Laws' will be held at the University of London Union on Thursday March 8, from 6-10pm.

The event is co-sponsored by the International Campaign in Defence of Women's Right in Iran-UK, the National Secular Society and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. The speakers are:

Sonja Eggerickx, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union;
Ann Harrison, researcher, Middle East and North Africa department of Amnesty International's International Secretariat;
Maryam Namazie, director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's international relations committee;
Taslima Nasrin, Bangladeshi writer, feminist, human rights activist and secular humanist.

http://tinyurl.com/ytzd7k
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Thousands of Iranian Teachers Strike in Tehran (Video)
Gateway Pundit

Iran Focus Reported on the protest:

Thousands of teachers took to the streets outside the Iranian Majlis, or Parliament, on Saturday in an anti-government protest despite preventative measures by state security forces.The protestors complained of rampant corruption and mismanagement in the Education Ministry and demanded their overdue salaries.

The demonstrators, some of whom held Farsi and English banners, chanted slogans including, “Oh teachers rise to end discrimination”, “If our troubles are not resolved, schools will be shut down”, and “We will not stay calm until we get our rights”.They also called for the resignation of Iran’s Education Minister, chanting, “Incompetent minister, resign, resign”.

At one point the teachers began to chant “Come out Haddad, come out”, referring to Majlis Speaker Gholam-Hossein Haddad-Adel who has been accused of turning a blind eye to economic mismanagement by the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Minutes after the protest began, a large number of agents of the state security forces swarmed around the Majlis building and prevented people in the vicinity from joining the protestors.

Video by Persian Warriors of the teacher's protest:(2:17 minutes)
{ http://tinyurl.com/2qxs6q }

** Update: A Second Teacher's Protest Was Held Today in Tehran!Thousands of teachers rallied in front of Parliament for the second time this week!

An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 teachers protested against the government in Tehran on Saturday! Winston carried the "Angry Teachers" news on Saturday.

Persian Warriors say the protests are spreading:
THE IRANIAN TEACHERS UNIONS FROM ALL ACROSS IRAN HAVE NOW ENTERED THE MARCH TOWARDS IRANS FREEDOM! IN THE DAYS TO COME WE SHALL WITNESS THE UNITY MOVE FROM THE WORKERS AND MANY OTHERS. PLEASE HELP THESE TEACHERS & THEIR FAMILIES FINANCIALLY AS THE MASS STRIKES START TO SET IN NATIONWIDE IN THE DAYS TO COME!!

Kamangir also has video and pictures of the Saturday protest.

Winston has more up on the Tuesday protests.

Michael Ledeen has more at Pajamas.

http://tinyurl.com/2qxs6q

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Colmar:

This is not your father's anti-war protest. Listening to speakers and rock bands, smoking a little dope, and playing in a drum circle.

These people literally risk their lives every time they do this. They may be attacked by police with batons, thugs with clubs, IRG militia. If arrested, they will probably be beaten in jail, possibly sentenced to prison for 'anti-State activity. For which they can be imprisoned, whipped, or even sentenced to death by hanging.

Genuinely Heroic.......

In Summary

An Outrage from Beginning to End
By Clarice Feldman

In this week's episode of Rome (a superb HBO series which increasingly reminds me of the Nation's Capital), Servilia, whose son was killed in a power grab, knelt before the door of manipulative Attia, mother of Octavian and lover of Marc Anthony, the two men responsible, calling out in a haunting cry,

"Attia of the Julii, I call for justice."

She did so because the unavailing legal system was broken, and curses (which were taken seriously in those days) were the one remaining way most people had to redress grave wrongs.

I call for justice for Scooter Libby because he has had none in this ridiculous matter.

But at whose door do I stand to shout my curses?

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame who cooked up a series of lies to undermine the Administration in the middle of the war?

The media, which megaphoned them and falsely suggested that someone had deliberately outed an undercover agent for political reasons, following the lead of The Nation's David Corn?

Former {Clinton appointee} CIA head Tenet, who insisted the Department of Justice investigate a routine referral for reasons which are still unclear but seem to be pique and revenge? Who refused to clarify the record about Wilson: who sent him, and what he found, and what happened to those findings?

For dragging out the declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate which showed the Wilson report supported rather than contradicted the estimate?

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Deputy Dick Armitage, who knew Armitage leaked and hid from the President and public that fact, letting Libby and the entire White House staff be put through the wringer?

The FBI which poorly investigated the matter, jiggered the notes of the interrogations and somehow lost the key inculpatory notes?

Former Attorney Ashcroft who allowed himself to be nose ringed by the mandarinate into recusing himself from looking into the matter?

Ashcroft's Deputy, Comey, who promised Senator Schumer when he was being confirmed that he would appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter and who then, in direct contravention of the Statute, made the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald, an appointment at odds with the U.S. Constitution? Comey, who tap danced the nature of the appointment to make it appear that there was an actual crime being investigated and not-as it turns out-that he was handing an open season fishing license to a proven master angler? And who days later, after unlawfully handing Fitzgerald the powers of the Attorney General, authorized him to look into the process crimes-which in truth is all they ever were after.

Fitzgerald, who set it upon himself to find any process violation he could find, and who tricked an unsuspecting Libby, who knew he'd not leaked Plame's name to anyone into repeated FBI and grand jury interrogations in the hope of finding any memory inconsistency, no matter how immaterial or insignificant on which to hang his hat?

Shall I curse the right side of the aisle which never likes to get its skirts dusty in the forum, even if their enemies are armed to the teeth and eviscerating their allies right before their noses? You know who I mean.

Charge a Clintonite with wrongdoing and the entire Department of Justice sits on the news until his friends have worked out an appropriate spin and a time to leak it when it will do him the least harm. Consider the merest possibility that someone in the Administration might have done something wrong and Andrea Mitchell has the news of the investigation on the air in an hour and his allies flee in fright that they might get their garments dirty by speaking in his defense.

Shall I blame the judge who let the prosecution get away with introducing into evidence prejudicial news accounts of limited relevance or probative value while denying the defense an opportunity to fully make its case? Who allowed the prosecutor to make scandalous charges in his rebuttal -- the last thing the jury would hear -- with no evidence on the record for them?

Shall I blame the jury which seems to have been unable to find the pony so it reconstructed it out of flip charts and post it notes?

This entire process has been an outrage from beginning to end.

How preposterous is it to watch Nancy Pelosi strutting about the forum today-her record filled with appointments like William Jefferson's to head Homeland Security and John Conyers to head the Judiciary? A Speaker who has the chutzpah to say,

"Today's guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual. The testimony unmistakably revealed -- at the highest levels of the Bush Administration - a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq."

And I explode with laughter at the Cassius-like Kerry who sneered,

"This verdict brings accountability at last for official deception and the politics of smear and fear.... This trial revealed a no-holds barred White House attack machine aimed at anyone who stood in the way of their march to war with Iraq. It is time for President Bush to live up to his own promises and hold accountable anyone else who participated in this smear. It is also well past time for Vice President Cheney, who according to the testimony was protected by Scooter Libby's lies, to finally acknowledge his role in this sordid episode."

Sordid the episode is, but not because of anything Libby did. And "a troubling picture" of Washington it is-but not of this Administration. The Bush crowd is guilty only of terminal naiveté and the foolish idea that high standards of probity will ever beat the opposition's utter unscrupulousness and willingness to misuse the legal system to their own partisan ends, even if it means the ruination of an innocent and capable man and enormous hardship to his family.

Democrats and the Media, I Call for Justice.

Clarice Feldman is an attorney in Washington, DC, who has covered the Libby Trial for American Thinker.

http://tinyurl.com/yrlmpo
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The Libby Travesty
Mr. Bush owes the former aide a pardon, and an apology.
March 7, 2007
Wall St Journal

The word "guilty" had barely crossed the airwaves yesterday in the perjury case of Scooter Libby before critics were calling it proof that President Bush "lied us into war" and demanding that Dick Cheney be strung up next. Maybe now Mr. Bush will realize that this case was always a political fight over Iraq and do the right thing by pardoning Mr. Libby.

The conviction is certainly a travesty of justice, though that is not the jury's fault. The 11 men and women were faced with confusing evidence of conflicting memories in a case that never should have been brought. In the end, they were persuaded more by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's story line that Mr. Libby, a former aide to Mr. Cheney, had lied to a grand jury about what he knew when about the status of CIA official Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson.

In hindsight, the defense seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the "fall guy" for others in the White House. That didn't do enough to rebut Mr. Fitzgerald's theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.

For that, in essence, is what this case is really all about. We learned long ago--and Mr. Fitzgerald knew from the start of his probe in 2003--that Mr. Libby was not the source of the leak to columnist Robert Novak that started all this. Mr. Libby thus had no real motive to cover up this non-crime. What he did have strong cause to do was rebut the lies that Mr. Wilson was telling about the Administration and Mr. Cheney--lies confirmed as lies by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004.

Mr. Libby did talk to some reporters about the Administration's case for war in 2003, and he did mention Ms. Plame in some cases. So the jury apparently decided that, when asked about those conversations by the FBI and grand jury, he had lied about his own sources of information about Joe Wilson and his wife. In other words, he has not been convicted of lying to anyone about the case for war in Iraq, or about Mr. Wilson or his wife.

Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it. One tragic irony is that if Mr. Libby had only taken the Harold Ickes grand-jury strategy and said "I don't recall," he probably never would have been indicted. But our guess is that he tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide. This may also explain why Mr. Libby never retained an experienced Beltway attorney until he was indicted.

None of this has stopped critics of the war from trying to blow this entire case into something far larger. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the conviction as proof that the White House tried to "manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But the charges against Mr. Libby had nothing to do with intelligence, and Mr. Wilson was himself so discredited by summer 2004 that the John Kerry campaign dropped him as a spokesman once the Senate exposed his deceit.

What Mr. Reid and others are doing is showing how much all this really has been about a policy dispute over Iraq. The fact that they are now demanding Mr. Cheney's head is further evidence of the political nature of this entire episode. But it should also be a warning to Mr. Bush and his advisers that they too bear much responsibility for Mr. Libby's conviction.

Rather than confront Mr. Wilson's lies head on, they became defensive and allowed a trivial matter to become a threat to the Administration itself. They allowed Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself and Mr. Fitzgerald to be appointed even though Justice officials knew that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been the first official to leak Ms. Plame's name to reporters. Mr. Libby got caught in the eddy not because he was dishonest but because he was a rare official who actually had the temerity to defend the President's Iraq policy against Mr. Wilson's lies.

As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe. But they too will pay a price for holding Mr. Fitzgerald's coat. The Bush Administration will soon be history, but the damage Mr. Fitzgerald has done to the ability to protect media sources and to the willingness of government officials to speak openly to reporters will last far longer.

Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible. The time for a pardon is now.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009753
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Except that this is too harsh on the Bush administration. Even though it is true that "Department of Justice employees knew the source was Armitage in the State Department", and Armitage told Fitzgerald immediately that he was the source, no one told Bush, Cheney or Libby. Not even Armitage or Powell, who though nominally Republicans, were fighting their own "State Department Realist" power struggle against the "neo-con Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield" camp.

Libby is probably now thinking "et tu, Armitage" about the mugging that has just occured.

What people tend to forget is that although Bush is President, many of the career employees in State and Justice are Democrats. That's why I've been calling it a "civil war" in the government bureaucracy. Bush made things worse by retaining Tenet, Clinton's head of CIA, naively thinking Tenet would be loyal to him. Cheney wasn't, and he kept much of the information about Wilson's lies quiet when he should have publically disputed them.

This was a politcal assassination of Libby, as a way to score points against the Bush administration. As is shown by how Reid and Pelosi are now falsely claiming that this shows that "Bush lied", and "Cheney ordered Libby" to "smear Wilson's revelation" of those supposed "lies".

What is desicable about all of this is that they aren't even against the war in Iraq. They are AT WAR with Bush here at home, and following the old adage that "all's fair in love and war". No matter how much it may damage the country in the long run.

And if good people end up in prison, well, that's just the "collateral damage" of political war.

That top members of my former party are going all out, as Congressman John Murtha infamously said, "to undermine the President's national security and foreign policy" efforts, and hoping to put good intentioned govenment employees in prison for years, simply as a way to win the White House for themselves in 08 utterly disgusts me.

Wilson Lied, Libby Gets Convicted

Colmar:

The amount of error, slant, bias, misrepresentation, and outright lies in the following articles is so great that I need to add my comments in the text {like this}. If I waited until the end to critic it all, I would have to reprint almost all of it.

This first article is fine by me, except where it says that Plame's job was "classified". The second article is just "vile" in its misrepresentation....

From Instapundit:

JUST A REMINDER THAT THE LIBBY CONVICTION DOESN'T VINDICATE JOE WILSON:

Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission Report
Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.

Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

{Note, this was written in 04, and mistakenly says her job was classified, which as it turns out, it was not. Had it been, disclosing it might have been a crime, but no one was charged with this because she was not in fact classifed.}

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
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Colmar:

Wilson lied to the press, to bolster the lie that "Bush lied". He said his wife was not the one responsible for his being sent to Niger, when in fact she was. He said that there was no basis for the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium, when there was. He said that the "dates and names" were false, on a document he hadn't even seen. Then when the Bush administration pointed out these lies, he again lied, saying that they were outing a "covert agent", which she wasn't, to smear him for telling the truth, which he wasn't.

Joe Wilson told serious lies, damaging not only to the Bush administration, but to the reputation of the US government worldwide. For this, he is a progressive "hero". Scooter Libby either didn't correctly remember what converstations he had with some reporters, or the reporters didn't correctly remember what he told them, and as a result is facing 25 years in jail.

And yet, the Associated Press is now using the "guilty" verdict as supposed evidence that "Bush lied" about Iraq, and is possibly also lying about Iran.
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Libby verdict puts focus on White House
Associated Press

The case laid bare the inner workings of a presidency under siege and the secretive world of Vice President Dick Cheney.

{"presidency under seige"..."secretive world".... what a masterpiece of objective reporting... NOT}

It showed the lengths to which Cheney went in early summer 1973 to discredit administration critic Joseph Wilson. The former ambassador's assertions had cast doubt on the administration's justification for having taken the country to war. And the Libby case showed the president assisting Cheney in the leaked attacks on Wilson.

{Notice the failure to mention that a bipartisan Congressional Committee found that those attacks by Wilson were false- no need to mention THAT. What it REALLY showed was an attempt to counter Wilson's public lies.}

The verdict "does great damage to the Bush administration," said Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University. "It undermines the president's pledge of ethical conduct. But the most serious consequences is that it will raise questions about Cheney's durability in office. It may be time for Cheney to submit his resignation."

{Even if Libby did diliberately lie about what he said to reporters, which many people still find quite questionable, why whould that be a reason for Cheney to resign. Cheney was NOT charged with ordering Libby to lie.}

But don't count on it. Bush in the past has repeatedly come to the defense of his vice president.

{The most damning charge of all, coming to the defense of one's Vice President against partisan charges from the opposing party...THAT shows just how low Bush will go...LOL}

The trial, which included a month of testimony, is also relevant as the United States seeks to build a case that Iran is providing sophisticated munitions to Shiite insurgents in who are using them against U.S. troops.
{Um, how is it at all relevant? It has been proven that the Bush administration told the truth about Niger, and Wilson was the one who lied. Libby MAY have lied about what he told reporters, he certainly did not lie about Iraq. Notice the disingenous linkage here, IF Libby lied about what he told reporters about Wilson, then Bush must have lied about Iraq. But a non-partisan Congressional committee found that Wilson was the liar, not Bush.}

Administration critics have suggested the administration is trying to lay the groundwork for isolating or even attacking Iran — using flawed intelligence, just as in Iraq.

{No one that I know of has charged that the claim that Iran is providing weapons to terrorists in Iraq is "flawed". We have captured actual Iranian provided bombs and sniper rifles in Iraq. As for the charge that Iran is in the process of building a bomb, both the EU and the UN say the same thing, based on their OWN intelligence. Why is "isolating Iran", which everyone acknowledges is funding Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and Lebanon, and openly calling for the destruction of Israel, a bad thing?"}

Wilson, a retired career diplomat, had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to build its case in Iraq.

{Again, no mention that Wilson's charges were proven FALSE}

The trial leaves a trail of unanswered questions leading to the doorsteps of Bush and Cheney.

{Such as what? No need to mention what they may be. We can all imagine what they may be. Is Bush still beating Laura, is Cheney a heroin addict, did Bush actually pilot the jet that hit the World Trade Center, and parachute out at the last moment? So many unanswered questions.}

Testimony and evidence did not clear up whether they directed the leaking of Plame's identity to the news media.

{This charge was not made, since the "leaking" of a non-covert agent is NOT ILLEGAL. If in fact they did leak that fact, it was only as a result of her having sent her husband to Niger in an attempt to discredit the Bush administration by lying about what he found. She can hardly get actively involved in a PARTISAN POLITICAL ATTACK on the Bush administration, and then say "don't mention me".}

But the trial did show Bush declassified prewar intelligence that Libby leaked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a plan carried out in such secrecy that no one else in the government even knew about it.

{NO, it did not, this is a total fabrication, the trial did not "show" this. Bush was not on trial, nor were there any charges about anything that was done. The only charges were about what Libby said in testimony.

Besides, this makes no sense. If no one but Bush and Libby knew about it, how could Cheney be responsible too ? Declassifying intelligence is done all the time, often at the demand of Congress, or persistent requests from reporters. If anything was declassifed, it was because it was deemed not needing classification, but was needed to prove that charges by "critics" were in fact false.}

Testimony showed the vice president was aware early on that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and told Libby about it. Cheney even scribbled a note to himself a week before Wilson's wife was exposed asking whether she had sent her husband on the CIA mission to Africa that triggered the controversy.

{Well, of course, that was the whole crux of the dispute. Wilson was sent to Niger NOT because the CIA leadership considered him an expert, but because his anti-Bush wife recommended him. The fact that Cheney knew she worked at the CIA would only be relevant IF she had been a COVERT AGENT, and she WASN'T. As Andrea Mitchell said, before she denied it, it was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife was CIA.}

Cheney also directed Libby to speak with selected reporters to counter Wilson's accusations. Cheney developed talking points on the matter for the White House press office. He helped draft a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet. And he moved to declassify some intelligence material to bolster the case against Wilson.

{Remember, just a few paragraphs before, this "reporter" was claiming that this was "a plan carried out in such secrecy that no one else {but Bush and Libby} knew about it". Now it is being presented as a huge team effort of most of the top levels of the administation. Which is it, is it unknown to everyone, or a conspiracy of everyone? Sheesh...}

Lanny Davis, a lawyer who worked in the Clinton White House during several investigations, said that, while Libby was the defendant, "it was Vice President Cheney who was on trial today and who has the responsibility for what Libby did. The vice president has a personal and moral responsibility to take responsibility for what Mr. Libby did at his instruction — and to apologize to Valerie Plame."

{Sure, a former Clinton lawyer is not only knowledgable about what happened in the Bush White House, but is presumably a nonbaised commentator on this. As I said previsously, the Dems consider this "payback time" for the Clinton Impeachment.

And apologise to Plame for what? For telling the world that she sent her husband to Niger to attempt to discredit the Bush administation? If she didn't want to be part of the public debate, she shouldn't have involved her husband in partisan "dirty tricks".

It is Plame who should apologise to both Bush and the US public for using her CIA job to try attack the US government. You know those "rogue elements" in the CIA the progressives are always whispering conspiracy theories about? Valerie Plame got caught doing exactly that, acting as a rogue element, operating against US policy. The idea that SHE, and not Bush and Cheney, deserves an apology, is just absurd.}

http://tinyurl.com/2fv7t4

This Associated Press "report" is beyond "slanted", it is a pure attack piece. It presents a trial of Libby's testimony as an idictement not only of Bush and Cheney, but of the Iraq War itself. It quotes only acknowledged partisan "critics" without anyone on the Bush side being allowed even single one sentence of rebuttal. It is as far from fair and balanced as one could get.

Above I criticised the phrase "presidency under seige", but on second thought, that would have been accurate if it had said "presidency under seige from the partisan liberal media"....

What Liberal Bias of the Media? ROTFL...

The Criminialization of Politcs

Comment on a blog about the "guilty" verdict in the Libby case:

"Well we have now succeeded in the criminialization of politcs"

In truth, this is President Bush's fault. He personally ordered everyone in the administration to "cooperate fully" with the investigation. This was a witch hunt, where in fact no actual crime had been committed. Had Libby just taken the "Fifth", and refused to say anything to the investigators, he would still be at work in the Bush administration today.

But a special prosecuter has to convict SOMEONE, and if no crime turns out to have been committed, after spending all of those millions of dollars, and thousands of hours of investigation, someone has to go to jail.

Libby is found guilty of "obstructing an investigation" of a crime that wasn't committed...... How absurd is that ?

And in DC, where the mayor can be caught on videotape using crack cocaine with prostitutes, and then be re-elected mayor, they were able to bring a charge of "being in the government, while Republican", and get it to stick.

Like the OJ verdict, in reverse. To an LA jury, OJ was "not guilty" because he was Black. To a DC jury, Libby is "guilty" because he worked for Bush. Meanwhile Dem congressman Jefferson, who was caught with $90,000 of bribe money hidden in his freezer, is still in the Congress, and recently appointed to the Homeland Security committee.....

Libby is another casualty in the Civil War in Washington politics.

ACLU, Where Art Thou ?

The Madness of Patrick Fitzgerald
Sifting through the nonsense that is the Scooter Libby trial
Reason Magazine March 5, 2007

“Madness! Madness! Outrageous!” special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald shouted in a high pitched voice as he began his closing argument in the Scooter Libby perjury trial. It was a feeble effort at sarcasm, a jab at the defense, from a lawyer whose sense of humor is as underdeveloped as his sense of justice or fair play. But prosecutors, especially special prosecutors, need neither. It’s not in their job description.

In those few words, however, Fitzgerald unintentionally—but accurately—characterized what he has been about these past three years. Like a drunk who stumbles and falls in the darkness, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and walked off as if nothing had happened. Try and tell Judith Miller that nothing happened. Fitzgerald sent her to jail and she was subsequently forced to resign from The New York Times because she refused to burn a source.

Fitzgerald went after Miller even though, unlike Robert Novak, she had never used the name of a CIA WMD analyst, Valerie Plame, in a story about her ex-ambassador husband Joe Wilson’s CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to search for Iraqi WMDs. Yet it was Novak’s story which led to Fitzgerald’s appointment. Worse, Fitzgerald did this to Miller even though he must have known to a moral certainty that (A) Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s deputy at the State Department, was Novak’s source; and (B) Plame was not a covert agent within the meaning of the espionage law in question, nor did anyone have reason to think she was.

Wait: It gets better. The mainstream media didn't cover the story in any detail, nor did it call Fitzgerald to task. But the fact remains that Judith Miller was tried, convicted and sentenced to prison based exclusively upon written evidence from witnesses whose identities and testimony were kept secret from her and her lawyers. They were given no opportunity to question, rebut, defend her against the secret evidence the courts relied upon exclusively in convicting her. Indeed, a full eight pages of the D.C. Court of Appeals decision discussing and analyzing this secret evidence was redacted from the published opinion.

Judith Miller is unique, the first American ever to be sent to jail based on facts she never saw and a federal appellate opinion she was not permitted to read. That's not troubling?

The central element in the case against Libby—who at least got to see all the evidence against him—was not that he lied about leaking Plame’s name. After all, he was not the first nor the only Bush administration official to do so. Richard Armitage (who was the first), Karl Rove and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer did so as well. Besides, Libby admitted leaking her name to several journalists, including Miller, Matt Cooper of Time and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post.

No, the key count in the perjury case against Libby concerns from whom he first learned that Plame worked for the CIA. In fact, he first learned it from Vice President Cheney, as he later testified. But initially, he testified he learned it from NBC’s Tim Russert. So what’s the big deal? That’s perjury, Fitzgerald said, because Libby was afraid he committed a crime and attempted to cover up where he first learned her identity.

A crime, of course, which Fitzgerald knew had never been committed.

Russert is critical to Fitzgerald’s case because specific intent is one of the elements of perjury the prosecutor has to prove. Fitzgerald must show—beyond a reasonable doubt—that Libby lied about Russert knowing it was a lie and not as a result of confusion, mistake, or a faulty memory. So even if no crime had been committed, Libby’s mistaken belief that he had commited one would provide a motive to lie.

Russert at trial said it was “impossible” that he and Libby discussed Plame. Really? When the FBI first interviewed Russert, he told them he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility he discussed Plame with Libby because he didn’t take notes and he talks to so many people. Time’s Matt Cooper did take notes which indicate Libby might have told him that he was not even sure if Joe Wilson’s wife was with the CIA.

Fitzgerald has an overarching theory that the White House was systematically trying to punish Joe Wilson by outing his wife. Yet four journalists with whom Libby talked during the relevant time period—Bob Woodward, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of the Post and Evan Thomas of Newsweek—all said Libby never mentioned Plame to them.

Bob Woodward, like Novak, learned of Plame’s identity from Armitage. More importantly, he testified that he might have mentioned Plame to Libby in their conversation later that month. Did Libby confuse Woodward with Russert? Does he have a bad memory? Glenn Kessler thinks so. Libby testified in great detail to the grand jury that he spoke with Kessler on a cell phone while Kessler was with his kids at the zoo and had a “lucid conversation” where he mentioned Plame. Kessler said it never happened.

Does Ari Fleisher have a bad memory? Walter Pincus thinks so. Fleisher testified it never happened but Pincus testified at trial that Fleisher called him and changed subjects in the middle of their conversation to reveal Plame’s identity, calling Wilson’s trip to Niger at the CIA’s behest a “boondoggle”. Boondoggle? A Cheney/Rove talking point perhaps? Libby testified he used the same word in the conversation he did or did not have with Glenn Kessler.

No trial lawyer will be surprised to learn any of this. Human memories are fragile and fallible, growing more so as time elapses, especially if there are no notes to refresh memories. Memories are what witnesses convince themselves must have happened. Russert kept no notes of his conversation with Libby, yet by the time of trial had decided that it was “impossible” they discussed Plame. Russert’s earlier admission to the FBI that he couldn’t rule out the possibility they did discuss Plame is closer to the truth. As an experienced prosecutor, Fitzgerald knew that too.

Is this prosecution based on fragile memory "madness?" Is it "outrageous?"

It certainly is.

Michael McMenamin, a contributing editor of Reason, is a media defense lawyer in Cleveland. His book Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor will be published this spring in the US and UK by of Harcourt.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/118955.html
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Let me get this straight. When an admitted al Qaeda terrorist, such as bin Laden's chauffeur, or the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks is in prison, the ACLU falls all over itself attempting to gain release for the very sort of people who would take away ALL Civil Liberties. Supposedly to "defend our system of civil liberties".

But when an American journalist is sent to jail, without even knowing who her accusers are, or even being allowed to read the charges against her...hey, no problem.

The progressive wing of the Dem party has been accusing the Bush admimistration for years of "taking away our liberties, and instituting Fascism". Yet when a reporter who hasn't even published on the story in question is sent to jail with no possisbility of defending herself, since she doesn't even know the charges, they can't be bothered.

This is just mind bogglingly perverse. As the article above says, "but wait, it gets worse". Now Libby is on trial for possibly lying about a crime that everyone admits DID NOT OCCUR. But he might still have "lied about a non-crime" {sic}. The trial consists of a series of testimony from various people, who for the most part did NOT take any notes about what transpired, years after the events in question. Not testimony about actual events, which one might reasonably remember somewhat accurately. No, testimony about what various people may or may not remember about what various people said in various conversations, YEARS AGO....

This is where it gets really bizarre....

The testimony, such as it is, of what people remember, or don't, of what they said or heard years ago, is the basis for the trial. And yet the jury considering the charges, are you ready for this, HAS NOT BEEN GIVEN A TRANSCRIPT OF THAT TESTIMONY.

THUS THE JURY MUST RELY ON THEIR MEMORIES, AND WHATEVER NOTES THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE TAKEN, OF WHAT THE WITNESSES SAID ABOUT WHAT THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE REMEMBERED.....

The Dems consider this "payback" for the Clinton Impreachment. But there is no resemblence whatever. Clinton DID have sexual relations with Lewinsky, he KNOWINGLY LIED about that, both on TV to the American people and under oath in court. Even he never tried to claim he didn't remember what actually happened.

This is a "witch hunt" for members of the Bush administration, for purposes of bolstering the LIE that "Bush lied". The way this all began is when Valerie Plame sent her anti-Bush husband to Niger to try to disprove the claims that Iraq had been seeking uranium. Wilson found that the Iraqi HAD INDEED tried to get it, but probably failed. Wilson reported that accurately to the CIA, and then wrote an article for the New York Times saying the opposite.

The charge is that the Bush administration was out to get Wilson for documenting "Bush's lies". But in fact, it was Wilson who lied. Which for obvious reasons the Bush White House was not happy about, but it is now well established that there was no attempt to "out" Valerie.

Wilson should be on trial for publically lying about what he found in Niger, a clear case of libel and slander against the US government. Libby should not be wasting years of his life trying to "prove" he didn't lie about a crime everyone agrees he did not commit.

ACLU, where art thou? Or do MSM reporters and Republicans not deserve the same "civil liberties" as al Qaeda terrorists?

It perhaps sheds some light on this if you know that the ACLU was founded by Communists, to protect Communists against the laws of the US. McCarthyism, right? Wrong......
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American Civil Liberties Union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roger Nash Baldwin became head of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) in 1917. An independent outgrowth of the American Union Against Militarism, the Bureau opposed American intervention in World War I. The NCLB provided legal advice and aid for conscientious objectors and those being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 or the Sedition Act of 1918. In 1920, the NCLB changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Union, with Baldwin continuing as its director.

In the year of its birth the ACLU was formed to protect aliens threatened with deportation, along with U.S. nationals threatened with criminal charges by U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer for their communist or socialist activities and agendas.(see Palmer Raids). It also opposed attacks on the rights of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other labor unions to meet and organize.

In 1940, the ACLU formally barred communists from leadership or staff positions, and would take the position that it did not want communists as members either. The board declared that it was "inappropriate for any person to serve on the governing committees of the Union or its staff, who is a member of any political organization which supports totalitarian dictatorship in any country, or who by his public declarations indicates his support of such a principle." The purge, which was led by Baldwin, himself a former supporter of Communism, began with the ouster of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a member of both the Communist Party of the USA and the IWW.

{So who was this Baldwin who founded the ACLU ?}

Roger Nash Baldwin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981) was a noted civil libertarian, pacifist, and social activist who held Communist views in his youth, yet continued to promote a Socialist agenda. He was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and its executive director until 1950; many of the ACLU's original landmark cases took place under his direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Nash_Baldwin

{It was officially founded to protect Communists from the Palmer Raids. What were the Palmer Raids, an attack on Hollywood actors who favored government aid for the needy? Hardly}:
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Palmer Raids
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Palmer Raids were a series of controversial raids by the U.S. Justice and Immigration Departments from 1918 to 1921 on the radical left in the United States. The raids are named for Alexander Mitchell Palmer, United States Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson.

{Note that Wilson was a Democrat, and what at that time was called a Progressive}

In 1919, the U.S. House of Representatives refused to seat Socialist representative from Wisconsin, Victor L. Berger, because of his socialism, German ancestry, and anti-war views. Congress also passed a series of immigration, anti-anarchist, and sedition acts (including the Sedition Act of 1918) that sought to criminalize or punish advocacy of violent revolution.

In response, on June 2, 1919 a number of bombs were detonated by Galleanist anarchists in eight American cities, including one in Washington that damaged the home of newly appointed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Another bomb reportedly detonated near Franklin Roosevelt. Palmer himself was badly shaken up (the bomber himself, Carlo Valdonoci, was also killed by the bomb, which exploded prematurely in his face). All of the bombs were delivered with a flyer that clearly indicated the bombers' intent:

War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.

Palmer, twice the intended victim of assassination, had a personal as well as public motivation to win the battle against the radical left and those preaching violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids
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Yes, after two assassination attempts on his life, and one on FDR, Palmer took it personally. Of course he did.....

So the ACLU was originally set up to oppose the War Efforts of the US in WW1. It took formal shape in 1920 to defend homegrown terrorists engaged in the effort to violently overthrow the government. It took some 20 years before the ACLU forbid "members of totalitarian organizations", and those who "by their public declarations" support "totalitarian dictatorships" to be in it's leadership.

AKA "don't ask, don't tell".

Having been set up to defend anti-US terrorists, it is hardly surprising that today it still prefers to defend leaders of the 9-11 attacks, and regards Miller and Libby as members of the "oppressor class" that deserve whatever they get.