NationStates Jolt Archive

Many people (myself included) have been using the logic "why would Patrick Fitzgerald pursue any kind of case if Valerie Plame weren't covert in the first place?" but many Bush administration apologists (on and off this forum) didn't want to hear it. (You know who you are.)

Well, find another excuse. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11179719/site/newsweek/)
Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.

Next talking point?

Meh.. that was like 37 news cycles ago..

More importantly, the second she was outed it put every foriegn contact she ever had in jeapordy including ones that may have still been cooperating with agents that had taken over her postitions. Also, those agents themselves.

Meh.. that was like 37 news cycles ago..
Tell that to the Bush/Rove/Cheney spinmeisters.

you already know how it'll go

second verse, same as the first

you already know how it'll go

second verse, same as the first
nice

Tell that to the Bush/Rove/Cheney spinmeisters.

I don't really think any of them care much about what happens to the defendants in this case.. Libby and whats-his-name, the other guy. They aren't exactly major players in Washington.. the only press coverage anyone paid attention to was speculation that someone important was going down, and since that hasn't happened.. well, we all know the rest. :p

Meh.. that was like 37 news cycles ago..
Isn't that grand! What a dignified response, so unbecoming of a right-winger ...
Reminds me of the response to the MI:6's information in The Downing Street Memos:
"Oh, that's old news.".


Translation:pwned.

Isn't that grand! What a dignified response, so unbecoming of a right-winger ...
Reminds me of the response to the MI:6's information in The Downing Street Memos:
"Oh, that's old news.".


Translation:pwned.

So.. you're saying it isn't old news then? ;)

I'll admit that I'm not very good at keeping track of everyone's national origin on this forum.. but if anyone here from the U.S. can honestly say that they've seen this story anywhere near the front page in the last two months.. well, who am I to call anyone a liar? :p

I don't really think any of them care much about what happens to the defendants in this case.. Libby and whats-his-name, the other guy. They aren't exactly major players in Washington.. the only press coverage anyone paid attention to was speculation that someone important was going down, and since that hasn't happened.. well, we all know the rest. :p
That's the spin then? Libby, chief of staff to Cheney, wasn't a major player? Come on.

So.. you're saying it isn't old news then? ;)

I'll admit that I'm not very good at keeping track of everyone's national origin on this forum.. but if anyone here from the U.S. can honestly say that they've seen this story anywhere near the front page in the last two months.. well, who am I to call anyone a liar? :p
Two things ...
One: It's a good thing that the link goes to a page with a date on it. That probably answers your first question.
Two: I didn't call you a liar. I just inferred you gave a limp-wristed pass-off as is often the case when a right-winger deals with new facts that they don't agree with. To your credit, you at least didn't try to change the subject ... although i can't immediately think of anyone on the left that you can play bait-and-switch here with.

Does anyone else think that the Bush Administration’s outing of a CIA agent may be the best thing it has ever done? The less ability the CIA has to spy on the world, the better.

Does anyone else think that the Bush Administration’s outing of a CIA agent may be the best thing it has ever done? The less ability the CIA has to spy on the world, the better.
Well, while the CIA has it's entanglements, other sub-bureaus get the go ahead with much less candor and transparency. As is, as shall ever be, methinks.

That's the spin then? Libby, chief of staff to Cheney, wasn't a major player? Come on.

Well, the build-up involved a lot of speculation about Rove and Cheney, so I would consider them minor in comparison.. there's no doubt that certain people were disappointed when the indictments came down, I think.

Either way, I don't know what the pre-approved spin is, but I would suppose that the political damage has already been done whether Libby does six months of probation or ten years in Federal prison.. although I don't completely dismiss the unravelling of certain details..

Two: I didn't call you a liar. I just inferred you gave a limp-wristed pass-off as is often the case when a right-winger deals with new facts that they don't agree with.

I wasn't being serious, hence the hyperbole.. I wasn't expecting to end debate or anything.. :p

I wasn't being serious, hence the hyperbole.. I wasn't expecting to end debate or anything.. :p
Fair enough! :)
It didn't seem like you wanted to argue much at all, given your bow-shot.
But you did post .... ;)

Fair enough! :)
It didn't seem like you wanted to argue much at all, given your bow-shot.
But you did post .... ;)

Just a bit of friendly antagonism.. :)

Well, the build-up involved a lot of speculation about Rove and Cheney, so I would consider them minor in comparison.. there's no doubt that certain people were disappointed when the indictments came down, I think.

Either way, I don't know what the pre-approved spin is, but I would suppose that the political damage has already been done whether Libby does six months of probation or ten years in Federal prison.. although I don't completely dismiss the unravelling of certain details..Rove's still in significant legal jeopardy--Fitzgerald has another grand jury up and running on the case. To be quite frank, however, I don't expect either of them will ever spend a night in jail, no matter what the outcome. I expect they'll both be pardoned sometime between November 2006 and January 2009, as will everyone else even remotely involved in the case.

Rove's still in significant legal jeopardy--Fitzgerald has another grand jury up and running on the case. To be quite frank, however, I don't expect either of them will ever spend a night in jail, no matter what the outcome. I expect they'll both be pardoned sometime between November 2006 and January 2009, as will everyone else even remotely involved in the case.
The sick thing is that the administration can't even pick and choose its media distractions anymore between the banal and the crucial .... it can only shift from one horrible participation to another as a focus. It's truly THAT bad.

The sick thing is that the administration can't even pick and choose its media distractions anymore between the banal and the crucial .... it can only shift from one horrible participation to another as a focus. It's truly THAT bad.On the plus side for them, though, is that all the scandals together get confused and messed up, and the more confused they can make the voters, the better for them.

Rove's still in significant legal jeopardy--Fitzgerald has another grand jury up and running on the case. To be quite frank, however, I don't expect either of them will ever spend a night in jail, no matter what the outcome. I expect they'll both be pardoned sometime between November 2006 and January 2009, as will everyone else even remotely involved in the case.

Well, in all practicality, they will have served their purpose (for this administration at least) by November of next year. From a purely political point of view, they're in a good position for the next election cycle, since any new trial is going to be delayed well beyond that date.

Does anyone else think that the Bush Administration’s outing of a CIA agent may be the best thing it has ever done? The less ability the CIA has to spy on the world, the better.

yeah, i have a hard time on this one. i'm in favor of outing spooks on principle, but i also approve of getting as many of the fuckers in this admin as possible out of power (and preferably locked up somewhere for the good of humanity).

On the plus side for them, though, is that all the scandals together get confused and messed up, and the more confused they can make the voters, the better for them.
It's a good thing there's folks like yourself, then, who keep track of the dates, names, and times, and when some idiot mouthpiece (or just idiot) gets on here, they can get the what-for and at LEAST not argue that someone hadn't tried to keep them from being confused.
Lonely as it is at times ....
I would say a good half of the populace is either confused or contributing to the confusion, which is also not particularly good for the future of the voting populace.
As it ever were, even.

EDIT: Ooh, on that topic ...

*ahem*
State's goal: find voters driven out by Katrina
Louisiana tells how to cast ballots from afar
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Louisiana officials are preparing to send out nearly 1 million mailers as part of a campaign to tell voters who fled the wrath of Hurricane Katrina how to cast ballots from afar, a problem not as widespread in other Gulf Coast states.
"It's unfair to think that displaced people would be election experts," Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater said Saturday during a conference of secretaries of state.
Ater said that he wants every voter driven out of Louisiana to have "the opportunity to participate, if they want, and that the bar is no higher for them to participate than it is if somebody's home didn't get destroyed."
In contrast, Mississippi faces fewer challenges because many of those who were displaced along the coast moved inland but are still in the state, its secretary of state, Eric Clark, said.
Nancy Worley, Alabama's top election official, said her state was more prepared for disaster because it was hit by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
Still, Worley added, her office is only now getting reports from some of the polling places damaged by Katrina.
Louisiana officials estimated that 400,000 registered voters were displaced by Katrina. Displaced voters have relocated to every state except Alaska, Ater said.
No estimates of displaced voters were available for Mississippi and Alabama.
Before Katrina intervened, voters in New Orleans had been scheduled to pick a mayor and other city officials Saturday. Elections are now planned for April 22.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060205/NEWS06/602050472/1012/NEWS06
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So how do you think that'll turn out, given this ... i hope no confusion.:

Update 10: White House, Chertoff Faulted Over Katrina
By LARA JAKES JORDAN , 02.01.2006, 06:24 PM
The White House and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff failed to provide decisive action when Hurricane Katrina struck, congressional investigators said Wednesday in a stinging assessment of slow federal relief efforts.

The White House had no clear chain of command in place, investigators with the Government Accountability Office said, laying much of the blame on President Bush for not designating a single official to coordinate federal decision-making for the Aug. 29 storm. Bush has accepted responsibility for the government's halting response, but for the most part then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who quit days after the hurricane hit, has been the public face of the failures.

"That's up to the president of the United States," GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker told reporters after being asked whether Chertoff should have been the lead official during the emergency.

"It could have been Secretary Chertoff" or someone on the White House staff, Walker added. "That's up to the president."

The report, which the congressional agency said was preliminary, also singled out Chertoff for several shortcomings. Chertoff has largely escaped direct criticism for the government's poor preparations and slow rescue efforts.

The Homeland Security Department angrily responded to the GAO report, calling the preliminary findings a publicity stunt riddled with errors. Homeland Security oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency and issued a national plan last year for coordinating federal disaster response with state and local agencies.

In their nine-page report, investigators noted that they had urged the Clinton White House to appoint a single disaster coordinator more than a decade ago after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Andrew. Still, they said, the Bush administration continued the failure with the lack of a clear chain of command and that led to internal confusion when Katrina struck.

"In the absence of timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability, there were multiple chains of command," the report found.

The assessment - the first of several reports about the response to Katrina - noted that Chertoff authorized additional federal assistance to overwhelmed state and local resources on Aug. 30, a day after the storm hit. But Chertoff did not specifically classify the storm as a catastrophic disaster, which would have triggered a faster response.

"As a result, the federal response generally was to wait for the affected states to request assistance," the report found.

In another stab at Chertoff, the report called for Homeland Security to provide stronger advance training and planning for future disasters - including taking better advantage of the military's ability to rescue and evacuate victims, provide supplies and assess damage.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the report misleading because federal officials and supplies were already at the Gulf Coast before Katrina hit. He said Chertoff did not activate a government plan for dealing with catastrophes because it is used only to respond to unexpected disasters.

The report "displays a significant misunderstanding of core aspects of the Katrina response that could have easily been corrected in the most basic conversations with" Homeland Security leaders, Knocke said.

Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who is leading a special House investigation of the Katrina response, said the GAO findings will be included in his own panel's conclusions, which are due Feb. 15.

"I'm very hopeful that our final report will answer a lot of questions the American people have," Davis said. "The most obvious being: How could our government fail so badly?"

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in Washington to testify before a separate Senate-led Katrina inquiry, said he was not surprised at the report's conclusions.

"One of the big challenges in this event was the chain of command issue," Nagin told The Associated Press. "And for something that was a multistate event, something that pretty much overwhelmed local government, we need to figure out how to do this better in the future."

However, a transcript of an Aug. 28 briefing as Katrina bore down on the region indicates Gulf Coast state officials were satisfied with the federal assistance they had so far received.

"I want to say thank you very much for all that you're doing," Louisiana emergency preparedness deputy director Col. Jeff Smith told Homeland Security and FEMA officials during the call, in which President Bush also participated, according to the transcript obtained by The Associated Press. "I think that at this point in time our coordination is as good as it can be."

Asked by FEMA's Brown if Louisiana had any unmet needs at that point, or if there were anything else the federal government could provide, Smith said: "Mike, no."

Until he was relieved of his onsite duties on Sept. 9, Brown was the top federal officer in the Gulf Coast. But GAO concluded that his authority was unclear, leading to an "incomplete understanding of roles and responsibilities" for other federal agencies.

The report praised the Coast Guard, the Pentagon, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Finance Center for taking a "lean forward" approach to preparing for and responding to Katrina.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/02/01/ap2493364.html


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