Wednesday, April 12, 2006

This is just ridiculous

Ok, ok, stop me if you've heard this one before: Get this--Smirky lied. No, no, I'm telling the truth! Really!
Um, yeah. It is absolutely amazing that these clowns are still in power, isn't it? I mean, now they are able to divert attention away from their misdeeds with other misdeeds!! We haven't even gotten to the vote on Feingold's motion to censure the President on the wiretapping scandal, but who cares about that now? Smirky says now that he declassified "parts" of the prewar intelligence report that were discussed with Scooter and Dick, thereby rendering legal the leaking of intelligence that led to the clearly (Ah! the drip, drip, drip of sarcasm!) inadvertent unmasking of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. That Plame was outed remains a crime, of course, but that's all on Libby. So Smirky, in essence, is throwing Scooter under the bus while protecting Dick and himself from potential treason (or at least Federal felony) charges.
Naturally, there is no earthly reason why we should believe anything Smirky says, but even if you take him at his word this reeks of falsehood. After all, when this whole story first broke, Smirky vowed, on the record in June 2004, that he would fire anyone found to have leaked the agent's name. (He didn't.) And even though last July he partially retracted that oath by making the commission of a crime the necessary act warranting dismissal, neither statement rings true with what Smirky is now claiming to be the facts. Why would even a serial liar make these two very public statements if he had already declassified the information leaked? If it was declassified info, there could be no crime in releasing that info to the press, as Dick did to Judith Miller. In fact, if Smirky did indeed declassify the intelligence, why have they been acting so secretive this whole time? The answer, of course, is that this new story is a retroactive coverup designed to neuter Scooter's upcoming testimony that Dick and Smirky gave him the go-ahead to leak both the details of this report and Plame's identity to the press.
Once again, Smirky appears either duplicitous (by lying about not knowing the identity of any leakers), or incompetent (by not realizing what was in the documents he supposedly declassified), but not legally culpable. Leaving aside the entire certainty that Smirky did not follow the proper procedures for the declassification of intelligence, the underlying seediness and vindictiveness remains clear: this Administration's highest officials had no qualms whatsoever in leaking Plame's name to the press in the cause of attempting to discredit the intelligence her husband presented to them. That they also had--and continue to have--no problem in selectively ignoring, classifying, and declassifying intelligence to fit their shifting agendas (or simply to cover as much and as many of their asses as they can) is obvious as well.
But that's ok--we don't even need "shiny objects over there" anymore; we can just wait until something else illegal is discovered/uncovered to blow this off the front pages.
P. S. Just for fun, look here to get a running calendar of the sickness that is the Bush Administration. (Ignore the opening paragraph and jump right into the day-by-day account of these felons' actions and inactions. It's astounding--there are probably close to 500 items!)

3 Comments:

Blogger Teresa said...

It's all so startlingly amateur, like hungover college kids lying to their parents, adding the insult of underestimating the patience and intelligence of Congress and the electorate to the injury of trashing our country in ways that will resonate for generations.

9:40 AM  
Blogger bryduck said...

Unfortunately, I would have to disagree--they have hardly underestimated anybody so far. (We shall see, but they've gotten clean away with it for 5+ years, allowing their cronies to rack up massive windfall incomes.) The plotline when seen in stark relief is certainly amateur, but the sheer, grandiose, arrogant hubris of it all certainly required a professional evil the likes of which we have never seen in this country.

9:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Damn him and his cronies...a bunch of old little boys who have never tasted the horror of war, but who like to play soldier,wasting countless lives, the prestige and wealth of our nation in their wake. Bush makes the administrations of Nixon and Reagan seem like "Happy Days."
Unfortunately, there are many who love him for his cowboy ignorance, and believe him to be a good leader because of his unyielding stubbornness.
He makes one realize that there must have been many citizens of places such as Ancient Rome and NAZI Germany who realized their nations were in the hands of insane leaders, but were powerless to do anything about it.
Damn him!

6:44 PM  

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