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Friday, October 28, 2005 |
James Moore: The Criminalization of Criminals. I was at a trial out in the Davis Mountains of West Texas when I heard a bit of unexpected wisdom. A Texas ranger was testifying at the courthouse in Alpine about a man who had run up into the hills to begin a revolution. Nobody listened very closely to the rebel; except for a few of us reporters who found him an intellectual curiousity. Eventually, his bubble tilted way off level and he started shooting. People were hurt. In the trial, his lawyers said he was standing on our most beloved principles of a right to protect his freedoms with guns. The old ranger, though, scoffed. "Look," he said. "Wrong is still wrong even if everybody's doing it. And right is still right even if nobody's doing it."
Leaking the names of CIA agents is not politics; it is a crime. Lying to congress about evidence for a war is not politics; it is a crime. Failing to tell a grand jury that you met with a reporter and talked about the CIA agent is not forgetfullness; it is a crime. Deceiving your entire nation and frightening children and adults with images of nuclear explosions in order to get them to support a bloody invasion of another country is not politics; it is a crime. Anyone other than Karl Rove and Lewis Libby and Tom Delay who does not get this, please raise your hand. The three of you will need to stay after class for further instruction in civics.
Fortunately, as the leaves of the Aspens continue to turn in Colorado (where she vacations) the suspects are also turning in Washington. Targets will be pleading and dealing and soon will be singing. We are, hopefully, seeing the beginning of an investigation that will broaden until it disabuses the final few million Bush supporters of their naievete'. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald must surely just be at the beginning of rendering justice. An indictment or two will hardly serve to answer the critical questions. The leak and any lies to the grand jury were most likely motivated by a deep and abiding fear that a much greater crime was at risk of being uncovered. Karl Rove is vindictive, yes. But he is not stupid. Rove would never risk treason unless he thought it served a political purpose. And this was the most important political purpose of all: protecting his most precious asset, George W. Bush. Ethics have never been a consideration of Rove's and he sees the law as only marginally instructive. Karl might have been more concerned about the leak and talking to reporters if somewhere along the line he had been held accountable for any of his other political tricks. But he has not.
We the people expect Fitzgerald to do more than indict a few leakers. There was a grand scheme behind what happened and it was put together by the big brains in the administration. Unlike the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Rove will have a hard time making an argument that this leak just spontaneously occurred to harm Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife in a timely political fashion. What is hiding back there behind the curtains? The mainstream media is now beginning to report on the forged Niger documents in Italy and the names of Bush administration operatives who met in Rome with Italian intelligence and defense officials before the phony yellowcake papers began to circulate. Is that what Fitzgerald is beginning to pursue? If Joe Wilson was threatening to uncover the fact that our government had deployed agents to act as covert operatives against the very citizens they are sworn to serve, well, that's more than a crime; that's a John le Carre' novel. Small wonder Democrats suspect Rove of a smackdown of Wilson.
We have no real shot at the truth without Patrick Fitzgerald. And he will soon be demonized. He will discover that being 42 and unmarried makes him the practitioner of an alternative lifestyle and that he may have once had a beer at an airport in Milwaukee with a Democrat. First they called him accomplished and capable when he was appointed. What will they call him now? Perjury was a high crime when Bill Clinton fibbed about the blue dress girl but it is being spun into a technicality when you stand accused of historic deceptions that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents. And that's not politics. That's a crime.
Because we have no shortage of pithy sayings down here in Texas, I will leave you with another one that is pertinent. And I wish that I could whisper it into the ear of the prosecutor. It comes from General Sam Houston, who pointed out in one of his infrequent moments of sobriety, that, "There's nothin' more powerful than a man who is in the right and keeps on a comin'."
Carry on, Mr. Prosecutor. Carry on. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
9:36:01 PM 
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Dear Scooter, From Dick. October 28, 2005
Mr. I. Lewis Libby
c/o Mr. Joseph A. Tate, Esq.
Dechert LLP
Dear Scooter,
Your counsel, and you, are missed. Like many White House officials implicated in this case, I admire your principled stand. But, like many of your co-conspirators, I wish you were back among the rest of us, doing what you do best -- trashing critics of this administration.
A few days ago, your counsel, Mr. Tate, asked that I repeat for you the waiver of omerta that I specifically gave to your counsel over a year ago. His request surprised me, because I thought we had an understanding that I dare not mention except on a secure line. But since this is an official letter, let me reassure you that you are absolutely free to repeat any discussions we may have had related to the Wilson-Plame matter. Absolutely. Free. Absolutely.
In the spirit of your counsel's and the Special Counsel's request, I would like to dispel any remaining concerns you may have that circumstances forced this waiver upon me. As noted in our previous correspondence, my lawyer confirmed my waiver to other White House staffers in just the way he did with your lawyer. Why? Because, as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other staffer's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before you blabbed. I waived the privilege voluntarily to cooperate with the Special Prosecutor, but also because the smart staffers' testimony served my best interests. Call it the Rove Corollary. I believed a year ago, as now, that similar testimony by all will be in the best interest of all.
I admire your principled fight against the five indictments. But for my part, this is the rare case where this "principal" would be better off if you plead guilty. That's one reason why I let George accept your resignation. If you find a way to testify about the discussion we had relating to the Wilson-Plame matter, if any, I would be very interested in whom your cellmate will be.
You were indicted in the Fall. It is still Fall. You fell down the stairs and broke your foot. Now you don't walk so good. It would be terrible if you fell down the stairs again and broke your skull. Others can cover-up our stories -- Iraqi WMD and the energy task force, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their unbroken roots connect them. Do the thirty years. At least you still have your health.
Until then, you will remain in my prayers and under surveillance.
With admiration,
Dick Cheney [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
9:35:09 PM
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Back to World Domination for Rove?. So is Rove off scot-free? No indictments, no nothing. Can he go back to plotting whatever it is he plots? Maybe not. Andrew Sullivan is making sense: "[I]t seems to me to be a pretty horrible scenario for the president. You have Libby indicted and Cheney thereby under suspicion, with a raft of potential questions heading his way; and you have Rove still under threat from the Grand Jury, fighting for his legal and political life, but required to stay mum (and understandably distracted) if the prosecution continues. You don't even get a clean break, and a chance to start over." The investigation's not over yet. The other day Paul Begala described what it's like to be in a White House under siege; doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun. [MoJo Blog]
9:34:55 PM
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Morris: Libby Indictment Implicates Cheney. On Fox News, former presidential advisor Dick Morris says today’s events don’t bode well for Dick Cheney:
JOHN GIBSON: How bad is this damage? And what does the president need to control it, Dick?
DICK MORRIS: Well, it depends on whether we are just talking about Libby. If the prosecutor is happy with an indictment of him, a conviction, and that scalp on the wall is sufficient for him, then it just goes away. It’s one bad chapter and it passes.
But it is very possible that the prosecutor looks up the food chain to Vice President Cheney. These investigations have a way of rising. And according to the terms of the indictment, Cheney told Libby about Valerie Plame and then Libby lied to the grand jury about how he found about it, saying that he got it from a reporter. Well, if that’s the case, the vice president knew that Libby was lying.
And it wasn’t like his grand jury was secret. It was all over the place, you could read it in any newspaper. So my question is, why didn’t the vice president say anything? Why didn’t he speak up? And when you’re out there committing perjury and your boss is silent, and your boss knows that you’re doing that, it’s [the silence is] a subtle signal from your boss to say, “I appreciate it.”
[Think Progress]
9:34:45 PM
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Arianna Huffington: Four More Years -- Courtesy of Judy Miller. Among the many facts that we learned from Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference, one of the most dramatic came in response to a question about whether it was "worth keeping Judy Miller in jail for 85 days?": "I would have wished nothing better," Fitzgerald replied, "than, when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, witnesses testified then. We would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005. No one would have [gone] to jail."
Hmmm, October 2004. That was right before November 2004.
Does anyone doubt that if Patrick Fitzgerald held a press conference announcing five indictments against a key member of the Bush administration just before the last election it would have affected the outcome? Would the two men whose lies Libby was ultimately lying to cover up have been re-elected?
Thanks, Judy. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
8:26:36 PM
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What To Expect Next
Elizabeth de la Vega
October 28, 2005
Elizabeth de la Vega has recently retired after serving more than 20 years as a federal prosecutor in Minneapolis and San Jose. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
The grand jury supervised by U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has returned an indictment charging Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide and reputed "alter ego" I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury, obstruction of justice and false statements to the grand jury. But this indictment does not end the story; rather, a close reading suggests that these charges are most likely merely a chapter in a long and tragic story. Here, from a former federal prosecutor, are thoughts about four things we should expect, four things we shouldn't, and one question we should all be asking.
We should not expect a final resolution any time soon. Complex cases usually take years to proceed through the courts. In addition, the indictment released today describes a chronology of close to two years and a complicated set of facts. Obviously, Fitzgerald is taking a "big picture" approach to this case. This mirrors his approach to previous cases. In December 2003, for example, Fitzgerald announced the indictment of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan on corruption charges in Operation Safe Road, which began in 1998. In that year, the investigation of a fatal accident revealed that truckers were purchasing commercial licenses from state officials. Indictments were announced in stages, culminating in the indictment of Ryan, who was the 66th defendant in the case. In the Libby case, the allegations suggest he was merely one of many officials[~]including an unnamed undersecretary of state and "Official A," a senior White House official[~]who were involved in revealing classified information about Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame. No other individuals are named as defendants, and they should not be considered so at this point, but the complexity of the indictment suggests that the investigation may follow a pattern similar to that used by Fitzgerald in the Illinois corruption case.
We should not expect to hear much more from Fitzgerald. The special counsel has been widely admired, and sometimes criticized, for his "tight-lipped" approach and "leak-free" grand jury investigation. But that, folks, is how it's supposed to be. Federal prosecutors are required to maintain grand jury secrecy. If they don't do that, they not only jeopardize their investigations, they could lose their jobs and/or be charged with a crime. The public has come to expect leaks from grand jury investigations because Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was not a federal prosecutor, ignored secrecy rules during the investigation of President Clinton (and got away with it). Even after indictment, Department of Justice (DOJ) press guidelines permit release of only limited facts about the defendant, the charges against him, and court documents or testimony that may become public during the prosecution. Don't hold your breath waiting for Fitzgerald to explain evidence not alleged in the indictment; nor will he appear on talk shows to debate defense representatives.
We should not expect a smoking gun. Even when there actually is a gun, there's hardly ever a smoking gun. In the case against Libby, as in most white-collar crime cases, the evidence is likely to consist mainly of documents, thousands of them. And considering that the weapon employed in this crime appears to be a telephone, the closest thing to a smoking gun may well be telephone records.
We should not expect the president to take steps to "get to the bottom of this." He professed that desire in October 2003, but belied it in the next breath, saying he "had no idea who the leaker was and didn't know if we'd ever find out. "There's a lot of senior officials [out there]," he commented. "You tell me," he asked a group of reporters, "how many sources have you had that's leaked information, that you've exposed, or had been exposed? Probably none." Of course, assuming Bush didn't already know who the leakers were, all he had to do was make darned sure his aides told him. After all, organizations routinely conduct internal probes in parallel with criminal investigations. Indeed, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines consider such inquiries to strongly indicate corporate acceptance of responsibility. But accepting responsibility for the CIA leak would have put quite a damper on the Bush re-election campaign. So, with his usual Janus-like approach to every threat, the president managed to declare himself above such petty politics while allowing surrogates to spread disinformation. In other words, the administration has attempted to derail the prosecution in precisely the same way it tried to derail ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson's credibility in the first place.
We should expect red herrings from the defense (even if not smoking guns from the prosecution). Fox hunters once tossed smoked red herrings out to test whether their dogs could stay on the right trail. Now, of course, the term means a distraction from the real issue; and if the Republican Talking Points rolled out thus far are any indication, we are going to be tripping over red herrings galore in the upcoming months.
We should expect more attacks on Joseph Wilson, even though they represent a very large red herring (more the size of a mackerel). These will be meant only for the court of public opinion. Since the White House has already admitted, repeatedly, that it had insufficient evidence to mention that Saddam Hussein was seeking Niger "yellowcake" uranium in thepPresident's State of the Union address in 2003, claims that Wilson went to Niger on a boondoggle or that he is merely a partisan critic (both of which appear to be untrue) have never been the least bit relevant. If you don't dispute the essence of the testimony of a witness, then undermining his credibility is pointless in a court of law.
We should expect another red herring, one that should have been thrown back in the river long ago: that perjury, obstruction of justice and false statements charges are not "substantive," and so somehow less serious. "Substantive" is a legal term, referring to a crime that can be proved without reference to the elements of another crime. For example, bank robbery is a "substantive crime" and conspiracy to commit bank robbery is not. (But they're both crimes.) Perjury, obstruction of justice and false statements may arise out of the investigation of other crimes, but they stand on their own. So they too are "substantive" crimes. More to the point, as Patrick Fitzgerald eloquently explained in his press conference, lying in an investigation is extraordinarily serious, because it undermines the integrity of the process.
We should expect attempts by pundits to derive "meaning" from the absence of charges under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act. Reasons for the absence of such charges can range from insufficient evidence to concerns about the Classified Information Procedures Act, which governs the use of classified information in a criminal case. No one other than Fitzgerald, his staff, and the grand jury knows why certain charges were not brought and they will never be able to explain their decisions.
We should expect a campaign to demonize Fitzgerald through claims that he is overzealous and has exceeded his authority. Such attacks are legally irrelevant, but more important, they're wrong. Fitzgerald's original mandate, contained in a letter from Deputy Attorney General James Comey, was to investigate all crimes arising from the outing of Valerie Plame. Out of an apparent abundance of caution, Fitzgerald requested clarification of the term "all" and was advised, again by Comey, that it included both underlying crimes and crimes that stemmed from the investigation of the underlying crimes. At no time did Fitzgerald seek, or receive, an expansion of his authority: It was there all along, as it would be in any investigation of federal crimes.
We should also expect pundits to argue that this prosecution is political. That is the most despicable of red herrings considering that Fitzgerald has been a career prosecutor forbidden by the Hatch Act to participate in politics for 20 years, is registered without political affiliation and was appointed by a Republican. Also, the resulting indictments were returned by grand jurors who heard evidence for two years, after which a majority, at least 12 out of 23, decided that there was probable cause to believe[~]in other words, it was "more likely than not"[~]that the defendant had committed all the elements of the crimes charged. In other words, in investigating and returning an indictment against the vice president's chief of staff, Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury have followed one of the most basic principles of criminal jurisprudence: that the law is no respecter of persons, that all persons stand equal before it. It would have been the most flagrant violation of the rule of law if the prosecutor and grand jury had walked away from Lewis Libby's deliberate deceptions simply because he was an important government official.
But should we expect, given the Republicans' attempts to belittle and politicize the case thus far, that President Bush will pardon his senior administration official if Libby is convicted on these serious charges? The 1992 Christmas Eve pardons of Iran/contra defendants by former President George Bush Sr. provide cause for concern. Let us hope that the current President Bush will not undermine the rule of law in this way.
4:31:35 PM
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Trey Ellis: President Cheney's Goose Is Cooked. The indictment today of Scooter Libby marks the beginning of the end of one of the most bold and cutthroat rises to power in American history. Dick Cheney was a former congressman from Wyoming, former Secretary of Defense and finally CEO of Halliburton. Not bad for a guy who flunked out of Yale. Twice. Then one night he gets a call that he had been waiting for all his life. His old boss George senior asks him to pick a vice-presidential candidate to run behind his inexperienced son. We know that Dick wanted to be President himself because he actually ran for that office in 1996 but dropped out before the first primary when he realized that someone of his dull looks and anti-charisma didn't stand a chance. This second time around he must have understood that by hiding behind a glib, telegenic heir to an important political family he could have all the power of the Presidency without that pesky problem of people actually having to like him. So instead of suggesting a VP who might actually help carry an important region or state, Cheney convinced the Bushes to go with him, a guy from a state with a whopping three electoral votes. (Read Dick, by John Nichols to learn more.)
It was a match made in some sort of heaven. One guy burned to have the power of the Presidency, while the other guy just wanted to play one on TV.
This isn't (just) liberal ravings here. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil and Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson both have gone public with how hands-off Bush governs. In fact when he did try to actually be the President and for once make a decision for himself what did he do? He chose Harriet Miers.
So once in office Cheney looks around the world and what does he see? Does he want to beat the Democrats into insignificance like Karl Rove and Tom Delay? Not particularly. Does he have some utopian ideal of stabilizing and democratizing the globe like Paul Wolfowitz? Are you kidding? As CEO of Halliburton he lobbied Congress to ease sanctions against Lybia, Syria and even Iran. No, once handed the keys to the kingdom this guy looked around the world and saw money.
Remember his first significant act in office? He presided over a secretive, closed-door energy task force. Bush's biggest donor Ken Lay was there. And what was on the table? Talk of conservation to buy us more time before oil reserves dry up? Aggressive investment in new technologies to free us of our dependence on foreign oil? Nope. According to Judicial Watch what were on the table were maps. Maps of Saudi and UAE oil fields and also a map of a country over which we, at that time, had no control -- Iraq. That was in March of 2001. We all know what happened next. In the days after 9/11 people like former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Prime Minister Tony Blair were shocked to hear Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld talking about Iraq when none of the hijackers came from that country. Just as Cheney saw a golden opportunity for himself in being picked to pick Bush's VP, he saw 9/11 as opportunity dripping with oil. Hiding behind a national tragedy he could mobilize the strongest army in the history of the world to do his corporate bidding.
We know this to be true because of the rush to war. No one, not the CIA, the State Department, or any foreign intelligence outfit thought that Iraq's threat was imminent. They all thought there was a threat because Saddam kept saying there was one, but no one thought that it was less than years away. The United States with the help of our little buddy Great Britain, rushed into war without the backing of any other major nations because Dick Cheney didn't want to have to share the spoils of war with them. And you can't spell "spoil" without "oil."
With Libby's indictment caring Americans can now press for the whole truth to come out. Cheney and his White House Iraq Group lied us into war then viciously went after anyone like Ambassador Wilson who dared get in their way. They almost got away with it. Almost.
Republicans keep saying that Democrats looked at the same intelligence briefings they did when they overwhelmingly voted to go to war. That is true. They all saw the same books, but what this indictment should bring to light next, is that those books had been cooked. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
2:08:28 PM
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Who Was “Under Secretary of State” In June 2003?. According to the indictments, one of the first people to tell Scooter Libby about Valerie Wilson’s identity was an “Under Secretary of State”:
On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of State orally advised Libby in the White House that, in sum and substance, Wilson[base ']Äôs wife worked at the CIA and that State Department personnel were saying that Wilson[base ']Äôs wife was involved in the planning of his trip.
There are 6 people who hold that title in the State Department. Here are the people who held the position of Under Secretary of State in June 2003:
John Robert Bolton
Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs
Marc Isaiah Grossman
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Grant S. Green
Under Secretary of State for Management
Charlotte L. Beers
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy
Paula J. Dobriansky
Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs
Alan Phillip Larson
Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs
Obviously, certain people are more likely candidates than others.
[Think Progress]
1:09:18 PM
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Addington Involved In Leak Scandal. Scooter Libby[base ']Äôs replacement as chief of staff to the Vice President is reportedly a man named David Addington. He was formerly Cheney[base ']Äôs counsel, a position he held since 2001. According to the indictment, it appears that Addington was involved in the leak:
18. Also on or about July 8, 2003, LIBBY met with the Counsel to the Vice President in an anteroom outside the Vice President[base ']Äôs Office. During their brief conversation, LIBBY asked the Counsel to the Vice President, in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee[base ']Äôs spouse undertook an overseas trip.
Was Addington aware that he was facilitating alleged criminal conduct?
[Think Progress]
1:08:18 PM
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Nathan Gardels: Scott Ritter on Indicting America. With the White House case for war further discredited by Scooter Libby's indictment, the credibility of
the maverick former UN arms inspetor Scott Ritter grows even stronger. Along with his boss, former
UN chief arms inspector Rolf Ekeus, Ritter was virtually alone in insisting all that inspections had
effectively disarmed Saddam of his weapons of mass destruction, and thus the Bush administration's forward-leaning spin for war on that basis was bogus.
Here is Scott Ritter's fiery commentary from my syndicated Global Viewpoint column:
INDICTING AMERICA
(ITALICS) Scott Ritter is a former chief U.N. weapons inspector who participated in
52 missions in Iraq, 14 of which he led. He is the author of the newly released "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the U.N. and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Nation Books). (END ITALICS)
By Scott Ritter
NEW YORK - The indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald provides the most cogent and visible evidence to date of the criminal mindset that exists inside the Bush administration regarding the decision to invade Iraq.
The indictment is linked to Libby's involvement in illegally revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in violation of U.S. law, and the resultant conspiracy to deny and cover up the fact that this crime had in fact taken place. But the real crime committed here is the deception leading to war carried out by the Bush administration, in particular the activities of the vice president, Dick Cheney, and his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, which is why they felt they needed to go after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Plame.
The outing of Plame was just the tip of this criminal enterprise. The specific charge - making false statements to a grand jury - is in fact the best indicator of the true nature of the crimes committed by Libby and, by extension, the Bush administration.
Acting at the behest of the vice president, Libby was a key figure behind inserting dubious and unverified intelligence data alleging the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction into the public arena, either by leaking this information to reporters such as The New York Times' Judith Miller, or by having it referenced in high-profile speeches such as the president's 2003 State of the Union Address or Colin Powell's now-infamous presentation to the Security Council in February 2003.
Cheney and Libby were behind the decision to mislead Congress, in particular the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's investigation into the reasons why the U.S. intelligence community had gotten it so wrong about Iraqi WMD capabilities. (Contrary to the much-hyped case made by the Bush administration in justifying the decision to invade Iraq, no WMD were found in Iraq, and the CIA subsequently acknowledged that all Iraqi WMD had been destroyed by the summer of 1991).
To Cheney and Libby, Joseph Wilson had committed the ultimate sin when he publicly challenged President Bush's case for war with Iraq by exposing the fraudulent nature of the administration's very public claims that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.
If true, the "yellowcake" story would have bolstered the president and vice president's assertions that Iraq had resurrected its nuclear weapons program, thus legitimizing the case for war. But the reality is that the "yellowcake" claim, like all of the Cheney- and Libby-peddled intelligence, was specious, in this case derived from forged documents.
Wilson's exposure of this fraud was seen not only as an act of betrayal, but also rightly recognized as a threat to the entire charade that was the Bush administration's fabricated case for war. If left unchallenged, Wilson's claims could have initiated a process that would have unraveled the entire fabric of deception and lies woven by Cheney, Libby and the Bush administration about the non-existent Iraqi WMD threat. As far as Cheney and Libby were concerned, truth was the enemy, and truth-tellers were to be attacked and destroyed.
And now the lies have come home to roost. But the indictment of Libby must not be the final punctuation in this tragic tale of lies and deception. Instead, it should serve as a much-needed boost for Congress, the media and ultimately the American people to carry out a massive re-examination of the totality of the processes that took place in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The lies of Cheney, Libby and the Bush administration regarding Iraqi WMD did not take place in a vacuum. Congressional checks and balances, especially in the form of relevant oversight committees, were non-existent; the few hearings held served as little more than sham hearings designed to amplify a case for war that was accepted at face value, without question, despite the fact that all involved knew the supporting evidence was either non-existent or paper-thin.
The fourth estate was likewise reduced to little more than a propagandistic extension of the White House and Pentagon, losing any claim to journalistic integrity through its slavish parroting, without question, of anything that painted Saddam Hussein's regime in a negative light, especially when it came to the issue of retained WMD.
At the receiving end of this tangled web of lies and incompetence are the American people. Having been duped into a war that has to date cost the lives of over 2,000 members of the armed forces (not to mention hundreds of our coalition partners and tens of thousands of Iraqis), the question now is how the citizenry of the world's most powerful representative democracy will respond.
Void of a major backlash on the part of the American people in response to the deliberate falsification and deceit that has transpired regarding Iraq and the now-debunked case for war, the Libby indictment may prove to be little more than an exercise in damage control. Already senior Republican officials, such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, are calling the Libby indictment a mere "technicality." Right-wing pundits refer to the indictment as the "criminalization of politics," as if lying one's way into an illegal war of aggression is somehow akin to politics as usual.
If the American people go along with such blatant attempts at obscuring the reality of the criminal conspiracy that has been committed, then it is perhaps time we finally lay to rest this experiment we call American democracy. At the very minimum, Congress should be compelled into action. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and in particular its two senior senators, Pat Robertson, R-Kan., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va, should not only complete their investigation into how the Bush administration used (or misused) intelligence to formulate Iraq policy, but also re-open its initial report into the so-called "intelligence failure" regarding the flawed WMD assessments, with the intent to indict any and all who conspired to keep relevant information from, or made false statements to, that committee during the conduct of its original investigation.
There must be a wider investigation into the totality of the criminal conspiracy undertaken by the Bush administration to defraud Congress and the American people about the issue of war with Iraq, and in particular the case used to justify the invasion of that country. The crime that was committed goes far beyond the outing of a rogue diplomat's CIA-affiliated spouse, as serious as that charge may be. The deliberate and systematic manner in which the Bush administration, from the president on down, peddled misleading, distorted and fabricated information to Congress and the American people represents a frontal assault on the very system of government the United States of America proclaims to champion.
(C) 2005 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT
[The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
10:43:31 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Patricia Thurston.
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