Tuesday, March 06, 2007

THE CIA LEAK CASE FOR DUMMIES



First of all let me commend the Democrats for finally admitting that lying under oath and perjury are crimes. It took you a decade, but you finally did it. Kudos.

Now over the last few years it has become clear that most of the anti-Bush people who are overjoyed today at Scooter Libby’s conviction, have absolutely no clue as to what went down in the CIA leak case or how this conviction relates to Valerie Plame.

Therefore for the benefit of the Florida Supreme Court and all of our dumb troops who are “stuq in Irak”, I’m going to explain exactly what happened and what lead us to this point.

Here we go.

Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by someone to investigate whether or not Saddam Hussein had sought enriched Uranium from that nation.

He came back and told the Senate Intelligence committee that Saddam had indeed sought this Uranium, but to his knowledge had not been able to obtain it.

In the President’s State of the Union address, George W. Bush said that Saddam had sought uranium from Niger, which was consistent with Wilson’s testimony as well as with British Intelligence estimates.

Wilson then went to the New York Times and wrote an article basically accusing the President of lying about the Uranium, but omitting his testimony to the Senate intelligence committee, whom he had given contradictory testimony. The New York Times was of course, complicit in Wilson’s deception.


When the article hit newsstands, the MSM predictably latched on to it as fact despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

The administration was understandably confused as to why Wilson, who had been an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on such an important mission in the first place, and then misled the American people about what he had found.

It came out that Wilson was most likely sent to Niger with the aid of his wife who worked for the CIA.

Several members of the administration talked to the media and explained to them what had happened and how Wilson had ended up in Africa. This included Richard Armitage, a high ranking State Department Official who was on record as being opposed to the war in Iraq.

Plame and Wilson then came out and claimed that the Administration had intentionally leaked the name of Plame in order to get revenge on Wilson for his comments to the New York Times. This was a problem, because according to them, Plame was a covert CIA agent, and knowingly leaking the name of a covert CIA agent is illegal.

So a prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was assigned by the Administration to investigate, as to whether the administration had done anything illegal.

Here’s what he found.

Fitzgerald found no evidence that anyone in the Bush Administration or the office of the Vice-President intentionally or knowingly leaked the name of a covert CIA agent, to the media.

There was no evidence that this was done as a way of getting revenge for anything that Wilson said.

It was not determined as to whether or not Valerie Plame had any kind of covert status at the CIA at the time of the leak in the first place, nor has it been determined at this point.
This has lead most intelligence scholars to conclude that she in fact, did not.

Somewhere along the line Scooter Libby gave information to Fitzgerald that did not match the established time line, which he had put together throughout the course of the trial.

Fitzgerald filed no charges in regards to the alleged leaking of Plame’s name.

When it was established that Bush's statement in the State of the Union address was factually accurate, the media clammed up. In a fashion similar to their screw ups with the Bush National Guard story and the terrorism financial tracking program, they tried to change the subject and hoped that it would go away.

Without any evidence, Karl Rove was convicted in the media, his reputation sullied for no reason.

In addition to this, the left-wing press made Joe Wilson their new darling allowing him full access to continue telling people that Bush lied, when in fact that it was Wilson who had been misleading the American people since his editorial was released.


He was invited to college campuses, and put on the cover of magazines and is now the subject of a new Hollywood film.(I wonder who the protagonist of that one will be?)

Most liberals that I have talked to have accepted as fact, what the media and the left wing bloggers have been saying about this case from the beginning, which is that Plame’s name was leaked as an act of revenge, in order to get back at Wilson for proving that the administration lied about Saddam’s intentions in Africa.

When presented with the facts about the case however, they are thrown completely off guard, and generally attempt to change the topic.

This pattern of immediate condemnation even without evidence is prevalent among anti-Bush people and even many moderates who have been mislead by liberals about this case as well as about a great many other issues, mostly surrounding the Iraq war.

It is driven by those in the media and by the Bush haters, both of whom see McCarthyism and Richard Nixon lurking in the shadows, and yet fail to see that Bush's predecessor is responsible for a great deal of the shady figures seen lurking in the wings.


I don’t know if Scooter Libby lied to the grand jury or not. I wasn’t on the jury, but I respect their decision.

It is important however that we all know exactly how this case played out, and that we are able to identify the way it was explained to us by the mainstream media and then compare and contrast that with what really happened.

I hope that this has been of some help, but trust me. I am well aware that a certain segment of the population will always believe what they want to believe, even if those beliefs are not able to peacefully coexist with facts. We have a name for these people. We call them liberals.

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10 comments:

Abouna said...

Don't get too quick with the complements to the Dems about admitting that lying under oath is a no no, because to the Dems, that only applies to the Republicans.

The first chance they get, one of those Dems will lie through their teeth and then come up with all sorts of reasons to justify it.

Most Rev. Gregori said...

Your indepth explanation of the Wilson, Plame Scooter Libby mess was right on, which is very different from the Liberal version, but then of course the liberals have been re-writing history for some time now.

It makes no difference to them that the FACTS do not fit their scenerio, they will go to their collective graves sticking to their version.

I often wonder, does the sun shine in their world?

Falling Panda said...

Yes the sun shines in their world. But, they tell us that it's shining too brightly and therefore, we are all going to die very soon.

Shannonymous said...

MAN ALIVE you guys like making generalizations and bashing us liberals! ;)

Sweeping judgements aside though, f.p., I love your passion and the fact that you are always on top of sh*t.

Keep caring!
Always,
Shannonymous

ps- love the Sexual Harassment Panda! ;D

Twingonaut said...

I haven't found any reports that in 2002 Saddam Hussein or his administration actually had discussions with Nigerian officials. From what I've seen, Iraqi officials did try to contact their Nigerian counterparts, but the meeting was refused due to the UN sanctions.

If there is any evidence to the contrary, I would be happy to look at it before making a judgment.

Unknown said...

Look it up. Lying under oath is not perjury. Only lying about a material fact is. And, no, not every question asked at deposition involves a material fact, a lot of questions don't, but you still have to answer them.

The only grounds at deposition for refusing to answer are privilege and privacy. For example, if I was subpoenaed in a case about my landlord allowing a dangerous condition to exist, I could be asked where I work and how long I've worked there. I could lie, it would affect my credibility at trial, but I would have 0 exposure to perjury.

And...for those who may be tempted to inform me that President Clinton was disbarred in Arkansas, he wasn't. He voluntarily agreed to suspend his law license there for 5 years in a deal to end the independent counsel investigation.

He was up for disbarment from the Supreme Court in Arkansas (which is separate from practicing in the state) where he never argued a case, but he chose to resign from that bar instead of fight it.

On an unrelated topic in this forum - Atheist are not required to prove anything to believers in invisible people and forces. If you put forward a proposition, the burden is on you, not me. Period. To say otherwise is a logic trap that results in trying to prove a negative. Which is unnecessary and unfair. Look, if you believe in some invisible all-knowing dude, you need to show us some proof. That's the scientific method and it works. If it didn't, we wouldn't all be typing on computer blogs right now.

Good luck gathering up that evidence, believers! Can't wait to see it. lol.

Falling Panda said...

Clinton was indeed disbarred albeit temporarily, from his Arkansas law license for five years and ordered to pay $25,000 in fines to that state's bar official. The situation was voluntary only in that he struck a deal in order to avoid further embarrasment. He would have been disbared for some period of time regardless of whether or not the case continued.

He was subsequently dibarred from practicing before the Supreme Court.

The Hussein government, did attempt to set up a meeting with high ranking officials from Niger for what was almost universally believed to be the purchase of enriched Uranium, since that is really all Niger has. So when the President said we have intelligence that Saddam sought enriched Uranium from Niger, he was in fact telling the truth.

You're right David the burden on proof is not on Atheists to prove that their is no God. But in reality, to be certain that no God exsists is even more foolish than being certain that there is one.

In order for the universe to have never had any higher power of any sort assist in it's creation, you have to believe that at some point in time something was created out of a complete vaccum, which goes against every scientific principal that exsists.

This vaccum must be present at some point if you go back in time far enough, and therefore we can only conclude that something well beyond our understanding had a hand in creating the universe and therefore may have had a hand in creating us as well. That's really what "intelligent design" is, and it should not be brushed off as the simple rantings of religious cooks who believe in some "invisible man in the sky."

As for the legalese, I think we can all agree that Clinton broke the law and paid a price for it. Whether that price was high enough is a matter of opinion.

8:36 PM

Abouna said...

Falling Panda, in regard to your question, as to why your picture dosen't show up on my haloscan comments, I really don't know what the answer is. I just recently installed halo scan and I don't know all of the ins and outs of the system. I have enabled the Gravatar system but why yours is not coming up, I wish I knew.

You can try asking other bloggers who have halo scan and see if they know what I might be doing wrong.

In the meantime, I will continue try to tweak my system.

By the way, I do enjoy your site and I have it listed on my blog roll.

God Bless

Unknown said...

"This vacuum must be present at some point if you go back in time far enough, and therefore we can only conclude that something well beyond our understanding had a hand in creating the universe and therefore may have had a hand in creating us as well."

I had no idea you were a physicist! Kidding...I am (said Yoda). The problem with this statement is not physics, but logic. First...your assumptions: There is no reason to assume that "something was created from nothing" or that "a vacuum must [have been] present at some point."

We do not know (nor will we ever know in all probability) the conditions of the early universe or how the singularity that birthed our particular universe came about. What we do know is that every phenomena which we have been able to verify and observe on Earth and in space is explainable through natural laws and interactions. There is no reason that the origin of the universe should be any different. Secondly, there is no reason to assume that the universe is linear. The assumption of a vacuum is one borne of our own experience, not verifiable evidence. But, just because we are born and we die, doesn't mean the universe undergoes a similar process.

Secondly, your conclusion, for similar reasons, is faulty as well. Even if your assumptions are correct, it doesn't necessarily follow that a non-natural force must have been involved to "create" our universe. Science has already shown that matter can be created from mass-less particles known as bosons and fermions. It may very well be that this process played a rule in the creation of the singularity which gave rise to our universe. Or it may be through some other natural process that we have yet to discover or understand. But it does not REQUIRE a god.

So...it remains my conclusion that it is the theists that the fools in this debate.

Unknown said...

Also see this link:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/simplicity.html