DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Libby Guilty on Four of Five Counts

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Libby was convicted of:

-obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame;

-making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;

-perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;

-a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.

Jurors cleared him of a second count of making a false statement relating to a conversation he had with Matt Cooper of Time magazine.

Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. A hearing on a presentencing report is scheduled for June 5.

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said, "He is virtually certain to go to prison if this conviction is upheld."

After the verdict was read, Libby was fingerprinted and released on his own recognizance.

Ted Wells, Libby's defense attorney, said he will file a motion for a new trial, or appeal the conviction if that motion is denied.

"We intend to keep fighting to establish his innocence," Wells said outside the courthouse.

As court concluded Tuesday, Libby's wife, Harriet Grant, hugged every member of the defense team. She was teary-eyed as she kissed Wells on the cheek.

The White House issued a statement that President Bush watched the verdict and was saddened for Libby and his wife.

Libby, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was not accused of exposing Plame. He resigned in 2005 after the grand jury indicted him.

Prosecutors contended Libby disclosed Plame's covert profession to reporters as part of a plan to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who alleged that the Bush administration twisted some intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Wilson, who conducted a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, wrote in a July 2003 New York Times editorial that he found no evidence Iraq sought to buy uranium from the African nation, as the administration claimed.

The jury was down to 11 members -- seven women and four men. A week ago, one of the jurors revealed that she had obtained outside information that prompted the judge to disqualify her.

The defense said it would accept 11 jurors to avoid having to start deliberations over with an alternate. The prosecution objected, but U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton overruled, and the panel has continued with one chair empty.

Testimony and evidence in the trial began January 23.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/06/cia.leak/index.html

Yep, the scooter is found guilty on 4 of 5 counts.

Justice has been served and all the spinning in the world could not stop a jury form getting to the "truth" and finding that scooter was lying and now convicted of lying.

and he should do time for his perjury... just like everybody else who commits perjury...... oh wait, not EVERYBODY does time for perjury....

It depends on what your definition of time is

Libby verdict really about Iraq War and Cheney

Question now arises: What - and whom - was Libby was lying to protect?

Howard Fineman

WASHINGTON - The stunning, vehement verdict in the Scooter Libby trial – that he lied, repeatedly, big time – isn’t really about Scooter Libby at all. It is about how and why we went to war in Iraq, and about how Vice President Dick Cheney got us there. Loyalty is everything to President George W. Bush, and I don’t expect him to march into Cheney’s office to demand a resignation. But the veep is a liabiity as never before, and even Bush has to know that.

The Libby verdict now brackets politically – suffocates politically – the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy. One side of the vise was already in place: the vivid, all-too-photogenic story of the human cost of the war to young American men and women. That, story, of course, is about Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the shoddy care given to outpatient casualties there. Now comes the rest of the story: lies that were told to cover up the story of how the war was sold.

Polls show that most Americans have moved on from the question of how we got into Iraq – and are far more concerned about how, and how quickly, we get out. Still, the last thing the administration needed was renewed focus on the genesis of the war.

And that is what we will get. First, Libby’s lawyers immediately announced that he will appeal the four-count conviction for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice – but the likely length of that process that will keep the story in the news.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame will be back, wanting to know – with good justification – what (and whom) Libby was lying to protect. Why were Cheney and Libby so frantic to discredit the couple? Was there something more than mere political hardball being played in this matter? What land mine had Wilson stepped on? And, as my colleague Chris Matthews keeps asking, what happened to the report Joe Wilson filed? If Cheney is the one who asked for it in the first place, what did he do with it when he got it? Did President Bush ever see it?

Expect the Democrats and their anti-war allies to do something that they have not quite had the specific legal justification to do until now: use the “L word”. They will conflate two things – lying about evidence for war and lying to Patrick Fitzgerald – but no matter. They will use the Libby verdict to pump up the volume.

But the biggest burden will fall on Cheney himself. His own Hobbesian view of the world – that life is nasty, brutish and short – is becoming all too personal. He had to be relieved that Prosecutor Fitzgerald described his investigation as “inactive.” That would seem to mean that Cheney is in no legal jeopardy.

Unless Libby, facing serious jail time (and he might well be, given the breadth of the verdict), decides to change his story and tell us something about Cheney we don’t know – and that the president of the United States won’t want to hear.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17484687/from/RS.4/


Now we DO know that lies were told within this administration to discredit those who questioned or doubted this administrations "causes for war". As the prosecuter Fitzgerald stated,there is a cloud over the Vice President's office now. It's a brewing storm that's just now beginning to rain.

Libby lied about who he told "what "to...he lied to a grand jury...he is guilty of that!!!!!

Sometimes a cigar...is just a cigar!!!!! This is just a cigar.

Next Monday this story will be over unless someone decides to investigate the "what" he was protecting ... was just what Sandy Berger stole from the National Archives in his socks.

Libby is guilty! Send him away for 30 years...let the punishment fit the crime.

Obstruction of justice Guilty

False statements to FBI investigators (concerning conversations with NBC newsman Tim Russert) Guilty

False statement to FBI investigators (concerning conversations with Time reporter Matt Cooper) Not guilty

Perjury to the grand jury (Russert conversation) Guilty

Perjury to the grand jury (Cooper conversation) Guilty


‘Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’

Juror says Libby was guilty but was set up to take the fall in Plame probe

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 22 minutes ago

The jurors who convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby believed Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was set up as a fall guy, a juror said Tuesday, but they had no alternative to finding him guilty in the leak of the identity of a classified CIA operative.

“I will say there was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury,” said the juror, Denis Collins, a former newspaper reporter.

“It was said a number of times: ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’ ” Collins said, referring to Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who was identified during the investigation as one of the senior officials who revealed the identity of the operative, Valerie Plame, to journalists.

“I’m not saying we didn’t think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of,” Collins said. “It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells [Ted Wells, Libby’s attorney] put it, he was the fall guy.”

In fact, Collins said, the focus on Libby frustrated the jurors, who had hoped to get a crack at the larger issues.

“What we’re in court deciding seems to be a level or two down from what, before we went into the jury, we supposed the trial was about, or had been initially about, which was who leaked” Plame’s identity.

“Some jurors commented at some point: ‘I wish we weren’t judging Libby. You know, this sucks. We don’t like being here.’ But that wasn’t our choice.”

Cheney’s role not extensively discussed
The 11 jurors — one was not replaced after being dismissed for seeing a news account of the case — convicted Libby on Tuesday of four of the five counts against him, concluding that he perjured himself before a federal grand jury and obstructed justice by lying to the FBI about the Bush administration’s efforts to discredit Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Wilson wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times in 2003 accusing the White House of misleading the public about Iraq’s attempts to obtain weapons material from Africa, a claim Wilson had investigated for the CIA and found baseless. Shortly thereafter, his wife’s identity was leaked to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, with the implication that Wilson was sent on his mission because of nepotism.

Testimony during the trial revealed that Cheney had taken a close personal role in monitoring the effort to discredit Wilson. But Collins stopped short of accusing the vice president of complicity in a cover-up, saying, “We actually never discussed that because that was not what we were assigned to do.”

“The belief of the jury was [Libby] was tasked by the vice president to talk to reporters,” said Collins, a former staff writer for The Washington Post who said he felt honor-bound as a journalist to speak with reporters. “We never came to any conclusion whether Cheney would have told him what exactly to say.”

Collins let the public in on how the jury approached the case, and in doing so, he demolished the speculation of numerous trial watchers about what was important and what was not.

The jurors focused with great intensity on the facts as stated by Fitzgerald and largely disregarded much-discussed questions of whether there was any cover-up of the leak and, if so, whether Cheney orchestrated it, Collins said.

“We had eight hours of grand jury testimony from Libby, so that was good. Hearing from Cheney, I think it would have been interesting,” he acknowledged. But he added: “I’m not sure what it would have done. I don’t have any idea what he would have said.”

In certain circumstances, it is a crime to disclose the identity of a covert CIA operative, and whether Plame’s identity was, in fact, classified was argued at great length during the trial.

But in then end, Collins said, it “wasn’t relevant” whether Plame’s identity was classified or not, “so we never talked about that.”

Russert conversation key to decision
The jury acquitted Libby of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Matthew Cooper, then a reporter for Time magazine. Testimony conflicted too much, Collins said, and there was enough reasonable doubt because it came down Libby’s word against Cooper’s word.

But the jury convicted Libby of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief and the host of “Meet the Press.” The jury found Russert to be “very credible,” Collins said.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contended that Libby learned of Plame’s identity from Cheney and falsely told the FBI that he learned it from Russert, instead, to hide the vice president’s involvement. Libby’s attorneys said he learned about Plame from Cheney, forgot about it and then learned it again a month later from Russert.

The jurors believed Fitzgerald. Collins said they did not believe Libby could possibly have forgotten that the vice president had told him something that important.

“We were told he had a bad memory, and we believed he did,” Collins said. But “even if he forgot who had told him about Mrs. Wilson [Plame’s married name], it seemed very unlikely that he would not have remembered that about Mrs. Wilson.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17485067/

One lie doesn't equate to four guilty counts Ralphie. And I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceburg. But we'll see.

"...One lie doesn't equate to four guilty counts Ralphie. And I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceburg. But we'll see"

To lie under oath strikes at the heart of the American Judicial system...perjury and obstruction of justice is bad enough ... but the cover up and denial gets you every time. Well, unless the lie is about sex in the White House.

All Libby had to do was to admit he lied and walk away with a slap on the wrist like Sandy Berger did.

Libby verdict reflects new scrutiny

Conviction of White House aide hangs over Bush team

WASHINGTON - Shortly before he was inaugurated for his second term, President Bush was asked why no one was held responsible for the mistakes of the first. "We had an accountability moment," he replied, "and that's called the 2004 elections."

Two years and a stinging midterm election later, Bush is having another accountability moment, but this one isn't working out as well. The conviction of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has coincided with a string of investigations into the mistreatment of injured soldiers and the purge of federal prosecutors, putting the operations of his administration into harsh relief.

The timing may be coincidental, but the confluence of events has revived a pattern largely missing through the six years of Bush's presidency, in which high-level officials accused of wrongdoing are grilled, fired and sometimes even jailed. For an administration that has been unusually opaque and mostly insulated from aggressive congressional oversight and prosecutorial investigation, it may seem like a gut-churning harbinger.

While the president's aides watch uncomfortably as one hearing after another plays out on Capitol Hill, the Libby conviction hit a nerve inside the White House. The onetime chief of staff to Vice President Cheney was well liked in the West Wing, and the notion of him going to prison dispirited the colleagues glued to televisions as the verdict was announced. Bush watched in the Oval Office with aides Joshua B. Bolten and Dan Bartlett, then instructed Bartlett to put out a statement expressing sadness for Libby.

"This has been a huge cloud over the White House," said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist close to the Bush team. "It caused a lot of intellectual, emotional and political energy to be expended when it should have been expended on the agenda. They're never going to fully recover from this. If you're looking at legacy, this episode gets prominently mentioned in every recap of the Bush administration, much like Iran-contra and Monica Lewinsky."

‘The politics of smear and fear’
The Libby case never reached the level of those scandals, of course, but it became a proxy for many in Washington eager to re-litigate the origins of the Iraq war. If Libby lied about his role in the CIA leak case, critics eagerly used that to reinforce their argument that Bush led the nation to war on false pretenses, in effect attacking the centerpiece of his presidency.

"This verdict brings accountability at last for official deception and the politics of smear and fear," said Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Bush's Democratic challenger in 2004.

While the White House publicly withheld comment, some Bush advisers expressed outrage, seeing a double standard and citing the documents-smuggling case of former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. Berger. "Scooter didn't do anything," said former Cheney counselor Mary Matalin. "And his personal record and service are impeccable. How do you make sense of a system where a security principal admits to stuffing classified docs in his pants and says, 'I'm sorry,' and a guy who is rebutting a demonstrable partisan liar is going through this madness?"

A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president ordered aides not to comment publicly, disputed the idea that Bush has escaped scrutiny in the past. "I don't buy the conventional wisdom that we haven't had accountability in the past," he said. "Is it different because Democrats are in charge? Of course. . . . But that's fine, that's a reality that we're prepared to deal with."

No one has been quicker to declare the return of accountability than Democrats, who are using their newfound subpoena power to sharp effect in hauling up Pentagon officials to answer for poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and in giving fired U.S. attorneys a venue to blame their dismissals on administration politics. In two months, Democrats have held 81 hearings on Iraq. "This is just the beginning," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "What a difference a year makes."

But accountability politics can also be dangerous to the touch. Washington became consumed during the presidency of Emanuel's onetime boss, Bill Clinton, whose administration came under scrutiny of at least seven independent counsels and even more Republican congressional committees. The atmosphere was so toxic that Clinton adviser Paul Begala put an attorney on retainer before even joining the White House staff.

The Republican-led impeachment of Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with Lewinsky backfired politically, and Washington grew so leery that it let the independent-counsel law lapse. When Bush was elected along with a Congress controlled by the same party, a new era was ushered in. With occasional exceptions, such as the commission that looked into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush largely escaped the klieg-light atmosphere. No senior officials were fired for the missing weapons in Iraq or the Abu Ghraib abuse. Three officials blamed by some for mishandling Iraq were given Medals of Freedom.

Changes after Katrina
That began changing after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005 and congressional Republicans investigated the administration's slow response. The change accelerated with the Democratic victory in the November elections. The next day, Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after months of deteriorating conditions in Iraq. Rumsfeld's successor, Robert M. Gates, has proved willing to fire others for mismanaging Walter Reed.

The risk for Democrats would be overplaying the accountability hand. Their attempts to impose limits on Bush's ability to fight the war have collapsed repeatedly and left them unable to fashion a coherent approach to the most serious issue in the country. Some Republicans suggested that the public could tire of repeated hearings such as those held this week and write them off to partisanship.

"They bring up sort of old Washington," said former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace. "The Democrats have to walk a fine line and be careful. People don't want to turn on the TV and see every story being about the obstruction of people trying to do things. . . . The people who will stand out in Washington are the ones who will look forward."

Two people looking forward with choices to make are Bush and Libby. The president came under instant pressure from conservatives to pardon his former aide. "Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn't have lasted beyond its opening act," National Review said within hours of the verdict.

Does Libby have more to say?
And Libby may have to decide if he has anything else to tell authorities. John Q. Barrett, an Iran-contra prosecutor who teaches at St. John's University, recalled James W. McCord Jr. in Watergate and Alan Fiers in Iran-contra, who under threat of prison recanted past versions of events. If the jury was right that Libby lied, Barrett said, "he's now sitting wherever he is with cold sweat and troubled stomach and truth that he hasn't told. . . . Whatever the chips, if he held them and didn't lay them down, this may be the moment to decide."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17492035/

Libby will get his pardon near the end of Bush's second term, the Democrats will yell and scream even though not one said a word when Clinton pardoned everybody but the axe muderers.... and the wheels of hypocrisy will continue to turn...

The Dems want Bush and Cheney's heads on a platter. The 2004 election erased the mistakes they made during the first 4 year term...
The Donkeys will try to send everyone who stonewalled up the river...my guess is that Libby will get a couple years to think about his lie... and then be rewarded for keeping his trap shut when he gets out.

Both sides play the gotcha game...both sides are fools

SHOOTING ELEPHANTS IN A BARREL Wed Mar 7, 6:41 PM ET


Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.

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It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.

With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.

As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record) was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.

This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.

Since Teddy Kennedy walked away from a dead girl with only a wrist slap (which was knocked down to a mild talking-to, plus time served: zero), Democrats have apparently become a protected class in America, immune from criminal prosecution no matter what they do.

As a result, Democrats have run wild, accepting bribes, destroying classified information, lying under oath, molesting interns, driving under the influence, obstructing justice and engaging in sex with underage girls, among other things.

Meanwhile, conservatives of any importance constantly have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves from utterly frivolous criminal prosecutions. Everything is illegal, but only Republicans get prosecuted.

Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh was subjected to a three-year criminal investigation for allegedly buying prescription drugs illegally to treat chronic back pain. Despite the witch-hunt, Democrat prosecutor Barry E. Krischer never turned up a crime.

Even if he had, to quote liberal Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz: "Generally, people who illegally buy prescription drugs are not prosecuted." Unless they're Republicans.

The vindictive prosecution of Limbaugh finally ended last year with a plea bargain in which Limbaugh did not admit guilt. Gosh, don't you feel safer now? I know I do.

In another prescription drug case with a different result, last year, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) (Democrat), apparently high as a kite on prescription drugs, crashed a car on Capitol Hill at 3 a.m. That's abuse of prescription drugs (BEGIN ITAS)plus a DUI offense. Result: no charges whatsoever and one day of press on Fox News Channel.

I suppose one could argue those were different jurisdictions. How about the same jurisdiction?

In 2006, Democrat and major Clinton contributor Jeffrey Epstein was nabbed in Palm Beach in a massive police investigation into his hiring of local underage schoolgirls for sex, which I'm told used to be a violation of some kind of statute in the Palm Beach area.

The police presented Limbaugh prosecutor Krischer with boatloads of evidence, including the videotaped statements of five of Epstein's alleged victims, the procurer of the girls for Epstein and 16 other witnesses.

But the same prosecutor who spent three years maniacally investigating Limbaugh's alleged misuse of back-pain pills refused to bring statutory rape charges against a Clinton contributor. Enraging the police, who had spent months on the investigation, Krischer let Epstein off after a few hours on a single count of solicitation of prostitution. The Clinton supporter walked, and his victims were branded as whores.

The Republican former House Whip Tom DeLay is currently under indictment for a minor campaign finance violation. Democratic prosecutor Ronnie Earle had to empanel six grand juries before he could find one to indict DeLay on these pathetic charges -- and this is in Austin, Texas (the Upper West Side with better-looking people).

That final grand jury was so eager to indict DeLay that it indicted him on one charge that was not even a crime -- and which has since been tossed out by the courts.

After winning his primary despite the indictment, DeLay decided to withdraw from the race rather than campaign under a cloud of suspicion, and Republicans lost one of their strongest champions in Congress.

Compare DeLay's case with that of Rep. William "The Refrigerator" Jefferson, Democrat. Two years ago, an FBI investigation caught Jefferson on videotape taking $100,000 in bribe money. When the FBI searched Jefferson's house, they found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer. Two people have already pleaded guilty to paying Jefferson the bribe money.

Two years later, Bush's Justice Department still has taken no action against Jefferson. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) recently put Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) on the Homeland Security Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), Democrat, engaged in a complicated land swindle, buying a parcel of land for $400,000 and selling it for over $1 million a few years later. (At least it wasn't cattle futures!)

Reid also received more than four times as much money from Jack Abramoff (nearly $70,000) as Tom DeLay ($15,000). DeLay returned the money; Reid refuses to do so. Why should he? He's a Democrat.

Former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger literally received a sentence of community service for stuffing classified national security documents in his pants and then destroying them -- big, fat federal felonies.

But Scooter Libby is facing real prison time for forgetting who told him about some bozo's wife.

Bill Clinton was not even prosecuted for obstruction of justice offenses so egregious that the entire Supreme Court staged a historic boycott of his State of the Union address in 2000.

By contrast, Linda Tripp, whose only mistake was befriending the office hosebag and then declining to perjure herself, spent millions on lawyers to defend a harassment prosecution based on far-fetched interpretations of state wiretapping laws.

Liberal law professors currently warning about the "high price" of pursuing terrorists under the Patriot Act had nothing but blood lust for Tripp one year after Clinton was impeached (Steven Lubet, "Linda Tripp Deserves to be Prosecuted," New York Times, 8/25/99).

Criminal prosecution is a surrogate for political warfare, but in this war, Republicans are gutless appeasers.

Bush has got to pardon Libby.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucac/20070307/cm_ucac/shootingelephantsinabarrel

Trial offered look at way White House worked

Testimony depicted lack of openness, rivalries among aides of Bush, Cheney

By Amy Goldstein

Updated: 40 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - When he took the stand as the fifth prosecution witness in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified that the vice president's then-chief of staff "was not somebody who would typically provide information to me."

Whenever he asked Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser for help, he usually received the same answer. "You should check with Dr. Rice," Fleischer said Libby would tell him, referring to Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser before she became secretary of state.

The glimpse of that cool interaction between the press secretary and the vice president's right-hand man was one of many tantalizing insights the trial offered into a White House culture in which even the top aides who surrounded the president were not entirely open with one another.

At the Bush White House described in the Libby trial, news media advisers were frozen out of decisions about how to respond to a crisis, colleagues kept from one another which reporters they had talked with, and the president declassified parts of a highly significant national security document without the knowledge of his chief of staff.

"They seem to have created all these little monopolies, all these little 'need-to-knows.' It creates cleavages internally," said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, a research group promoting access to government records that has combed through the Libby trial exhibits.

Blanton said the evidence presented at the trial that ended Tuesday in Libby's conviction demonstrates that "this administration's obsession with secrecy" extends to the way Bush's aides interact with each other. In particular, Blanton said, "the Cheney office seems to have raised information-hoarding . . . to a real fine art."

Testimony from eight current and former administration officials, combined with handwritten notes and other evidence, also made clear that a White House that likes to profess an indifference to its public image has at times been quite the opposite on the inside.

Zeal to manipulate, monitor image
Time and again, witnesses gave fresh details of a zeal to manipulate and monitor the administration's portrayal in the news media that reached the top echelons of the White House.

At one point, early in the summer of 2003, Cheney personally directed his staff to watch every television news show that mentioned him, in addition to its customary clipping of published articles, his former public affairs director testified. And witnesses provided a vivid window into rivalries between the vice president's office and other parts of the White House -- and between the West Wing and agencies responsible for diplomacy and national security.

"For six years, the conventional wisdom was, this was an absolutely smooth-running machine with everyone in harness, all message control," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan. "From my gleaning, the sense in the trial was . . . there were competing forces in the White House, competing and tugging."

Taken together, the trial testimony and evidence depict the Bush White House as it operated near the peak of its powers in the spring and summer of 2003 -- when the Iraq war was new and less unpopular, the administration's slump in public opinion had not yet begun, and Republicans still controlled both chambers of Congress.

Libby was convicted of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice for lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about when he learned about and whom he told about an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, who is the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In 2002, the CIA dispatched Wilson to Niger to assess reports that Iraq had recently sought to buy weapons-grade uranium from the African nation. He concluded that the reports were false, and later published a stinging rebuke of the administration, accusing Bush of distorting his findings to justify the invasion of Iraq, and contending that he had been sent to Niger in response to an inquiry from Cheney.

Prosecutors argued at the trial that Libby had told Fleischer and reporters about Plame and her CIA job as part of a White House strategy to discredit Wilson's assertions by suggesting that the agency had chosen him for the Niger mission because of nepotism.

As the multi-pronged campaign to tarnish Wilson's credibility unfolded, the trial demonstrated, participants held information so closely that often one aide did not know what another had done.

Cathie Martin, the vice president's former public affairs director and still a White House employee, testified that on July 10, 2003 -- four days after the publication of Wilson's stinging op-ed piece -- she sat in a hall outside Libby's office while she worked with him on a statement that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet was to give to try to diffuse the controversy over war intelligence.

In a handwritten note, she jotted the initials for a secret National Intelligence Estimate, a pivotal October 2002 document on what the government knew about any danger posed by Iraq's weapons programs.

Martin testified she was advocating on that day that parts of the document be declassified to help fight Wilson's assertions. She did not know, the trial demonstrated, that Bush had already declassified parts of it -- and that Libby had shared them with Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter. Other evidence showed that then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had also not known about the declassification.

In a similar vein, Martin testified, she attended a meeting convened by Stephen J. Hadley, who succeeded Rice as national security adviser, in which Hadley brought up a report by NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. In it, she suggested that the White House was shifting the blame to the CIA for a statement about Iraqi weapons in Bush's State of the Union address, for which the White House later apologized. Irked, Hadley looked around the room, wondering whether anyone at the meeting had been a source for Mitchell's story.

Libby had. But instead of telling Hadley, Martin testified, Libby simply "looked down."

Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17515198/

Pit...you seriously need to understand that because the President and his administration ran with inadequate Intel when we attacked Iraq no one is going to force the Prez or Cheney out of office or to jail. Ain't gonna happen.

Cheney is a bad guy to screw with... he will try to lay you out if you oppose the Administration. Did he cook up a nasty plan to hurt Wilson and his non covert,covert operative wife...YES. Did Libby carry out the dirt...Yes, probably.

Is this the first time Elephants and Dems have played hardball with a split seam fastball against each other.. No!

If You believe that Bush,Cheney, Halibuton and the neo con Cabal of the Potomac cooked the books to get us in the Iraq conflict and killed thousands of our men and tens of thousands of Iraqis to 1. Revenge daddy Bush. 2. Get cheaper oil. 3. Establish a fascist gov't in Iraq to keep those dirty Muslims in line or any of your other nightmares ...SO WHAT???

We are now fighting an ideology similar to the fascist ideology in WWII...similar to the Soviet Communist ideology of the Cold War...the Islamic Radical Terrorist Ideology of the 21st Century...we are there and it had to come ..sooner better than later.

We should have gone after it in the 90s under Clinton when they attacked us 3 or 4 times...but we are on it now and it will continue for a long,long time.

The question really boils down to,"who are THEY"?

The government of Sadaam?
The people of Iraq?

The problem is Ralphie,NO evidence has tied Sadaam or the nation of Iraq into ANY terrorist attack upon our national interest. None,nada.zero.

If this war was "manufactured" against a nation that is NO WAY involved in ANY form of aggression against the U.S.,there is something inherrantly wrong and evil about that. Unless of course you feel just "picking any location" in the Muslim world is an acceptable method to fighting terrorism?

That's the issue here. And Cheney is NOT above the law! I don't care how nasty the SOB is!

First, I guess you conveniently forget about the terrorist training camps that have been found. Do you think they were training them to be hot dog vendors at soccer games?

Second, you keep harping on the "IF" all the time. You have claimed for years now that this was all fabricated with NO EVIDENCE of it. You keep beating that same drum. Well if ifs and buts were candy and nuts every day would be Christmas. No matter how much you WANT this to be true, it's simply not. No doubt, though, you will take great joy in the witch hunt only to simply dismiss the subject altogether when those you want so desperately to burn at the stake aren't found to have been guilty of anything.

Well coach,this IS PROOF,that someone within the White House,broke laws to try to cover up the fact that a CIA operatives name was leaked. This IS PROOF that this administion DID have at least ONE PERSON trying to discredit people who SHOWN EVIDENCE that their "case for war was WRONG".

This IS PROOF that the White House DID KNOW that Iraq HAD NO YELLOW CAKE,but STILL our president CLAIMED THEY DID in his State of the Union speech.

Now I know FOUR CONVICTIONS mean nothing to YOU,but it does to people who are not so bias and closed minded. Where will it go? Indications are it could easily go straight to Vice President Cheney before it's over! And IF he's guilty of these things,it should!

Unless over 3100 dead soldiers because of a pack of lies means nothing to you? I don't know the extent of where this will lead,neither do you. But it looks like,according to the jurors,which I feel know a HELLUVA LOT MORE than either one of us do,that Libby WAS protecting Cheney!

Now the best I can figure,they know FAR more about this than YOU DO! So I'll take it that they have great reason to believe this. But you on the other hand?

Pit...you need to take a quick breather. I realize that Cheney and Bush have lied many times over during their lives...maybe even now.
The place we differ is that Joe Wilson has been put up as a victim of Republican dirty tricks and someone who was impartial with no axe to grind versus the Bush White House.
Actually Wilson was a vocal critic of their policies and the Iraq Study Group which you place so much trust in...exposed Wilson as someone who was not above lying.

What do you think should happen to Bush, Cheney,Libby if they were making things up to go to war???? Impeachment? Abu Grahib type pyramid gymnastics,death,leather whippings from Pelosi and Hillary????

What do you want to happen while we are at war???

I seen a replay of Rush Limbaugh, spinning these convitions into a victory for the Republican Party. It's shameful what was done, to lead us into war.

Do you mean if they "intentionaly cherry picked" intel? If they knowingly lied to the public to start this war? If they did that? Firstly,I don't really believe that Bush had ANYTHING to do with ANY of that. He may have,but I've seen no hint of any evidence that leads in that direction as of yet.

But Cheney? I have seen some pretty strong hints that he may very well have been involved in such type of activities. And if so? The lives of over 3100 of our troops deaths hangs over his head. An untold number of our citizens working for government contractors in Iraq lay on his shoulders. The deaths of ten of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens hangs over his head.

I think that qualifies him as a war criminal,not a vice president should these possibilities be confirmed. What do you think that lies leading to tens of thousands of lifes being lost is deserving of? Is there a punishment severe enough?

From the late 1970s onward there has been sufficient justification to go after whatever group of Islamic Terrorists we felt were misbeheading the worst.

Spin the Wheel and Pin the bomb on the Turban in

Alex- I'll take the Taliban for $400 in Afghanistan....good choice
- I'll take Al Queida for $500 in Iraq, Pakistan or wherever...
- I'll take Hamas, the Al Aquisa Brigade in the Palestinian area...

If not in 2003...when...if not 2004..when...if not in 2005...when...if not in 2006/07...when????? Surely since 1978 there has been enough Islamic murder,beheading of innocents to deserve our time,sweat and blood to stop them.

So what percentage of terrorista must live in a nation to qualify for war Alex?

5%,10%,20%?

So war is a game show like pin the tail on the donkey? Pick ANY Islamic nation that has ANY terrorists residing within their borders and just bomb the hell out of them and take over?

Now I get it....................

LOL, once again, Pit, you are so desperate to continue your hatred for all that is conservative that you totally destroy your own credibility. You call ME bias? Please. If there was ONE SHRED of evidence that the intel was manufactured, I would be the first to be screaming from the rooftops. I know you always leave out facts so they don't get in the way of YOUR bias and agenda, but I will point out once again that I have personally lost 2 family members in Iraq. So, while you think it really furthers your agenda to insinuate that I don't care about the soldiers that died, you make yourself look even more foolish by trying to. This is the typical crap that you always try to spew to make those that see your posts for what they are look bad. Sadly, you only make yourself look more and more pathetic. Are you SERIOUSLY accusing me of not caring that two members of MY OWN FAMILY was killed? Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that I have a bias that would be more important than MY OWN FAMILY? Please tell me you aren't that ignorant.

Well Coach,maybe you can tell me then...............We KNOW they outed Plaime to attempt to discredit Wilson while Wilson was right all along. We know they LIED about it too.

Who and how many lies will it take and about what before you question this administration? We have the vice presidents top aide found guilty of pergery and obstruction of justice trying to discredit a man who oposed their views and was right all along.

That doesn't bring any doubt into your mind? That doesn't mean anything to you? You don't care? Just wondering. Because from the best I can tell,you could care less about the honesty of why this war was started. It honestly looks like you could care less wheather they lied for the reasons of this war or not. My question is................ does it?

And I'm not the one who's desperate. Libby is. He's the one who got convicted of the lies,not me.

Dick Cheney in Twilight

Thursday, Mar. 08, 2007 By MICHAEL DUFFY

George Bush's sense of humor has always run more to frat-house gag than art-house irony, so he may not have appreciated the poetic justice any more than the legal justice on display in the Libby verdict.

Or, to be more precise, the Cheney verdict.

Bush stumped just about everyone seven years ago when he tapped the safe and solid Dick Cheney to be his running mate. But Bush didn't want any trouble. He didn't want a Vice President who preened before the cameras. He didn't want a policy sparring partner. And he didn't want someone who would check out after five years and run for President himself. And because Bush got exactly the kind of partner he wanted, he now faces the very problem he tried to avoid. Cheney has become the Administration's enemy within, the man whose single-minded pursuit of ideological goals, creaking political instincts and love of secrecy produced an independent operation inside the White House that has done more harm than good.

On an imaginary political balance sheet, Cheney is the Democrats' most valuable asset. And reversing that situation is getting close to impossible. Cheney recently made his weekly pilgrimage to the Senate, where he had lunch on March 6 with Republicans. He took his usual seat on one side of the stately Mike Mansfield Room and watched the proceedings quietly. Various Senators came by to ask him about his health after a blood-clot scare the day before. Others quietly lent support in the wake of that morning's four-count guilty verdict of Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But for all the personal shows of support, more Republicans with each passing week have acknowledged privately what is felt across Washington when it comes to the Vice President: his time has passed.

And what a time it was. Back in the days of Bush's first term, aides to Cheney loved to regale journalists with tidbits about the scope of the Vice President's influence and the intensity of his commitment to protecting the U.S. from a terrorist attack. He was so driven and hands-on, the aides would say, that he and Libby would routinely ask to see raw intelligence rather than the processed analysis put together by the cia and other agencies. "He's a voracious consumer of intelligence," said an admiring aide to the Vice President. "Sometimes he asks for raw intelligence to make his own judgment. He wants it all."

He may have come across as deferential to the President in public, but friends and advisers in the fall of 2002 described Cheney as nothing less than the engine of the Administration. "There's no way in which he is not driving the train on this," said one, referring to Cheney's role in pushing Bush and the Administration inexorably toward an invasion of Iraq. "Analysis, advocacy — it's all done by Cheney or his prot�g�s or his former mentor [Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld]. It's about context. It's reflective not so much of Cheney's direct influence on the President as it is of his influence on — his dominance of — the decision-making process. It's about providing the facts and analysis to the decision maker that the decision maker needs. Bush is making the decision, but the Veep is directing the process toward the decision that he thinks is the right one." In other words, Cheney had so rigged the process that important decisions were foregone conclusions, ones that had been reached by the Vice President well in advance.

So when the verdict against Libby came down, it was also a rebuke to that hermetic power-sharing arrangement at the top of the White House. The legal outcome was never in doubt. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had been massing evidence of perjury for months and then unveiled it piece by piece until even the defendant chose not to testify in his own defense. Libby's highly touted defense lawyers, meanwhile, seemed weak and scattered. Their promise to reveal how the White House had left Libby to be the fall guy for higher-ups was introduced and then abandoned. And it would have taken them down a road Libby steadfastly refused to travel: the one that led to the Vice President's door.

From the start, the case was only marginally about Libby. What was really on trial was the whole culture of an Administration that treated the truth as a relative virtue, as something it could take or leave as it needed. Everyone knows now that Bush and Cheney took the country into a deadly, costly and open-ended war on flimsy evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Yes, Congress went along. And yes, the public on balance supported it. But no one was more responsible than the Vice President for pushing the limits of the prewar intelligence that did all the convincing. And when former ambassador Joseph Wilson questioned the credibility of that intelligence — and the motives that helped polish it — it was Cheney who led the fight to bring him down.

None of that was illegal. So four years later, the Libby trial still prompts the question, Why did Libby get into legal trouble in the first place? Why did the Vice President's top aide not simply admit to what everyone knew was true — that he discussed the identity of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, with at least one reporter? Since most experts agree that Libby was unlikely to be prosecuted on a charge of revealing her identity, it is hard not to conclude that Libby cooked up his stories to protect Cheney. If Libby had gone a different route and admitted in his grand jury testimony that he had told a reporter about the identity of Wilson's wife, Fitzgerald's next question would have been, Were you acting on Cheney's orders? And it would not have been long before Cheney was giving testimony under oath. There was, said Fitzgerald in his summation, "a cloud over what the Vice President did."

Libby's conviction comes at the end of a dreadful year for Cheney: last February he accidentally sprayed a friend with bird shot while hunting in Texas. A week before the midterms, in a gift to Democrats, he all but endorsed waterboarding on a North Dakota radio talk show as an interrogation technique. Mary Cheney, his openly gay daughter, ran afoul of conservative activists in December when it was revealed that she and her partner were expecting a baby. Late last month, while he was touring Bagram air base in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber attacked the camp's perimeter and killed at least 23 people in what the Taliban called an assassination attempt. Then on March 5, doctors found a blood clot in Cheney's leg, for which he will be treated with blood-thinning medication for several months.

But the personal setbacks have merely been the counterpoint to the larger policy reversals Cheney has suffered in internal debates in the past year. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is executing an unmistakable course correction in U.S. foreign policy, quietly stepping away from the strident and unilateral positions of the neoconservatives and cutting deals with — or opening lines to — the remaining members of the axis of evil. Backed by a strong new team of career diplomats, Rice prevailed on Iraq to invite Iran to a regional conference on security and then swiftly agreed to attend, unwinding Washington's vow just a few weeks ago that it would have no direct contact with Tehran until it stopped enriching uranium.

A few weeks earlier, after working for months with the Chinese, President Bush signed off on a deal with North Korea to freeze its primary nuclear reactor in exchange for economic aid and closer diplomatic ties. That deal was strikingly reminiscent of a controversial pact that Bill Clinton inked with North Korea in 1994 — and that the Bush team criticized in the first term. When hard-liners inside the government complained to reporters that the White House was selling out to a dictator, Bush backed Rice in public. Even in intelligence matters, the area in which Cheney was once most dominant and in which he invited the most trouble in the Libby case, his hand has been weakened. For example, in public testimony before Congress lately, intelligence officials have emphasized more ambiguities and uncertainties in their conclusions about threats overseas than was commonplace at the height of Cheney's power. Democratic Senators report that a refreshing new degree of candor has returned in classified sessions as well. "Cheney's influence on intelligence has declined markedly," said Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Cheney is hardly unaware of Rice's new dominance. A senior Administration official told TIME last week that Cheney has been part of all the arguments and has simply begun to lose some. But that alone means ideas that would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago — early engagement, muscular multilateralism, even patient negotiation — are becoming more acceptable in Bushland. American diplomats have asked the Jordanians for their notes on the Clinton-era negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, seeking to restart the Middle East peace talks that fell apart abruptly at the end of 2000. That's yet another turnabout for an Administration that lampooned those very talks in 2002.

Of course, some of the repositioning was inevitable, and most of it was long overdue. Even if Bush and Cheney didn't want to listen to the polls on the home front, they couldn't ignore the few allies they had left overseas. Britain's Tony Blair announced a partial pullout from Iraq last month, and then moderate Arab neighbors in the region began to clamor for Bush to pull up before he crashed. On Wednesday, King Abdullah II of Jordan made an impassioned public appeal in a joint meeting of Congress for Washington to take the lead on Middle East peace talks.

While Rice rewires foreign policy, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten is showing signs that he can match Cheney on domestic matters. The Bush Administration has said it will retreat on the issue of domestic surveillance and abide by laws regulating wiretaps passed years ago by Congress. And the Democrats in Congress are finding Administration officials far more forthcoming with facts and figures about the conduct of the war in Iraq, in part because the White House knows that the next step — subpoenas — won't help their dwindling poll ratings. "There has been an ebb and flow," said Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, "and the President has come to realize that the broader assertions of executive power had to be tempered."

But there is another force driving the Bush team to pivot: the ticking of the clock. "It's very hard to do things at the very, very end," said Wendy Sherman, who coordinated North Korean policy in the Clinton State Department. "If the President wants to end eight years and have people say, 'You lost Iraq, you lost Iran, you lost North Korea, and you made the Middle East worse,' it's not a good moment in history. And so the pragmatists are predominant at the moment. This is their window."

How did Cheney, a man once considered by members of both parties to have a feel for the golden mean, create a culture in which his top aide perjures himself? Some of it is his solitary roots: Cheney has never been a natural politician. He's more of a High Plains drifter who hailed from one of the least populated states in the nation, who took up the lonely job of utility lineman when he dropped out of college. Although he won a seat in Congress six times, he didn't have to work at it the way some lawmakers did. He easily rolled up huge margins in his Republican-tilted Wyoming district that literally covered the whole state. Personal charm wasn't so much Cheney's secret — the census was. In those days, everyone in Wyoming pretty much knew everyone else. Most years Cheney outpolled his rivals by more than 2 to 1.

So when he decided to give running for President a try in 1994, he soon realized he was unsuited for the big game. He raised a million dollars and built a good organization, but he found that the little things got to him. His fund-raising dinners, Cheney told aides, "weren't substantive enough." He didn't care to pal around with donors. He therefore called it off and never ran on his own again. This removal from people, from politics, from the sensors that make leaders responsive to people, turned into Cheney's Achilles' heel. And it actually deepened when he became Vice President. Bush picked Cheney because Cheney would never run again, but that also meant the newly minted Veep never had to put his ear to the ground.

Then came the war, which changed all of us but affected Cheney more than most. He was still wired in on everything, but that didn't mean he was in touch. He was convinced he was right about grave matters — that Saddam Hussein was a threat that had to be removed, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was intent on using them, that critics of Administration policy were at best misguided and at worst traitorous. "It's always been a joke in his office that his staff is extraneous," said a staff member. "The only thing you can do is provide him with information he doesn't possess yet. He doesn't need your analytical skill and judgment. He has that already."

Even in his own family, Cheney has a reputation for simply not being there. At times he simply departs the room, not physically but mentally, says a family friend who has also worked for him. He loses himself in thought or a book or whatever he's doing and can't be raised or roused. When that happens, his daughters have a nickname for him: the Bull Walrus. And so they will wave their hands and affectionately call out their pet name for their dad — "Hey! Bull Walrus!" — as if he were sleeping on a big rock near the Arctic Sea. And then he'll come to.

So long as Bush remains Commander in Chief, however, and Cheney his faithful lieutenant, the Vice President's power will flow through the Oval Office. Cheney remains the Administration's point man in its war of words with Iran and helped persuade the President to send an extra carrier group to the Persian Gulf last month. He remains a force in White House debates about the conduct of the war, and though he has been forced to retreat in some areas, he has not walked away from the fight. He remains Bush's best messenger when delivering the tough love that Washington spoons out from time to time, as it did two weeks ago when the Administration pushed Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf to take the war on al-Qaeda up a couple of notches.

Libby's four-count conviction guarantees that Cheney's White House role will remain in the news for most of the year. At the moment, Libby faces 18 months to three years in prison, though Judge Reggie Walton has discretion over the sentence he will hand down on June 5. In Libby's favor is the Columbia Law School grad's otherwise clean criminal record. Meanwhile, Libby's lawyers will try to argue for a new trial — something few observers expect Walton will permit — and then will ask the judge to allow Libby to postpone his jail sentence until an appeal can be heard. Retired Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin maintains that an appeal could be considered — and ruled on — in as little as six months, but it could stretch into 2008 if the appeal briefs are extensive. Given the way his lawyers tried to slow down the process with pretrial motions last year, they are likely to be.

And that's part of the plan. If his appeal fails, Libby's only recourse is a presidential pardon, and the chances of that go up as Bush's days in office dwindle. That means the longer Libby can keep the wheels of justice turning, the more likely he is to avoid spending any time in jail. Already the betting on a pardon is running at 65% by the end of Bush's term, and the Washington Post has announced a pool to predict the date. Democrats have called on Bush to swear off a pardon, but that outcome is not likely. If Bush ruled one out now, he might encourage Libby to seek leniency from Fitzgerald in his sentencing phase in return for cooperating with the prosecutor. In his first comments after the verdict was announced, Fitzgerald left the door open to such negotiations: "Mr. Libby is like any other defendant. If his counsel or he wish to pursue any options, they can contact us."

Then there is the argument that Bush should boot his Vice President before he strikes again. It's an often forgotten fact that three of the past six Presidents either dumped or tried to dump their Vice Presidents: Richard Nixon tossed Spiro Agnew for Gerald Ford in 1973, Ford tossed Nelson Rockefeller and tapped Bob Dole as a running mate in the 1976 campaign, and Bush's father George Herbert Walker Bush let his top aides try to give the heave-ho to Vice President Dan Quayle when he was dragging down the G.O.P. ticket by three or four points in 1992.

The father's instincts have never been the son's. Replacing the Veep now would create exactly the unpleasant succession scenario Bush had hoped to avoid when he chose Cheney in the first place. He didn't want someone soaking up all the attention and energy as he headed into his last 18 months in office. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

With reporting by Brian Bennett, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Elaine Shannon/Washington

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1597226-1,00.html

What percentage of Afghanistan's population were Taliban??? I don't know nor is it relevant.

You seen upset... no shocked...no outraged...by the fact that some Americans are willing to enter another sovereign nation to track down Islamic Terrorists. When a Muslim Terror group is sworn to kill Americans where they live some Americans are willing to go into the Terrorists comfort zone and get them first. Yes...I admit it!!! So what??? Are you satisfied with wagging the bony finger of indignation and warning at them[ the Islamists] as they flaunt their disregard for the laws of men and the natural law.

I see that as a very different matter. The government of Afghanastan had the option of turning over Al Queda. Al Queda DID attack the U.S. and Afghanastan was its home base. Not Iraq.

We had been attacked by a group whose headquarters lay within the boundaries of Afghanastan and the government in power refused to cooperate with us. We had every right.

Nobody had to create lies to convince the American people of that. Nobody had to out a CIA agent to attempt to discredit someone who oposed their intel on Afghanastan. You can't see a difference there?

Sometimes I do find it unbelievable what lengths people will reach to in an attempt to tie these two wars together by simply ommiting the facts at hand.

And no,I have no problem "tracking down terrorists". But we didn't "track down terrorists" in Iraq. We toppled their government and invaded their nation without provocation and without it being a major terrorist haven. Afghanastan is NOT Iraq.

This same shell game has been going on since 03. The game is over! Iraq did not have WMD. There still is no proven ties between Sadaam and Al Queda yet some of you keep spewing that same retoric. It doesn't sale anymore. It's been defrocked,disproven and exposed over and over again.

Toppling governments and nation building is NOT fighting the terrorists! Never was,still isn't and never will be. If it is? You can post your proof and your sources to prove it. But you know what,they simply don't exist. Just retoric and double talk.

At least you've convinced yourself without any proof. Even though there were no ties to Bin Ladin by Sadaam. Even though there were no WMD's. Even though Joe Wilson was right and his family persicuted because of it. No nuclear program. No ties to Al Queda. None of this matters to some.

But to people actually willing to face those facts,it means a lot. And yes,I'm bewildered,perplexed and deeply saddened by those who simply don't give a damn about those facts. Because I thought this country was better than that. And in the hearts and minds of many of our citizens,I was simply wrong about that.

"...Sometimes I do find it unbelievable what lengths people will reach to in an attempt to tie these two wars together by simply ommiting the facts at hand."

These are not 2 separate wars Pit! They are separate campaigns in the same war. In WWII we fought against Germany,Japan and Italy. They were the enemy regardless if they were in France,Germany,the Netherlands,Denmark,Italy,the Philipines or on the continent of Africa.
They spoke different languages and wore different turbans but their purpose was similar to kill and demoralize our troops wherever we found them.

We will never agree as to whether Intel was falsified to justify our actions versus Iraq...but the fact remains that we had reasons to suspect that he never destroyed the previous WMD materials cited during the First Gulf War.

It makes little difference as we are in it now and will continue.

It's not going to continue for long Ralphie.

And you're right,we won't agree. Because once again you come up with some obscure comparison that simply does not hold water.

We were attacked by Japan and our allies were attacked by Germany. And it was the government of both Germany and Japan that attacked us and or our allies. Not some covert group that lay within that country. Much like the Gulf War (which I did support BTW) Kuwait,our allie,was attacked by Sadaam. It was our duty,according to treaties,to protect our allies and to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. I supported honoring our word and standing behind our allie.

In this case,NOBODY within Iraq attacked us or our allies. This was a "pre-emptive strike". Now can you explain how the hell WW2 was a "pre-emptive strike"? It most certainly was not and therefore there is no comparison Ralphie. Had the government of Iraq attacked Kuwait again or Saudi Arabia? I would feel completly different. But they attacked nobody. Nobody from Iraq was involved in 9/11.

Was the bill of goods spoon fed to the American people manufactured? The jury is still out on that one. What we do know,is that from Vice President Cheney's office,anyone who dared show evidence and proof to the contrary to their "intel" was attacked,attempted to be discredited and a hefty cover-up of those facts led to obstruction of justice and pergery charges to be proven. How much more is there to be found??? Stay tuned................

Congress Says Prepared to Act in Plame Affair
By Jason Leopold

Wednesday 07 March 2007

Aides to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they were engaged in discussions Tuesday about the possibility of holding immediate hearings and subpoenaing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to provide details of his nearly four-year-old investigation, and the evidence he obtained regarding the role Vice President Dick Cheney and other White House officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The aides requested anonymity because they were not yet permitted to discuss Congress's course of action in the matter publicly.

The news came on the heels of a verdict Tuesday in which a jury found former vice presidential staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to federal investigators for his role in the Plame leak. Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a fierce critic of the Iraq war who accused the administration of "twisting" pre-war intelligence. The verdict against Libby was rendered nearly four years to the day that the US invaded Iraq.

An aide to Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that the senator is still determined to investigate the flawed intelligence that the administration used to convince Congress and the public to back the Iraq war. The Levin aide said the senator will likely seek testimony from Libby, Cheney, and senior members of the White House who played a role in the Plame leak, and that it "makes sense" to fold the issues surrounding the CIA leak case into the hearings about pre-war intelligence since they overlap with the leak case.

Fitzgerald said if new information materializes he will "take action." However, at this point, he plans on returning to his "day job."

In the meantime, if Congress decides to hold hearings or further investigate the roles of other administration officials who were involved in the leak, such as White House political consultant Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney, Fitzgerald said he may be inclined to share the evidence he collected over the course of three years with lawmakers if they ask for his documents.

At least one member of Congress has indicated that he will likely take Fitzgerald up on his offer. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-NY, who has led the effort among Democrats in Congress to expand the CIA leak probe, said the guilty verdict returned against Libby does not go far enough in settling questions surrounding Cheney's role in the case, and that he intends to call for a criminal probe to pursue charges against the vice president.

Jeff Lieberson, a spokesman for Hinchey, said Hinchey will likely make a determination in the next couple of days on the course of action the congressman will pursue in his attempts to reenergize the investigation.

Congressman Hinchey "is definitely taking this very seriously," Lieberson said. "We're seriously looking into what steps can be taken to continue this investigation and dig deeper into the vice president's role."

Hinchey said Tuesday that "other administration officials, starting with Vice President Cheney, must be held accountable for their role in this case."

"This case doesn't end with Mr. Libby's conviction. Testimony in the Libby trial made it even clearer that Vice President Cheney played a major role in the outing of [covert CIA operative Valerie Plame] Wilson's identity. It is time to remove the cloud hanging over Vice President Cheney and the White House that Special Counsel Fitzgerald so aptly described in his closing remarks, and expose all of the lies that led to the outing of Mrs. Wilson's identity."

The aides to Pelosi and Conyers said they have already had brief discussions with staffers in the office of Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Government Oversight Committee, about his intention of calling for hearings into the leak case and possibly getting answers to lingering questions about Cheney's hands-on role in the leak, and the role White House political adviser Karl Rove played as well.

Two years ago, Waxman called for Congressional hearings to determine if there was a White House conspiracy to unmask Plame's covert status in retaliation for the criticism Wilson leveled against the administration's Iraq policy. A spokeswoman for Waxman, Karen Lightfoot, was unavailable for comment.

"I think that the Congress must hold hearings, bring Karl Rove in, put him under oath and let him explain the situation from his point of view," Waxman said during an interview with Democracy Now in July 2005. "Let him tell us what happened. It's ridiculous that Congress should stay out of all of this and not hold hearings."

At the time of Waxman's comments, it was unknown how involved Cheney was in the matter. But two weeks ago, during closing arguments, Cheney was implicated in the leak. It was the first time Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal, and that his investigation into the true nature of the vice president's involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice.

Libby's attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors during closing arguments that Fitzgerald and his deputy have been attempting to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby, and that the prosecution believes Libby may have lied to federal investigators and a grand jury to protect Cheney.

At issue were a set of talking points Cheney dictated in July 2003 that the vice president's former chief of staff was instructed to discuss with the media, included information about Plame. The discussions with the media were supposed to be centered around Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and the fact that he accused the White House of misrepresenting intelligence related to Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from Niger, according to testimony by Cathie Martin, Cheney's former communications director.

During the trial, Martin testified that she was present when Cheney dictated talking points about Wilson, but Wells said in his closing arguments that there was a clear implication by the prosecution that Martin may not have been privy to some of the private conversations that took place between Cheney and Libby regarding Plame.

"Now, I think the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney," Libby's attorney Theodore Wells told jurors Tuesday, according to a transcript of the closing arguments obtained by Truthout. "The prosecutors questioned Ms. Martin: 'Well, you weren't with Mr. Libby and the vice president all the time. Some things could have happened when you weren't there.' And the clear suggestion by the questions were, well, maybe there was some kind of skullduggery, some kind of scheme between Libby and the vice president going on in private, but that's unfair."

Rebutting the defense's assertion that Cheney was not behind the leak, Fitzgerald told jurors, "You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting - the two hour meeting - the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened."

"If you think that the vice president and the defendant 'Scooter' Libby weren't talking about [Plame] during the week where the vice president writes that [Plame] sent [Wilson] on a junket - in [Wilson's] July 6 column, the vice president moves the number one talking point, 'not clear who authorized [Wilson's Niger trip] - if you think that's a coincidence, well, that makes no sense."

On Tuesday, Fitzgerald reiterated his belief that there was a cloud hanging over the vice president because Libby obstructed justice and lied.

The revelation during closing arguments led to widespread speculation that Fitzgerald had Cheney in his crosshairs. During a news conference Tuesday, Fitzgerald said he would further investigate others if he receives additional information.

Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY, who led the push for the appointment of a special prosecutor in 2003 to investigate the leak, said the Libby trial demonstrated to him that Libby was indeed the "fall guy" and was covering up for other officials who "remain unpunished."

"That is the real tragedy of this," Schumer said.

Juror Denis Collins, a former Washington Post reporter who at one time worked alongside Post reporter Bob Woodward, agreed.

"It was said a number of times, what are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are these other guys? I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy," Collins said during a news conference Tuesday.

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030707A.shtml

The shock and outrage you seem to convey may actually be used to differentiate more than a just an anti-Bush/anti-Islamic Terror war and a pro military/proactive attack point of view.
While the reasons for attacking Iraq you see as lies and therefore negates the validity of continuing the struggle...some of us believe that the struggle is engaged and must be continued regardless of the original mischaracterizations of the original threats.

The Islamists involved are willing to murder,blow up and behead anyone who blocks their path....we need to continue the effort to secure Baghdad to allow the gov't the real opportunity to form a fair gov't. This is turn may allow for a more progressive sovereign nation in the middle of totalitarian lands.

If it doesn't work out just that way we will have engaged the bad guys in their lands and not in ours again......yet!




Really Pit....a war on Terror is a War against Radical Islamic Extremists who use Terror as their mode of battle.! We may never have another conflict between 2 clear cut sovereign nations again because of the nature of the M.O. used in the conflict.
When we attacked Afghanistan we entered the country to destroy the Taliban...not to destroy the Afghan people simply because many of them were Taliban...we went after the murderers and extremists.
We are in Iraq and attempting to cut down the radical Islamic Extremists there whether they be from Iraq,Pakistan,Iran,Syria,S.A., UAE or whereever they come from.
Some seem to believe that because no one sovereign nation claimed the Terrorists were acting under orders of that nation that we have no right to enter a land we believe is harboring these same terrorists. Whether the head of that gov't is purposely supporting them or not we will attempt to end the Terrorists actions...where we find them.

Libby lied...Libby misled and Libby evaded the truth often. Did Cheney know? Did Cheney ask him to lie? Did Cheney expect him to muddy the waters?
I don't know and I do not care anymore because the War is on. The war versus Islamic Killers in the name of Allah is engaged and no court convicting Libby and even Cheney will stop the response against the Islamic Radicals who kill in the name of Allah but without care for innocents ...ever!!!!

Typical response,Pit. First, you avoid the questions because you realize how absurd you look. Then you contine to say you "know" that "they" did this and did that. Sorry, the ONLY thing WE "know" is that LIbby is guilty of these charges. You don't know WHY anything was done. You ASSUME it because it fits your agenda. Of course, that's all you ever do. Just like calling me biased and not caring about the deaths of the soldiers and when confronted with the REAL FACTS, you ignore it. Typical.

Oh, and the domocratically controlled congress is ready to act? Wow, there's a shocker. Imagine that.....a political party trying to use something to their advantage by smearing people not found guilty of anything. Yeah, that really helps prove your point.

Ralphie,once again,in no way have you said ANYTHING that made attacking "the ntion of Iraq" as justifiable. It seems as though we could have made a dart board of that entire region of the world,blindfolded someone,let them throw a dart and wherever that dart landed would have been fine by you.

That innocent civilians being killed and thrown to the wind,losing their houses through no fault of their own,no aggression toward us on the part of their government is perfectly acceptable. This "picture you paint" rationalizing such behavior is not an acceptable behavior by any civilized reasoning. I support the war in Afghanastan. I supported the Gulf War. I do not support this one. Why? Because this one has no grounds in reality. Just some wild eyed ideaoligy that has no true rational based in reality. It never has.

I guess the Limbaugh "clan" only recognizes a jury trial when someone they disagree with is convicted. It's not surprising and quite expected. Their "clan" is above the law. They're untouchable. Not anymore.............

Hate to shock you again Pit...but if you accept that the incursion into Afghanistan is a true,good and noble venture then why be suprised when we expand the conflict to include other Muslim murderers who are killing innocent Muslims and Kurds.
The notion that a hot conflict must be contained within the borders of one sovereign nation when the perpetrators of the terror have like minded radical terrorists in the neighboring nation attacking civilians and fellow citizens is past absurd.
The facts at hand are these...we are involved in a global conflict against Radical Muslim Extremist Murderers who may be allies and may be traditional adversaries...but...are aligned by fate to fight those who refuse to accept the violent precepts of an outdated interpretation of a certain religion.
We are not fighting against Islam as these Terrorists would have others believe...we are fighting against Islamic Murderers in the name of Allah by use of Terror tactics to discourage any opposition to their plans.

Do you think the War on Terror would end if someone put Cheney,Rice and Petraius in prison tomorrow??? I didn't think so so go ahead and scream for punishment for lies...30 years...it doesn't matter.

One other note Pit.....the Clinton saga was not about national security I grant you. In the scheme of things a sex act is simply a sex act but.....
the government did not orchestrate the suit against Bill Clinton.
Paula Jones filed a civil suit for violation of her "civil rights" stemming from an incident involving a Clinton move on Ms.Jones. Clinton lied in a deposition not instigated by the gov't but by a private citizens.
In the end it wasn't a big deal any more than the Libby lie was....!