On Fouad’s Fallen Soldier
I promise, I’m going to start looking at the Libby letters in earnest tomorrow, and hopefully continue my series on the week of June 9, 2003. I have to wait until tomorrow, though, bc I’ve got key documents on my desktop, and all the batteries for the keyboard and the mouse crapped out at once (and mr. emptywheel has expressly forbidden me from using any but rechargeable batteries for them anymore).
But for now, I want to look at Fouad Ajami’s absurd piece in the WSJ.
All that has been said about the piece–not least, it’s insult to real soldiers, particularly those who have fallen in Ajami’s and Libby’s war–is absolutely right. But I’d like to say something slightly different.
I appreciate Ajami’s piece or its naked honesty. Ajami portrays this fight–the fight for Libby’s pardon–to be a key battle in the larger bureaucratic fight to be able to go to war.
Well, you have put about as much lipstick on this pig as is possible I guess. I dunno, I find this argument so completely mendacious and malignant that it is truly breathtaking. And on so many different levels. It shows a complete lack of respect to just about everything this country is founded on and is supposed to stand for.
bmaz – you can thank the wall street journal for Fouad Ajami’s article and many other first rate pieces of propaganda that they have been dishing out since prior to the war in iraq… why would they stop now?
Beautifully deconstructed, as usual, Marcy. Your insights into the hive mind of the neocon cabal shows just how far these people will go in their war on the rule of law and the Constitution. They are encouraging Bush to reward obstruction of justice so that Libby’s lies, his protection of Bush and Cheney, and his lack of remorse, are somehow made palatable. This is what they are saying; it is perfectly OK for Scooter Libby to lie before a Grand Jury, to obstruct justice, commit perjury, to do whatever he believes is necessary, because he is a soldier in their elitist army. The major lies, such as the WMD lies, the Saddam/al Qaeda lies, the pro-Likud lies, and the Franklin/Rosen spies, are all necessary and just because they (the neocons) know better than anyone else what is in our national interest. That the end always justifies the means, and us peons should shut up be thankful for these brave chickenhawks.
who the hell is fouad adjami?
and what the hell does he know about the american military or its codes of honor.
has he by chance served in the american armed forces?
or is he one of that battalion of right-wing irregulars who, quite properly, wear the insignia of the â€the 101st fight keyborders†on their pajama sleeves?
adjami’s is the rhetoric of a college sophomore.
sounds to me like murdoch has already bought the wsj.
or, alternatively,
what’s the diff between murdoch and the current owners re: the wsj’s editorial page?
zero.
murdoch might actually be forced to improved his interventions – after a few appearances before congress to explain why fox news is a republican propaganda organ, not a news outfit.
Taking Ajami’s letter to its logical conclusion, Fitzgerald and the DC Grand Jury were nothing more than a bunch of terrorists, to be fought by loyal soldier Libby.
â€He accepted the logic of the Iraq war, the great surprises we met in the course of this war.â€
â€Accepting the logic†is at best a tepid endorsement of Libby’s dedication to the cause and a far cry from making the committment based on moral principle, don’t you think? Perhaps â€the logic†of the Iraq war be it 9/11 attack on the US by Iraq and/or Iraq WMD and/or the operational affiliation of al Qeada and Saddam and/or liberation of the Iraqi people and/or … when do we get to the reason that stands the test of time… the truth!?
This is what they are saying; it is perfectly OK for Scooter Libby to lie before a Grand Jury, to obstruct justice, commit perjury, to do whatever he believes is necessary, because he is a soldier in their elitist army.
Posted by: Seamus | June 09, 2007 at 23:07
Yes. The argument is clever because it appeals to Bush in the way that might work. Black/White. Good/Evil. Such is the intellect of a man with an acute clarity of moral vision.
Neil,
The sad truth is that we attacked Iraq for no other reason than it was there. People twist themselves in all sorts of pretzel logic trying to come up with a rational explanation for the Administration’s actions to avoid this simple and uncomfortable truth. Bush was determined to invade Iraq even before he was elected. While there probably all sorts of weird pyschological reasons for Bush’s motivations, Rove’s was simple. He knew it would help win elections. The Cheney faction needed a war to smooth the way for their â€unitary executive†dreams. Rumsfeld needed a war to test his bizarro world notions of military strategy. The NeoCons wanted to demonstrate our Imperial might. None of them (except for perhaps Bush) really cared who went to war with, but it had to be a war we started and the victim had to somebody who spouted anti-American rhetoric (Afghanistan just was not good enough, that was just retaliation).
The harder question to answer is how they got away with it. The moral weakness of the Democrats, the failures of the press corps, successful covert actions against us by the Italians and the Iranians, and the general bloodlust of the American people after 9/11 all played a role. Ajami is correct that Libby accepted the logic of the Iraq war, the logic that said we should invade Iraq because we could and that the role of the government was to provide the pretext for the war that Bush and Cheney were determined to have. Anybody who got in the way of that would be punished. Libby is a soldier all right. A soldier in a war to strangle American democracy and replace it with a democratic facade covering an authoritarian state.
If Bush pardons Libby, I’ll bet that we’ll hear from either Bush or from some other quarter the line about criminalizing politics. The same line used by old man Bush when he pardoned Casper and the boys on Christmas Eve ’92.
The Republican party has, over the last three plus decades, established a notion that contempt for the law is an entitlement of public office.
Every Republican administration since Nixon has run roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law. Nixon-Ford 22 convictions, Reagan-Bush 32 convictions, Bush/Cheney several convictions and counting and serious felonies by both Bush and Cheney that will likely go unpunished. That’s batting 1.000.
Twenty-eight years. It’s congenital, deep and incurable and for many reasons.
There is a letter to Judge Walton that reveals just a tiny revelation, an insight into mindus GOP.
From Leonard Garment of Nixon administration fame. His letter contains this incredible statement:
†… did not act with any intent to profit personally.â€
Nixon made that statement about Watergate. Don’t remember the exact words but Nixon was talking on the phone and was amazed that anyone should get so upset about Watergate because ’after all no one made a dime’
Yeah that’s it, destroy the constitution, help lie us into a war killing and maiming thousands, out a CIA agent; but it can’t be bad because Scooter didn’t make a dime.
I think there has got to be some kind of vortex in the common person’s mind when juxtaposing Libby and Paris Hilton.
Paris got sentenced. She goes to jail and serves her sentence.
Libby got sentenced. He should go to jail and serve his sentence. And, that’s that.
All this whining and moaning for Libby is like Paris’s screen, â€Mom, help me!â€
They just don’t realize how little credibility they don’t have.
These neofacists deserve the same evaluation as Tony Soprano: Narcisitic Sociopaths.
â€who the hell is fouad adjami?
and what the hell does he know about the american military or its codes of honor.
has he by chance served in the american armed forces?â€
Fouad Ajami is a professor at Johns Hopkins, a Shiite, and I believe, born in Lebanon. He was a frequent interview by CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in the period after 9/11 and, as I recall, leading up to the invasion. I seem to recall that he was also interviewed on other news venues as well. He has something of a reputation for laziness. He’s a neocon player.
fouad adjami was the guy who gave wolfowitz or cheney the idea that the iraqis would be greeting the americans in the streets with flowers and gratitude.. he got that very wrong, much like the content of his wsj commentary.. fun how the wsj will put up this stuff in their paper and hope folks take them seriously.
It would be interesting to inquire about Fouad Ajami’s opinion of the fundamental facts in the Libby trial and CIA leak case that justify the pardon he recommends. As a student and professor of government at both Princeton and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, I’m sure he’d have a compelling and well-reasoned explanation of why a pardon makes sense in a nation of laws.
Wow this was fast, from WIKI Fouad Ajami:
â€In a June 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial, he described Scooter Libby as a â€fallen soldier,†which angered some people who considered it insulting to compare a soldier to someone with Libby’s criminal record.â€
The Scooter defense from the multi-million dollar defense fund as well as the intense PR and propaganda effort and the ready access to the pages of the leading corporate print media as well as talking points spouted on TV goes to prove how relentless and organized the neo-cons and their allies are.
There’s a reason why the are successful domestically – there is no focused opposition. How many op-eds have been written and pundits have gone on TV presenting the case of abuse of power and criminality?
Scooter must be hoping to pressure Walton sufficiently to get bail since he must be quite certain that Silberman and his cohorts at the DC Appeals Court will let him off on some contorted rationale and technicality just as they allowed Ollie North and Poindexter to skate.
Oh gee, I can’t wait to read YOUR comments on the letters. Save yourself the embarrassment. I’ve glanced over most and the least of them are 10x more eloquent than you on your best day.
Your raving rationalizations about this whole affair do nothing to mitigate the fact that is has been a sick joke beginning with Wilson’s lies and ending with Walton’s utter incompetance. Fitzflong had no business being SP (either Constitutionally or otherwise) and if there was an ounce of sanity left in D.C., DOJ really would have fired this lunatic months ago.
Based on Walton’s recent comments he is now clearly the nation’s leading Emo-judge. Which is dangerous considering that not only does he hold Libby’s life in his hands he is now to be sitting on the FISA court. Combine that with the fact that he has shown the legal IQ and mental dexterity of a newly hired court reporter and we have the obvious answer as to what Bush should do at the end of next week:
1. Pardon Libby.
2. Fire Fitzflong
3. Replace Judge Judy with Judge Reggie (my apologies to Judy)
hilarious goldwater, but i think you are trying to be serious, which makes it even more hilarious.
EW, great job as usual in deconstructing the neocons. Given their intellectual heritage and pedigree I guess that we shouldn’t be surprised at their audacity and the intellectual dishonesty of their propagandistic bad works and malign motives.
While you were hard at work deconstructing this latest bit of â€neoconlogism,†the neocons were toiling behind closed doors to construct their next new reality with which to herd the sheeple. What better way to herd the sheeple than through their unartful but maleficent control of messaging through the always compliant mass media? Well, what can one expect when the masters of mass media production are on their side. Oh those neocons, they may have been failed Marxists but they’re quite the malignant little worker drones eating away at the last vestiges of democracy.
Quite a few newspapers around the country ran op-eds opposing pardon. Dan Froomkin highlights some in his June 7th Washington Watch column. He also notes that WaPo hadn’t yet had one.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..00879.html
USA Today! –
â€Pardoning Libby would send a message that it’s OK to attempt to thwart the criminal justice system if you’re an important player in Washington. Washington already sends enough messages of that sort.
â€A pardon would also say that people who work for the White House are above the law if they think they’re doing the president’s bidding, because the president could always let them off the hook.â€
They see themselves in his shackles.
When they signed on, they thought Bush cared. Now everyone knows that he doesn’t, never did, never will. If they fall, they fall all alone.
They’ll have plenty of company behind bars.
â€â€¦the great surprises we met in the course of this war….†(the pronoun â€we†referring, I suppose, to Adjami himself, along with his adressee(s)).
What a delicate phrase! Adjami refers (and in the past tense!) to losses in blood and treasure that cannot possibly be calculated–losses to millions of people (with regard to their lives, their families, their homes, and their health), and in trillions of dollars (in direct costs, and in opportunity costs, for the next fifty to a hundred years).
What started as a lark–an exercise in high speed and low cost, with minimal friction everywhere–has become an unending apocalypse, where the acts of a few have ruined, and continue to ruin, the lives and cultures of entire populations.
Let us rather hope, then, that Adjami will have occasion to ponder â€the great surprises we SHALL meet in the course of this warâ€â€“namely through the response of all laws (all legal systems, wherever their occasions present themselves), in the bringing of these thugs, these war criminals, to a just accounting.
This, for me, is the genius of the â€bureaucratic war†in Washington: an improvised re-enactment of the trials of Nuremburg. I truly hope and believe that Libby will be the first war criminal headed for jail–probably the last place left on the face of the earth where the better angels of his days at Deerfield Academy and Yale University can begin to make themselves heard. (As for Bush and Cheney, let them be buried up to their necks in sand.)
See Digby today for interesting speculation about the ultimate appeals outcome of the Libby case. He sees Bork weighing in as code to the extreme conservatives (such as Sentelle) who are still Appeals Judges, and compares the situation (in power terms) to that of the appeal stage of Oliver North’s conviction–which was in fact overturned. The entrenchment of power conservatives in higher courts was always a long term goal, and it has to an important degree occurred. The Ajami argument is in these same power terms–power and allegiance to power. Remember the judicial outcome of Election 2000. They play the card when they must.
OT: Thank you French Open! I tuned in to watch Press the Meat at 9AM ET and it was pre-empted by tennis. After some surfing around I found Emptywheel on C-Span2 on BookTV. I know it was a rebroadcast EW but you were great. In other C-Span news – did you see Patrick Fitzgerald’s speech at Amherst? He was average ;).
Well, if Libby is a ’soldier’ in the war (in Iraq? on Terror? against Liberals?), then so was Valerie Wilson.
Which means Libby isn’t so much the ’fallen’ soldier as he is the one who stabbed a fellow soldier in the back, left her bleeding on the ground, and posted a sign next to her saying ’Desecrate This U.S. Corpse’.
With that reasoning in mind, Libby should be court-martialed, at the very least.
JGabriel – Very nicely put.
This, for me, is the genius of the â€bureaucratic war†in Washington: an improvised re-enactment of the trials of Nuremburg. I truly hope and believe that Libby will be the first war criminal headed for jail–probably the last place left on the face of the earth where the better angels of his days at Deerfield Academy and Yale University can begin to make themselves heard. (As for Bush and Cheney, let them be buried up to their necks in sand.)
Posted by: alabama | June 10, 2007 at 07:00
I agree with your comment. This government sought authorization with a fraudulent case and then perpetrated unthinkable harm upon Iraqis and everyone else standing in their way.
Deerfield Academy does not claim Scooter Libby as one of their own. That honor goes to Eaglebrook (also in Old Deerfield, MA), Andover Academy, Yale U. and Columbia Law. Boola boola.
Well, in the world of psychology this is all called â€rationalizingâ€. Rationalizing is a powerful tool that allows human beings to behave in ways against the greater good, so as to relieve the cognitive dissonance that would occur.
It’s not the sociopaths who need the rationalizations. (Bushco) The rationales are for the common folks who need to follow the leader. Bushco have no need for rationale because there is no cognitive dissonance.
It is my humble opinion that every time a rationale for the violence loving war machine that is the republican party, is put forth, it should be loudly deconstructed just as is done by our well versed and most logical EW. She will know the power of her logic by the viciousness of the blow back.
There are poor twits following this crew just like the 12 year olds participating in gangs that are being led down a path of â€beliefs†that will later justify the means. And those of us willing to deconstruct their unconcienable positions will be viciously and vacuously attack.
Their attacks will have no true meaning…just attacks. See what happens when you speak out?? It has been very effective in muzzling the opposition. Expect the attack. They have no other intellectual means by which to make a point and make their position stronger. Their strength comes only from the destruction of the â€other†position. Never from the strength of â€truth, justice and liberty for all†in their position.
Great post E.W.
cal1942
and
…
thanks.
on another matter,
it’s wonderful, that our new immigration system, whenever it is put into place, will give high points to immigrants who are well-educated,
but the hispanic immigrants i work with, many of whom are very bright, very hardworking, and very conscientious,
and who want nothing more than to make some good money to send home,
and then to go back home to their families,
will end up down at the bottom of the list.
i’m thinking luis, marcos, geraldo, carlos, alberto, gabriel
vs
fouad adjami, deneesh desouza, et al.
WSJ = Cheney’s ghostwriting staff
No surprise, really, that Ajami wrote this piece (or put his name to it) when seen in that light.
It does make the potential acquisition of WSJ by Murdoch amusing; does Murdoch let Cheney publish anything he wants in the new WSJ?
Walton served as an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and from 1991 to 2001. He was appointed to that position by President Ronald Reagan, in 1981, and by George H. W. Bush, in 1991.
Walton is a U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia, one of 15 such jurists. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001.
Inconvenient truths the neocons would like everyone to forget.
~
alabama –
like the comment.
i hope scooter has a tolerance for hip-hop, played very loudly.
but then, again, probably he ain’t going to one of those low-class jails.
ah,
â€a jail cell for scooterâ€.
sounds like a nice title for a kids book.
Writing an op-ed in the WSJ to try to influence Bush? Who famously doesn’t read the newspapers? And who admits my English isn’t very good�??
>>>>With that reasoning in mind, Libby should be court-martialed, at the very least.
Brilliant thought! Except for the minor inconvenience that Armitage was the one that spilled the beans about Super Secret Agent Wilson.
And for Goldwater, Jodi and all the other skeptics, I recommend the piece in the WaPo on the â€Five Myths†About The Libby case by the WaPo writer who covered it. She makes clear that Valerie was covert and that Libby most likely did leak about her identity, but that Fitz couldn’t prove that at that time Libby knew she was covert. She also punctures a â€left wing†myth, though it is not something that got wide credence here.
uhm, there’s only ONE PROBLEM with this drivel
scooter libby ain’t no soldier, and Valerie Plame had the equivilent rank of Colonel, which means thatr Valerie Plame ACTUALLY WAS A SOLDIER
so we’re supposed to excuse a wanna-be soldier who betrayed a REAL SOLDIER ???
I wonder how the shit stain feels about that one
I’m sure the shit stain has some type of rationalization or â€Belief†(ROTFLMAO at that one) that will allow the shit stain to totally agree with this tripe
what do you say shit stain ???
has the bush administration finally insulted your intelegence (like the shit stain has inteligence)
Goldwater: â€Brilliant thought! Except for the minor inconvenience that Armitage was the one that spilled the beans about Super Secret Agent Wilson.â€
And how did Armitage learn of Wilson’s CIA employment? Through a memo generated by Marc Grossman at Libby’s request.
Let’s get this talking point out of the way: Liby was NOT ’just a fall guy’.
Libby first learned of Valerie Wilson’s CIA status from Dick Cheney. Libby almost certainly propagated that information on Cheney’s orders, but let’s not forget that it was *Libby* who did the propagation. All roads in the leak lead to Libby.
Rove probably first learned of Wilson’s CIA status from Libby.
Armitage learned of Wilson’s status from an e-mail generated by Libby’s requests, at the very least. Though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Armitage got a heads up from Libby first, either specifically about Wilson’s status or just to look for the memo Libby had requested.
Novak learned of Wilson’s status from Rove and Armitage, each of whom learned it — whether directly or indirectly — from Libby.
Ari Fleischer learned of Wilson’s CIA status from Libby. As did Condi Rice.
Matt Cooper’s sources for Wilson’s status were Rove — who learned it either directly or indirectly from Libby — and Libby himself.
Judy Miller learned of Wilson’s status from Libby.
Bob Woodward learned of Wilson’s status from Armitage — who learned by way of Libby.
While Fitzgerald might not have been able to indict Libby on the most relevant charge — IIPA violation — there is no doubt that Fitzgerald prosecuted the man most guilty (outside of Cheney) for the leak and widespread dissemination of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA agent.
Libby was the person most responsible for the dissemination of Valerie Wilson’s CIA affiliation. And it was only Libby’s *Obstruction of Justice* that prevented Cheney from being indicted or impeached in the matter.
So enough with the ’Libby was just a fall guy’ or ’Libby just committed perjury’ talking points. Libby deserves every second of the prison sentence he received for Obstruction of Justice, and more.
jgabriel
i’ve never seen this â€all roads led to libby†argument before
a nice, concise summary.
bmaz & orionATL: Thanks!
Dems didn’t win the presidency in 2004, but they took Congress and are now stripping away individuals from the Bush administration. In each case there is a public hearing of their behavior and they are found wanting or guilty. It’s a bloody process where many ’soldiers’ will fall and the good guys will win. Removing Libby is only one part in a larger war against George W. Bush. It’s important to punish Libby to restore honor and integrity to the CIA and to demonstrate we, the American people, do in fact support the CIA (in it’s primary endeavor) and we don’t want it’s functioning and our national security to be corrupted by the NeoCons who seek absolute power. Unchecked power isn’t part of the American system. Checks and Balances IS fundamental to the American system of Democracy.
George will be left by himself, stripped of support and aimless. That will be a good thing.
JGabriel – You are most deserving. In fact, your comment motivated me to write something on this. I quoted you at the end of the piece and gave you appropriate credit. If you are interested, here is link:
http://proctoringcongress.blog…..-name.html
to, orionATL, I think the â€all roads led to libby†argument is a part of the (I think accurate) suspicions about the Whitehouse Iraq Group (WHIG)
Wilson went public in late Feburary and early March of 2003, and the WHIG met on March 8th or 9th
scooter seems to be the conducter of the â€Orchesta Of Treason†that began playing their â€Plot Against Wilson†long before novakula outed Valerie Plame
with all of the unanswered questions about the WHIG, I think we need to gather all the principles and secondary players, ship them to GITMO for a few months of intense â€Treatment†and see what we learn. novakula and dead eye might not survive their â€treatment†(they got medical problems and all ya know), but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make …
anyway, there’s still a lot of facts that haven’t been exposed to the light of day here
The whole world was with us after 911, I keep having to remind myself, and here EW you point out the utter nonsense that this group created, taking sides, having school-girl chick fights, cowardly boy fisty fights, because they didn’t have the intellect to know what else to do.
All that pent-up aggression and one of their own going to jail, and they still keep at it, amazing…….
I agree, it is absurb.
Freepatriot, you may be right, but that’s not how I came by the ’All roads lead to Libby’ argument above.
Instead, I just thought it through with the evidence that’s been presented so far while asking â€Where did the original leak start?â€
Obviously, that was when Cheney told Libby.
(One could argue that it started with whomever told Cheney, but that would miss the point: Cheney was VP, and literally could have found out from anyone who knew Wilson’s status. The person whom Cheney learned it from need not have had, and likely didn’t have, any ulterior motive than responding to a VP’s request for information.)
So, once it goes from Cheney to Libby, how does it get to Armitage, Rove, Fleischer, Rice, Novak, Cooper, et. al. Just as obviously as above, from Libby. And it pretty much checks out for all the sources. Rove is a little less clear, but even there, Libby seems the most likely source.
Anyway, I didn’t take WHIG into account when putting this together, but it does seem likely, now that you mention it, that WHIG was a probable conduit, or at least a binding element within WH officials amongst whom it was originally disseminated.
yo, bmaz, you need to work on those â€linking†skills, friend
maybe one of the computer literate among us will repost the secrets to â€in text†links (looking around hopefully)
I’m having fun reading all the smackdowns today (broder is an easy target, ain’t he ???) and I wanna read what you wrote in response to JGabriel before I gotta stop reading
so could you please try again ???
Freepatriot – Man, links are not my specialty (obviously). I am now in a different browser, let’s see if this works any better, but I doubt it. Aw hell, just click on my name and you’ll get there. Article is â€A Soldier By Any Other Nameâ€.
Allright this is getting ridiculous. That browser doesn’t even link my stinking name. This one does.
I’m intrigued by the comparison between the fates of Scooter Libby and Paris Hilton. Cue Lawrence FIshburn, â€History, it seems, is not without a sense of ironyâ€. What a teaching moment.
Both are people born to privilege.
Both in their respective spheres possessed power and prestige.
Both were media darlings that used the media to advance their respective unseemly interests.
Both broke the law.
Both were duly processed through the criminal justice system.
Both have been sentenced to incarceration in payment to society for their crimes.
Both are trying to stay out of jail.
Both appealed their plight to their respective authority figures. Paris’s plaintive, lame cry to, â€Mom, it’s not right!â€, while Scooter appeals anonymously to the great white father.
How does it feel to be Scooter Libby and be equated with Paris Hilton? Paris Libby? Scooter Hilton? That’s gotta hurt.
But Paris Hilton has one thing on Scooter Hilton. She NEVER represented herself as anything but a pop culture icon wanabe. Someone that was suitable to fill dead ET airtime and the dark side of the paparazzi lens or American psyche. Scooter Hilton, on the other hand, was always the ever so staid, button-down face of Washington officialdom, which makes his lying hypocrisy all the more rank and reprehensible.
That settles it.
BE IT RESOLVED!
Let us agree to write fervent, bodice ripping missives to all of Scooter’s well-placed supporters and demand that they also labor for Paris’s release. After all, she is only being crucified for living the life we American’s would like to live, albeit, vicariously, voyeuristically and at a safe distance.
FREE PARIS!
[Ed note: Try to work in a line using, Liberté, égalité, fraternité. If necessary outsource to â€The Generalâ€. I’m sure his inner Frenchman can come up with something.]
I just went to DKos and they also have a post about this letter, and it got me thinking about one part of this letter, the part where Ajami talks abou the fact that the President would not allow leakers in his administration.
The leaker to Novak was Armitage, and the leak is known to have taken place, July 8, 2003.
see: http://select.nytimes.com/sear…..94DE404482
– but Armitage did not announce his resignation from his job officially, at least until November 2004.
see: http://www.abc.net.au/news/new…..245178.htm
and according to the NYTimes article at least, the whole thing was known by Gonzales, then White House counsel, through a State Dept lawyer, â€Mr. Taft asked Mr. Gonzales whether he wanted to be told the details and was told that he did not want to know.â€
**** So uncurious and irresponsible WH Counsel Gonzales, here in the middle of it all again.*****
If Ajami believed, as us non-lawyer citizens believed, that Bush would fire the leaker,as he states in his letter, why did it take more than a year for Armitage to go, and why was he allowed to â€resign,†apparantly keeping his retirement benefits? And why did Powell resign first?
Why didn’t our Attorney General tell the Commander in Chief that the leaker was still walking the halls of the State Dept, and if he did, why as Ajami, his loyal servant believes, he was not promptly fired?
Part of Ajami WSJ letter in regards to leaker: â€It was then, it should be recalled, that you, Mr. President, said that any of your staff caught up in that case â€would no longer work in my administration.â€
(The President’s press secretary made this claim, â€September 29, 2003: McClellan Said Leaker Would Be Fired.
Scott McClellan said: â€If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.â€
[White House Press Briefing, 9/29/03]†link: http://www.democrats.org/a/200…..ersary.php
****** but as we now know, it was WH Counsel’s Gonzales job to have already told Bush who the leaker was.*******, which leads to the question, which uncurious Ajami, the â€lawyer-letter-writer here,†fails to question, who told Armitage? and of course who also shut up Gonzales, and all of the resulting covering ups etc…
But Ajami claims in the next sentence of his WSJ letter that â€And it was then that the Justice Department stepped out of the way to let a special prosecutor launch an investigation…..†but this decieving at best, it wasn’t the Justice Dept per se it was the congress insisting on an investigation( see link below),and it certaiinly wasn’t your beloved President, Mr. Ajami, During John Ashcroft’s term as AG, Ashcroft recused himself, and so Deputy USA Comey appointed Fitz.
John Dean explains the congress’ role here:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040106.html
(and yes, I DO remember John Dean)
and to the above about links:
1.) you have Next Hurrah open
2.) open a new â€tab,†under â€fileâ€
3. go to destination of what you plan to link
4. highlight the URL of the page, Hit â€copyâ€
5 come back on the other tab to Next Hurrah, place your cursor where you would like to place the link in your post, hit â€paste.â€
Tabs is a feature in MAC SAFARI and Windows Firefox,and if you are using Windows, I can’t help you there, but I am sure they have the feature now since they steal everything else they undoubtably have stolen this too.
and to the posters above who doubt the Democrats and their role, please read the John Dean summary of the history in FindLaw of the reason the Plame affair became an investigation-
Dean begins(at the last paragraph of his diary):
â€Congressional Calls For Investigation Should Be Heeded
Senator Dick Durbin (D – IL) was the first to react. On July 22(2003, 2 weeks after the Novak article)*, he delivered a lengthy speech about how the Bush Administration was using friendly reporters to attack its enemies. He knew this well, because he was one of those being so attacked……â€
link: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030815.html
had there not been oversight by Durbin and Schumer, and the ascertion that a law had been vilolated, do you really think the Repub would have reacted?
*my insertion
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