Month: October 2005

Do not click on this link if you do not want to see the evil of the Islamist enemy. These pictures are horrifyingly graphic. But I believe we need to see them – and the barbarism they represent – if we are to maintain our will to fight back and defend our civilization.

It seems clear from Bart Gellman’s piece in the WaPo today that Libby did indeed speak with Cheney on July 12 about how to respond to press inquiries about the Wilson matter. Libby subsequently leaked the name. Leaving legal matters aside, does anyone seriously doubt that Libby would have done what he did without Cheney’s support, collusion and permission? I guess I should say for the record: I don’t. Whatever can be legally proven, it seems by far the likeliest scenario that Dick Cheney knowingly compromised national security to smear a political opponent. Greg Djerejian has more.

An emailer takes me to task:

“Speaking of sand in people’s eyes, check your own. How on God’s green earth, after all that’s been made public, can you still write “I have yet to be even nearly convinced that Plamegate reveals some massive conspiracy to deceive the public in advance about the rationale for the Iraq war”?

Read Barton Gellman’s piece in the WaPo this morning, “A Leak, Then a Deluge.” Can you honestly say after reading this that the issue of the Niger yellowcake was the fault of the intelligence community? Show me where you make that case.

Every single fact points to the American intelligence community (and others) fighting to establish the falsity of the yellowcake claims, and to the administration’s insistence on including those claims despite repeated clear indications that they were false.

Why would they do that? Are they that stupid? No. They knew the reports were bogus. Same as the aluminum tubes. Same as the Iraq-al Qeada connection. But they were good enough: in the fog of events, they would serve the purpose. Get the country into war, and then justify the war by 1) success, and 2) holding up whatever old WMD they found still remaining from 1991. In the blazing glory of that Roman triumph, all those inconvenient prewar details would be forgotten. Only, it didn’t turn out that way, did it? There has been no success — at least, no clear-cut glorious victory. There were no old stockpiles of WMD. Shock. Dismay. Why do you think they spent umpty-odd bazillion dollars searching for those old WMD, yet could not manage to secure known ammo dumps? Priorities.

Andrew, face it: they conned us into this war. Maybe the war was worth fighting. Saddam was a bastard. But that’s not the issue. The issue is our democracy. The issue is America. We cannot run this country on lies, secrecy and manipulation. Fitzgerald just made the most eloquent argument for truth as the basis of our justice system, and therefore the gravity and necessity of indictments on perjury and obstruction. Apply his arguments to our political system. They are exactly the same. Without truth we are done for. We’re on the long slide down into darkness.”

I would simply say that there is an obvious alternative, and less conspiratorial, explanation for the pre-war over-estimation of Iraq’s WMDs. The administration was terrified of the consequences of under-estimating Saddam; and almost everyone agreed with them, including the Clinton administration before them. After the CIA’s under-estimation of Saddam’s WMDs in 1990 and after 9/11, they had every reason to veer on the side of over-estimating Saddam’s threat. It was up to Saddam to prove us wrong. And he failed to do so. My problem is with the post-invasion, not the preliminaries, although, obviously, if some details were deliberately fabricated or passed on in full knowledge of their falsity, that’s a different case. But we don’t know that yet.

Here’s the money quote of the day:

“The problem is that the President doesn’t want to make changes, but he’s lost some of his confidence in the three people he listens to the most. All relationships with the President, except for his relationship with Laura, have been damaged recently. The funny thing is everybody’s failing now, in which case perhaps it’s time to look at George Bush’s relationship with George Bush.”

The three people are allegedly Cheney, Rove and Card. The quote is attributed to a “a White House adviser who is not looking for a West Wing job.” Introspection? Self-criticism? Here’s hoping.

My take in the Sunday Times.

“VERBIAGE”: Thank God McCain is defending the American hero, Ian Fishback. Money quote from a Newsweek piece out today:

The Army has sought to paint Fishback as a lone malcontent. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, says the Army Criminal Investigation Division was investigating the captain’s allegations. He calls Fishback’s long letter “verbiage” and says he had no comment on the questions raised about Rumsfeld’s veracity. But NEWSWEEK has obtained corroboration for Fishback’s central point in the Army’s own files. According to papers released by the Defense Department in September in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, supporting documents for an inspector-general probe in July 2004 show that abuses were much more widespread than the Army acknowledged. In one IG document, an Army sergeant testifies that putting detainees in stressful positions and pouring water on them “seemed to be something all interrogators” in the Fourth Infantry Division were doing.

We have a choice. Do we believe Fishback and McCain or Cheney and Rumsfeld? It’s not really a choice, is it?

The president plans no changes, no major staff shake-ups and hopes to weather the storm. Not surprising, but maddening for anyone who wishes this country well. What’s still amazing after all these years is how impervious Bush is to any criticism, how unable he is to be flexible or self-critical, how stubborn and insular he is. Just recall who was getting on the helicopter to Camp David on Friday to review the new Supreme Court nominees over the weekend: Andy Card and Harriet Miers. Recall and weep.

Saddam’s best buddy is beginning to see the harsh light of justice. Updates here and here.

A TPM reader picks up on some very interesting tidbits in a NYT 10/1/05 story, a story that casts new light on the point raised by Greg Djerejian below. Money NYT quote:

A lawyer who knows Mr. Libby’s account said the administration efforts to limit the damage from Mr. Wilson’s criticism extended as high as Mr. Cheney. This lawyer and others who spoke about the case asked that they not be identified because of grand jury secrecy rules.

On July 12, 2003, four days after his initial conversation with Ms. Miller, Mr. Libby consulted with Mr. Cheney about how to handle inquiries from journalists about the vice president’s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa in early 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying acquire nuclear material there for its weapons program, the person said.

In that account, Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby to direct reporters to a statement released the previous day by George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence. His statement said Mr. Wilson had been sent on the mission by C.I.A. counter-proliferation officers “on their own initiative.”

Was this on the plane? Yes, it was:

Mr. Libby has said he spoke with Mr. Cheney on July 12, six days after Mr. Wilson’s article.

Mr. Libby said he told Mr. Cheney that reporters had been pressing the vice president’s office for more details about who sent Mr. Wilson to Africa. The two men spoke when Mr. Cheney was on a trip to Norfolk, Va., for the commissioning of the carrier Ronald Reagan.

Libby doesn’t testify that Cheney told him to leak the name. But Libby’s testimony has been charged with perjury already. What we know from this is that Cheney and Libby conferred about how to respond to reporters’ questions on the matter. Libby subsequently leaked the name.

FITZ AND BUSH: This also strikes me as interesting:

Mr. Fitzgerald was spotted Friday morning outside the office of James Sharp, Mr. Bush’s personal lawyer. Mr. Bush was interviewed about the case by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what discussions, if any, were taking place between the prosecutor and Mr. Sharp. Mr. Sharp did not return a phone call, and Mr. Fitzgerald’s spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

Hmmm.

And the press is already on the case.

“So then he said – I said – he said, sorry – he said, Mr. Russert said, did you know that Ambassador Wilson’s wife, or his wife, works at the CIA?” – Lewis Libby testifying before the grand jury (page 18 of the indictment).