Don’t be so sensitive.
Oh damn. Having to control myself when I really really REALLY want to answer this in the form of an insult.
Seems to be working nicely so far…
Let’s just ponder what Bill Bennet has to say on the subject. I think that he makes a very good point…
I’m not on here to be insulted. I come to Forumosa for intelligent discussion and debate, and most of the time I get it. If you’re looking to spew caustic invectives at Forumosans then stick to your usual targets. They keep coming back for more. I won’t.[/quote]
Fred laughs at a lot of things these days. He laughs at the safety of American intelligence agents, he laughs at wounded U.S. troops. I guess that he’s a member of al Qaeda or a Republican – hard to tell which is which sometimes.
Bill Clinton should have been prosecuted for perjury just as Libby deserved to be. That’s a logical, legally and morally consistent position.
So why wasn’t he? It was just about sex right? haha
Here we have Novak’s comments…
[quote]WASHINGTON – Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: “It was said a number of times. . . . Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?” Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
“It’s about time,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rejoicing in guilty verdicts against Scooter Libby, “someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics.” But Libby was found guilty only of lying about how he learned Valerie Plame’s identity. Reid and Democratic colleagues were after much bigger game than Cheney’s chief of staff.
Democrats had been slow reacting to my column of July 14, 2003, that reported former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame. By September, when the Justice Department began investigating the CIA leak, Democrats smelled another Iran-Contra or Watergate. They were wrong.
The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his "day job" (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity.
While my column on Wilson’s mission triggered Libby’s misery, I played but a minor role in his trial. Subpoenaed by his defense team, I testified that I had phoned him in reporting the Wilson column and that he had said nothing about Wilson’s wife. Other journalists said the same thing under oath, but we apparently made no impression on the jury.
The trial provided no information whatever about Valerie Plame’s status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband’s mission. No hard evidence was produced that Libby ever was told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and Federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet, in his closing arguments, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson’s secret status, and in answer to a reporter’s question after the verdict, he said she was “classified.”
In fact, her being classified – that is, that her work was a government secret – did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine U.S. intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage.
Some questions asked me in television and radio interviews after the verdict implied that I revealed Armitage’s name to Fitzgerald. Actually, in my first interview with Fitzgerald after he had been named special prosecutor, he indicated he knew Armitage was my leaker. I assumed that was the product of detective work by the FBI. In fact, Armitage had turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality.
On Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” Tuesday night, super-lawyer David Boies said Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. But neither is he a Democratic partisan trying to milk this obscure scandal.
George W. Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political. It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009.[/quote]
[quote=“mofangongren”]
Fred laughs at a lot of things these days. He laughs at the safety of American intelligence agents, he laughs at wounded U.S. troops. I guess that he’s a member of al Qaeda or a Republican – hard to tell which is which sometimes.[/quote]
The Democrats have had a problem knowing who the enemy is since the 1960s.
Wasn’t it Democrats who thought the commie menace was something worth fighting down there in the first place? I thought the Vietnam war was all supposed to be Johnson’s fault … or did you somehow forget about that. As to Kerry, as far as I can tell he didn’t like the war but fought it hard while he was there.
For the same reason that Libby will be pardoned before he spends a day in jail.
It was the Democrats who sold our Vietnamese and Cambodian allies down the river. Exactly like they are trying to do in Iraq.
I was there when you were sitting on your mama’s knee watching Scooby Doo.
[i]Yeah.[/i] Right.
Bullshit.
[quote=“Doctor Evil”]
[/quote]
The above is a doctored photo:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp
It was the Democrats who sold our Vietnamese and Cambodian allies down the river.[/quote]
When did Nixon join the Democrats? Or, are you arguing the way Fred Smith once did that Carter was responsible for us losing Cambodia? Laos is nothing to feel glad about, either, but that was a mess that spanned three presidencies to create.
Who’s being sold down the river there? We went there to find WMDs, didn’t find them … I don’t think our troops are going to get anything further done being used to paint schools and get killed. We’ve been quagmired by the Bush administration, operating with the rubber-stamp approval of a Congress that was dominated by the GOP up until quite recently. If only they’d listened to the Powell Doctrine, we wouldn’t have been stuck as we are now, but that’s where we are now.
I was there when you were sitting on your mama’s knee watching Scooby Doo.[/quote]
Well, so then I’ve heard plenty of folks put the blame on Johnson for the war. Were people blaming somebody else for it?
[i]Yeah.[/i] Right.
Bullshit.[/quote]
OK, so are you going to offer up your own “Smearboater” version? Perhaps a few more fake facts to go along with your fake photo??
MFGR:
You can hardly blame Dr. Evil for smearing the Democrats when nearly 100 percent of your post content is to smear Republicans. You constantly smear the Republicans by suggesting that we all knew there were no wmds in Iraq but chose to invade anyway. You constantly smear Bush and his state of the union address by stating that the 16 words on yellowcake in Niger were incorrect. Yet the British continue this day to stand by that statement and Bush did after all state that the British had said… This among many many many many others.
I do blame the Democrats for the decision in the US Congress in 1975 to cut off funding and military support for the South Vietnamese regime. That is a dark stain on the Democrats. They were able to do so by cutting funding in a vote in Congress. Naturally, Republicans have had their share of failures as well. I do also blame the Democrats for the weak and vacillating response to dealing with the crisis in Iran when the Shah fell. This subsequently led to a great deal of trouble in the Middle East with the mullahs in Iran and their oil money moving to radicalize the Middle East. Think Hezbollah. Witness the arming and funding of extreme elements among the Palestinians. Witness the major uptake in funding and arming of terrorist groups. I seriously doubt the Russians would have invaded Afghanistan had we still had a tight alliance with Iran, do you?
Anyway, I do not view most Democrats as “traitors” though I do have a great deal of contempt for most of the far leftwing. I do, however, view you as an unprincipled rabble rouser (Chouteau for our times) rather than someone who is generally concerned about the issues. While it is highly amusing to read your posts and your boilerplate invective, I hardly respect you as someone with a well-thought out position who merely has opposing views, hence, for the most part, I stand with Dr. Evil in responding to you as he has.
Except for that other 100% aimed at discussing the Scooter Libby matter. This is a Scooter-relevant thread, yes? No need for me to accept falsified photos of Kerry here as “evidence” of anything, right? No need for me to pretend that Johnson, a Democrat, wasn’t somehow involved with cranking up the Vietnam War in the first place. Dr. Evil apparently wants to have things both ways – he posts a doctored photo of Kerry with Jane Fonda and says Dems can’t tell who the enemy is. If Dems (and much of America) were against the Vietnam War at its end, I don’t think we can ignore that Dems (initially Kennedy and then Johnson) were the ones who jumped into that war.
Well, if the British are so trustworthy for these matters, let’s go to the Downing Street memo, shall we? The British were also quite sure Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq no matter what.
Again, what’s the darker stain? Dems were for the war in Vietnam before the nation (and they and the Republicans) went against it. Remember that Nixon ran promising to get “peace with honor” and so on. Ford signed the bill that cut the aid in December 1974, providing a statement about his concern for Vietnam but signing it nonetheless – had he wanted to he could have vetoed it.
I don’t view most Republicans as “traitors” either – just those who would stoop so low as to out a serving intelligence officer and band together to interfere with the investigation of the outing. I would consider a Democrat, a Green party member, or anybody who would do such a thing to be acting traitorously against the interests of the nation. I see myself as an American first and foremost, whereas apparently the Bush administration sees themselves as Republican Party Members first and only. I don’t think normal people see their party’s needs as above the needs of the nation, but then I don’t think the Bush White House reflects “normal”.
But, hey, the GOP top leaders have staked out some interesting turf in recent years. I keep hoping that rank-and-file Republicans will get control of the party someday and get things back to reality, but that seems increasingly unlikely to happen. The GOP is what it is – it ain’t the GOP of Eisenhower or Lincoln, that’s for sure!
So you stand with Dr. Evil in standing by a doctored photo? Please clarify…
Fair point. Do you want to be held to the same standard across the board?
I will stand by that. Bush cited the British. Bush wanted to get rid of Saddam once and for all. Wmds was ONE reason and was overly hyped. We should have emphasized the 29 not just the one point. I admitted long ago we got a big PR black eye, but that was not the only reason why we wanted to remove Saddam and we were quite right to do so. Even the Butler and Duelfer reports note that Saddam had every intention of reconstituting his wmd programs when sanctions collapsed.
Can you supply the link on that cut and what happened in terms of numbers in Congress (would the veto have been overridden). My knowledge on this appears different than yours. Let’s clarify before proceeding further.
haha. But there was no crime. Even if she was covert and there is doubt, her position would not have made outing her a criminal matter according to the law. AND are you not mad that her husband’s lies are not partially responsible for outing her? I mean had he not claimed (lied) that the office of the vice president sent him, there would have been no effort to find out how he really had been sent right?
And a chicken in every pot!!
That’s because (wait for it), it’s the NEW IMPROVED Republican Party with greater TERRORISM FIGHTING capabilities!
Yes, it appears doctored but I think that the issue was less to one of accuracy of this photo but more to present an image that adequately reflects and reflected the political views of both Fonda and Kerry. Do you disagree that this photo, howevermuch doctored, does in fact do that? You are right, however, to point to its doctored status as an issue but that does NOT resolve Kerry or Fonda of activities that in my view were treasonous. Skip past the photo, Mr. Chouteau, and address their actual conduct during the war. Would you like to defend them on those grounds?
[quote]
Please clarify…[/quote]
exactly. Please do…
Fred, what do you think the odds are you would have gotten your war without the WMD and al Qaeda 'n Saddam propaganda? 
Hard to say. I believe that we would have gotten it at the US side but that we would have lost the vote in the UN. We did anyway following Blair’s “advice” to stick to wmds. Anyway, what’s done is done and worst of all it had to be done. Worst of all, we have a ton of work and a generation before the Muslim world’s demographic curve starts to work in our favor and by that I mean civilization and those who value it.
Hard to say. I believe that we would have gotten it at the US side but that we would have lost the vote in the UN. We did anyway following Blair’s “advice” to stick to wmds. Anyway, what’s done is done and worst of all it had to be done. Worst of all, we have a ton of work and a generation before the Muslim world’s demographic curve starts to work in our favor and by that I mean civilization and those who value it.[/quote]
No disrespect, Fred, but I think you’re dreaming. If President Bush had gone before Congress and the American people back in 2003 and given them the straight story that he wanted to tie us up for a half-century in Iraq to the tune of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein (and that was about it) I think the answer would have been a thunderous ‘what do you think we are? gullible fools?’
[quote=“spook”]
No disrespect, Fred[/quote]
Where’s the fun in that?
BroonAsks
With all those Jewish members of Congress?
Seriously though, you insistently and willfully refuse to remember or acknowledge that both reports came back with the same conclusion: he did not have wmds; he deliberately created that impression; his own generals believed that he had wmds; and most important, he had every intention of reconstituting said programs once sanctions were ended. What don’t you get about that? The threat was real. It was not the wmds; it was Saddam. He had to go. He is gone. We were wrong about the ability to reshape Iraqi society. We are there now. We will be there for 60 years. It will be a good thing.