basso, Rove lied. Period. There are few people in this country more powerful than Rove. (Pres and maybe VP). Short list. Rove has access to virtually anything he wants. If he didn't know Plume's status then he's an idiot. He shouldn't be spouting off crap about things relating to national security during wartime. If he did know, then how far does the rabit hole go? Determening what Rove knows will come out in time. I doubt anything will happen because he has the power to cover up and W still supports him (although he said the leaker should be fired). But always know that Rove had the resources to find out. For me, its just a matter of proving it which will be difficult because you'd have to prove something that's in his brain. Just about impossible (eg...he knew Plume was undercover) Regardless of the legal technicalities...Rove lied. Rove lied. Rove lied. Rove lied. Rove lied. Period.
Saw you in GARM and said you should get your ass down here... and here you are already. Groovy! Don't know if you've been reading the BBS while on "vacation," MacBeth, but basso has been bulldog-like, along with Giddy, in defense of Bush Jr. I have to give credit where credit is due. No matter how damning the evidence, they use ever more creative ways to defend their guy. basso, a master of semantics in defense of Bush, is now using that accusation as part of his defense effort. Rove clearly lied about "outing" Joe Wilson's wife. basso splits hairs and ignores the fact that Rove lied. That's apparently not an issue. He's grabbed a hold of the, "But did he break the law?? No!" line to excuse Rove lying and Bush not firing him for it. I have no doubts that Rove broke the law, but just for kicks, basso, even if he didn't, shouldn't he be fired for bald-faced lying to the American public about a very serious issue involving national security? In the White House? As Bush's assistant Chief of Staff? What's up, basso... doesn't that matter anymore? Keep D&D Civil!!
It's the same all over, bud. The polarization blinders that Bush et al have exploited so successfully continue, but in this case they might meet with a legally abrupt flash of light. It is a matter of some debate wheter Rove can be proven guilty to satisfy a court of law. What seems to me beyond debate is this fact: were the situations reversed, the current Rove apologists would be hollering louder and with even more ( likley genuine) outrage at the Democratic offical who put politics ahead of patriotism than are the current Rove attackers. Does ANYONE honestly dispute this?
Let me make this real simple for you libs: 1) If Rove truly did not name Ms. Plame -- or claim to not know her name and 2) If Rove did not know that she was undercover Then he is free from legal liability. Now how will anyone be able to prove points 1 and 2? Especially with reporters not revealing sources -- and going to jail over it? Do tell, libs, do tell!
How are any of us to know if there was an actus/mens rea? HO HO HO! I think the libs desperately WISH that the act was committed. There's no doubt about that. They hate Rove. He is their kryptonite. No one -- NO ONE -- owns the libs more than Karl Rove. No one.
Well, it's proven all the time. For example, in cases of sexual assault. Legal proceedings allow for alternate means of arriving at a verdict contignent upon proving intent when said intent is only 'knowable' by the accused. In such cases prosecution rests on significant probabilities and assumptions based on 'common sense'. So it might be that the 'libs' get the last 'Ho'. But, yeah, Rove is formidable. Anyone willing to do stuff like this and the black baby thing will be...until they're not.
just when you thought your expectations of these fools could get no lower --- honor & integrity indeed. anyway, read this blast from the past, which once again illustrates to us, the same way it did in the Iraq wmd fiasco that we have a President and admnistration who are either 1. lying, or 2. completely clueless, delusional, to the point of being incompetent. Honor and integrity....
Rove is still a lier! Apprently you like liers. Yes, I WISH the act was committed but I doubt it'll come to light.
Larry Johnson is a former intelligence officer at the CIA where he worked with Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame. He served as deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office of Counterterrorism, 1989-1993. He is now CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC ,an international business-consulting firm. The Big Lie About Valerie Plame By Larry Johnson From: TPMCafe Special Guests The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans' talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie. For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak's column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove. Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card. Jul 13, 2005 -- 12:47:20 AM EST A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed. The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her. The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that "no laws were broken". I don't know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached. For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publically identified a CIA NOC. They have set a precendent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate. They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson "lied". Although Joe did not lie let's follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion. Let's use the same standard for the Bush Administration. Here are the facts. Bush's lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000. Joe Wilson has not killed anyone. He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world. But don't take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report. Even though it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report: According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe's visit in February 2002), "Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on." Joe's findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford. The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses. At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That's the true outrage. http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340
you guys are going to have to work on your slogans. at least "Bush Lied, People Died" had a certain alliterative panache, but "Rove Lied, Plame Got on the Cover of Vanity Fair" just smacks of desperation.
Boy far a WH that is keeping their mouth shut about this whole affair, the GOP sure seems to up to their usual tactics. Must have hit a nerve... ------------------------ GOP on Offense in Defense of Rove By Jim VandeHei Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 13, 2005; Page A01 Republicans mounted an aggressive and coordinated defense of Karl Rove yesterday, contending that the White House's top political adviser did nothing improper or illegal when he discussed a covert CIA official with a reporter. With a growing number of Democrats calling for Rove's resignation, the Republican National Committee and congressional Republicans sought to discredit Democratic critics and knock down allegations of possible criminal activity. "The angry left is trying to smear" Rove, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, a Rove protege, said in an interview. A federal grand jury is investigating whether anyone in the Bush administration unlawfully leaked the name of a CIA official, Valerie Plame, to the news media. Although the White House has previously said Rove was not involved in the episode, a recently disclosed internal Time magazine e-mail shows that Rove mentioned Plame, albeit not by name, to reporter Matthew Cooper before her name and affiliation became public in July 2003. The grand jury is scheduled to hear from Cooper today. The emerging GOP strategy -- devised by Mehlman and other Rove loyalists outside of the White House -- is to try to undermine those Democrats calling for Rove's ouster, play down Rove's role and wait for President Bush's forthcoming Supreme Court selection to drown out the controversy, according to several high-level Republicans. The White House said Bush retains full confidence in Rove, but for a second day officials would not answer a barrage of questions about Rove's role in the leak scandal on the grounds that the investigation is not complete. But the RNC -- effectively Bush's political arm -- weighed into the controversy in a major fashion. Mehlman, who said he talked with Rove several times in recent days, instructed GOP legislators, lobbyists and state officials to accuse Democrats of dirty politics and argue Rove was guilty of nothing more than discouraging a reporter from writing an inaccurate story, according to RNC talking points circulated yesterday. "Republicans should stop holding back and go on the offense: fire enough bullets the other way until the Supreme Court overtakes" events, said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/12/AR2005071200093.html
How about this..... Rove Lied, and Treason is Alive and Well in the White House Kinda catchy, in a verbose sort of way.
hey basso! Some light hearted reading from your boys at the Journal. They sure have the talking points down! I love the title! LOL!!!! Karl Rove, Whistleblower He told the truth about Joe Wilson. Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud. For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove. Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists. On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail. "While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either. The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address. Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair. But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report. The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger. About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded." In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know. If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue. As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006955
