I Cogitate

."..Before I talk about those charges and what the indictment alleges, I'd like to put the investigation into a little context. Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community...

...The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003...

...That's the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer's identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it. And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts...

...It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.....

... I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge. This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime...

...I can say that for the people who work at the CIA and work at other places, they have to expect that when they do their jobs that classified information will be protected. And they have to expect that when they do their jobs, that information about whether or not they are affiliated with the CIA will be protected. And they run a risk when they work for the CIA that something bad could happen to them, but they have to make sure that they don't run the risk that something bad is going to happen to them from something done by their own fellow government employees.

QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, the Republicans previewed some talking points in anticipation of your indictment and they said that if you didn't indict on the underlying crimes and you indicted on things exactly like you did indict -- false statements, perjury, obstruction -- these were, quote/unquote, "technicalities," and that it really was over reaching and excessive:

PF: I'll be blunt. That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter...

...However, you're asking do these charges vindicate a serious breach of the public trust? Absolutely. If you're going to have a grand jury investigation into the improper disclosure of national security information and you're going to have someone in the position Mr. Libby is lying to the FBI on two occasions and going before a grand jury on two occasions and telling false testimony and obstructing the investigation, that, to me, defines a serious breach of the public trust.

PF: Well, I will just say this: Any lie under oath is serious. Any prosecutor would tell you -- in my days in New York, in my current days in Chicago -- that we cannot tolerate perjury. The truth is what drives our judicial system. If people don't come forward and tell the truth, we have no hope of making the judicial system work. If someone knowingly tells a lie under oath during any investigation, it's every prosecutor's duty to respond by investigating and proving that if you can. And so that's a serious matter in any case. It's obviously a serious matter in a case here where there's a national security investigation. So the nature of any person telling a lie under oath to a grand jury is a serious problem. Having someone, a high-level official do that under oath in a national security investigation is something that can never be acceptable. And that just made it mandatory that we pursue it...

...The legal system suffers, because we don't know what the actual facts are. And, frankly, lots of other people suffer since, when you don't know what the truth is, people draw all sorts of conclusions. So all we'll say that Mr. Libby, by lying and obstructing justice, harmed the system. And that was something serious. And that's the point we made to the jury, and obviously the jury agreed factually....

...QUESTION: Was there clear evidence in the trial that the information about her was indeed classified?

PF: The trial evidence -- the judge made a ruling that we were not going to try the case about whether the information was classified. I can tell you, on the face of the indictment, it states that her relationship with the CIA was classified. And I have 100 percent confidence in that information, and we would not plead it in an indictment. Well, we didn't make it an issue at the trial, because the issue is whether or not Mr. Libby perjured himself under oath. There is not doubt that her relationship with the CIA was classified. And that's just a fact...

"It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case..."

David Broder Is A Rapist
Posted by Phoenix Woman on June 9th, 2007

Is he? Literally? Probably not.

But he has the moral vacuity, and the cognitive dissonance, of a serial rapist. Just examine his latest piece of amoral tripe, “Judge Walton’s Lesson“.

The money quote from Broder:

"This whole controversy is a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.

Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable."

As a Soldier, Fouad Ajami Sickens Me
by The Angry Rakkasan
Sat Jun 09, 2007 at 02:55:12 PM PDT

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Dr. Fouad Ajami, a neo-con and Johns Hopkins faculty member, begged for leniency concerning Scooter Libby’s upcoming stint in the slammer for treason obstruction of justice.  In the article, Ajami likened Libby to a "fallen soldier."

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