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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (186585)	5/12/2006 5:39:38 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

To be honest it is too depressing to keep track of the dead in Iraq. The Sunnis are keeping track of their dead, trust me. All I know is that Zarqawi was a dumb punk and now he is a terrorist superstar with as big of bounty on his head as OBL. How did he achieve this given that as US media recently said he can't even fire a gun? I guess he has managed to find enough fallowers. That is both the beauty and curse of inciting splodeydopes to martyrdom. You don't need many to wreak havoc BUT the indiscriminate nature of their killing usually creates more enemies than it kills. It is not, after all, militarily effective to blow up women and children in the marketplace. It only works wonders in our Western media. Useful idiots.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (186585)	5/12/2006 7:06:42 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Karl Rove: Foggy memory or fabrications? _______________________________________________________ By JIM VANDEHEI WASHINGTON POST NEWS SERVICE Friday, May 12, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the CIA leak case by weighing this central question: Did Rove, who was deeply involved in defending President Bush's use of pre-Iraq war intelligence, lie about a key conversation with a reporter that was meant to rebut a tough White House critic? Fitzgerald, sources close to the case said, is reviewing testimony from Rove's five appearances before the grand jury. President Bush's top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it in earlier testimony. Fitzgerald is weighing Rove's foggy-memory defense against evidence he has acquired or accumulated over nearly 2½ years that shows Rove was very involved in White House efforts to beat back allegations that Bush twisted U.S. intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to sources involved in the case. That evidence includes details of a one-week period in July 2003 when Rove talked to two reporters about Plame and her CIA role, then reported the conversations back to high-level White House aides, according to sources in the case and information released by Fitzgerald as part of the ongoing leak investigation. Additionally, one former government official said he testified that Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the pre-war intelligence and countering Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. It was Wilson who publicly accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Africa. The official refused to be named out of fear of angering Fitzgerald and the White House. Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, responded that "just because Rove was involved in the defense of the White House Iraq policy, it does not follow that he was necessarily involved in some effort to discredit Wilson personally. Nor does it prove that there even was an effort to disclose Plame's identity in order to punish Wilson." Rove expects to learn as soon as this month if he will be indicted -- or publicly cleared of wrongdoing -- for making false statements in the CIA leak case, according to sources close to the presidential adviser. A Rove indictment would be devastating to a White House already battered by low poll numbers, a staff shake-up and a stalled agenda. If Rove is cleared it would allow Bush's longtime top aide to resume his central role as White House strategic guru without a legal threat hanging over him. Fitzgerald began his investigation 2½ years ago, looking into whether any administration officials knowingly disclosed Plame's CIA identity as part of an effort to discredit Wilson's allegation. Wilson, a former diplomat, had been sent on a CIA mission to investigate whether Iraq had sought nuclear weapons material from Niger. Wilson reported back that the charge could not be proved, but Bush nevertheless asserted in his 2003 State of the Union address that there was intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. After Wilson went public with his allegation a few months later, an embarrassed White House was forced to concede that the Africa claim was not based on solid enough evidence. Fitzgerald has not charged anyone for the crime he initially set out to prove. But last October, he indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice during the investigation. Unlike the Libby case, which includes a detailed narrative of the vice presidential aide's alleged efforts to obtain information about Plame and leak it to reporters, Fitzgerald appears to have focused most of his attention on one key question, according to a source close to Rove, who based this assessment on questions asked of the presidential adviser: Did Rove testify falsely in February 2004 when he failed to disclose that he told Time's Cooper about Plame's CIA role seven months earlier? In testimony offered in subsequent grand jury appearances, Rove essentially argued that he did not recall the conversation with Cooper until a few months after he first testified, when his attorney found a 2003 e-mail Rove had written to then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley. In the e-mail, Rove mentioned he had discussed the Wilson affair with Cooper. The e-mail prompted Rove to tell the grand jury that he apparently did discuss Plame -- though not by name -- with Cooper, said the source close to Rove. In his most recent testimony, Rove said he would have been foolish to lie when he first testified and explained how he had been tipped before his first grand jury appearance that Time reporters were openly speculating about his conversation with Cooper. The details of the "tip" are in dispute, however. According to the source close to Rove, his message to the prosecutor was, in essence: Why would he risk lying when he could safely assume that his discussion of Plame with Cooper would soon get out? Moreover, he has testified, if he really wanted to damage Wilson in the summer of 2003, he would have sought out the many other reporters he knew better and trusted more than Cooper. He argued he hardly knew Cooper -- who had recently started on the White House beat -- one reason the conversation slipped his mind, the source close to Rove said. To determine whether Rove could simply forget this conversation, Fitzgerald and his investigative team have questioned current and former government officials about Rove's involvement in the 2003 campaign to counter Wilson and defend prewar intelligence. One former aide, who would discuss internal White House discussion only if his name was not used, said Rove was intimately involved in the weapons of mass destruction fight and discussed various components of the plan at senior staff meetings and one-on-one strategy conversations. The aide said Rove's message was that "if there are no WMDs and some blame us, it will not be a pleasant election year."