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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (61292)	5/18/2006 12:00:01 AM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

consortiumnews.com A politician's reaction to dissent is often the true test of a commitment to democracy. Great leaders not only tolerate criticism, but welcome disagreement as part of a fair competition of ideas leading to the best result for society. Certainly, no one who truly cares about democracy favors punishing critics and demonizing dissenters. But just such hostility has been the calling card of George W. Bush and his backers over the past five years as they have subjected public critics to vilification, ridicule and retaliation. More at.... consortiumnews.com The Plame Case But what’s most troubling is that this intolerance toward dissent is not simply overzealous Bush supporters acting out, but rather loyal followers who are getting their signals from the top levels of the Bush administration. For instance, a new federal court filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney apparently instigated the campaign to punish former Ambassador Wilson for his criticism of the administration’s claims that Iraq had sought enriched uranium from Africa. After reading Wilson’s July 6, 2003, opinion article in the New York Times, Cheney scrawled questions in the space above the article, according to the court filing. Cheney’s questions would soon shape the hostile talking points that White House officials and their right-wing supporters would spread against Wilson and his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame. “Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant – his chief of staff [I. Lewis Libby] – on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to these assertions,” according to a May 12, 2006, filing by Fitzgerald. Cheney’s questions addressed the reasons why the CIA sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to check out – and ultimately discredit – suspicions about Iraq allegedly seeking “yellowcake” uranium from Africa. “Have they [CIA officials] done this sort of thing before?” Cheney wrote. “Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?” Though Cheney did not write down Plame’s name, his questions indicate that he was aware that she worked for the CIA and was in a position (dealing with WMD issues) to have a hand in her husband’s assignment to check out the Niger reports. Over the next several days, White House officials, including Libby and Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove, allegedly disseminated information about Plame’s CIA identity to journalists in the context of knocking down Wilson’s critical article. In effect, the White House tried to cast Wilson’s trip as a case of nepotism arranged by his wife. On July 14, 2003, Plame was publicly identified as a CIA operative in a column by right-wing commentator Robert Novak, destroying her career at the CIA and forcing the spy agency to terminate the undercover operation that she had headed. A CIA complaint to the Justice Department prompted an investigation into the illegal exposure of a CIA officer. Initially, when the investigation was still under the direct control of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bush and other White House officials denied any knowledge about the leak. Bush pretended that he wanted to get to the bottom of the matter. “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. “I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.” Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters. In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started – since he was involved in starting it – he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role and possibly to signal to others that they should follow suit in denying knowledge. Failed Cover-up More at... consortiumnews.com Excerpts from Parry's latest article. Orca