Friday, April 07, 2006

Georgie, you got some 'splainin' to do!

Okay so I know I'm late on this, but wow. George, what have you done? You know, I'm not getting too excited about this. Everytime I see something like this, I think maybe this is going to be the last straw for the average American, but everytime I am disappointed when it goes nowhere. The worst part is that it's easily "explainable" for hacks like Fox, Limbaugh, and Hannity to muddy the water. President Bush obviously has the inherent right to declassify information in the best interests of our country! Our fearless leader would never damage the fight on Terra, the solemn duty for which God himself has called our Commander in Chief to deal with and history shall greet him as a liberator!

Oh well, this gives the Dems and the press a real issue to push with, and push come to shove, the Republicans in Congress are going to either have to abandon Bush or defend him, both of which are full of very significant risks going into the mid-terms, but I'm not flush with optimism.

Papers: Cheney aide says Bush OK'd leak

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame leak that Cheney told him to pass on the information and that it was Bush who authorized the leak, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for justifying the invasion of Iraq.

Libby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate," the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the "certain information."

"Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller - getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval - were unique in his recollection," the papers added.

Posted by crimnos @ 8:46 AM