What Do We Need to Know?
The All Wise Voices of Reason at The Washington Post editorial board poo-poo the Libby verdict and conclude with a sniff: "Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq."
Come now. That reads like a dispatch from, say, mid-2004 when there was a serious debate in this country about the Iraq War. From the vantage point of March 2007 what could we possibly learn that would change our minds about the Iraq War. We learned, years ago, that the WMD case was a mess. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea has gotten worse. Thousands of American soldiers are dead. Tens of thousands more are wounded, many of them seriously. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. And nothing has been accomplished. There was nothing left for the Libby conviction to possibly tell us about the war; the war debate ship left the port years ago.
Comments
Hiatt, I seem to recall, is either a neocon or neocon-lite; his position doesn't seem all that surprising.
Hiatt's dishonesty is so remarkable that he can't even bring himself to admit that Novak published the fact that Plame worked for the CIA. Look at the fourth paragraph, where somehow Joseph Wilson becomes responsible for her outing to the public.
Erratum: for "Nuclear proliferation in Iraq" read "Nuclear proliferation in Iran"
In order to be taught something, you have be willing to learn it. The Libby case showed that the President and Vice President manipulated the press and public into supporting the war with false allegations that Iraq was attempting to build nuclear weapons, and it smeared those who contended that that allegations were false. I would say that the trial taught "us" something about the war. But it hasn't taught Hiatt, who is still spewing slanders about Joe Wilson and defaming Patrick Fitzgerald in order to avoid facing the truth.
But Hia
There is one and only one lesson to be learned from the Libby trial. Lying under oath: IOKIYAD.
This is amazing.
The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance.
Skilled at what? What does the writer "respect" about what Libby has done?
Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.
Who cares if it was sensational? It's true.
Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name.
Completely avoids the question of the nature of the laws Fitzgerald was trying to enforce. If the writer is ignoring this fact, he or she should not be covering a legal trial.
...he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case.
No, he did not. He was obstructed from prosecuting the crime he was charged with investigating. Since he was stopped from doing that by very specific people, he prosecuted those people. He then concluded. Good grief.
The damage done to journalists' ability to obtain information from confidential government sources has yet to be measured.
What about the damage that journalists did in refusing to persue the facts surrounding this case? See: http://mediamatters.org/columns/200702060006
Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.
Yes. They tell us nothing. But mr. journalist, that's your job, which you've been studiously neglecting.
Ridiculous.
speaking as a berkshire hathaway shareholder, i find the crap spewed forth daily by my employees hiatt and his colleagues on the editorial page apalling. happily, as buffett himself noted recently, the economics of the newspaper industry are in free fall: someday in my lifetime, the idiotic donald graham, whose editorial staff is doing so much to destroy the reputation of the post that his mother built up, will oversee its bankruptcy.
hiatt will blame the democrats. or fitzgerald. or anyone but the man in the mirror.
Al, nice try, but really, worthy of the post's editorial page: it wasn't ok for clinton to lie about an irrelevant matter during a phony civil lawsuit initiated by his political enemies. as a result, he was disbarred in arkansas.
and it wasn't ok for libby to lie to a grand jury investigating the outing of a CIA agent. as a result, he wakes up this morning a convicted felon.
what's the problem you're alluding to?
what's the problem you're alluding to?
I believe Al is alluding to the fact that -- much to his disappointment -- there is still a small sector of American society which functions in something approaching an equitable manner. Hence, he thinks it's funny to taunt the people who feel it's significant that 99% of society doesn't function that way.
That reads like a dispatch from, say, mid-2004 when there was a serious debate in this country about the Iraq War.
Maybe my satire meter is off - or maybe I was asleep - but we had a serious debate about the Iraq War in mid-2004? When? Where? By whom?? If it happened it certainly wasn't covered in the media was it? In my memory they diligently carried water for BushCo until Katrina in 2005.
I'm still waiting for a really serious debate about the war in this country - it's too bad that the Republicans won't let it happen.
Al, nice try, but really, worthy of the post's editorial page: it wasn't ok for clinton to lie about an irrelevant matter during a phony civil lawsuit initiated by his political enemies. as a result, he was disbarred in arkansas.
and it wasn't ok for libby to lie to a grand jury investigating the outing of a CIA agent. as a result, he wakes up this morning a convicted felon.
what's the problem you're alluding to?
Howard, I am certainly not saying that I think it was OK for Libby to lie under oath; it isn't, and I'm glad he will be punished for it. As I thought my comment made clear, my problem is the double standard here: Libby is a convicted felon for lying under oath while Clinton paid a two-bit fine and lost a license to do something he never was going to do again anyway. IOKIYAD. If this country wasn't completely biased in favor of Democrats, Clinton would be facing the same exact punishment that Libby isn't. But this country protects its powerful Democrats with a passion. I mean, think about what would have happened if Sandy Burglar was a Republican - he'd have been thrown in jail for life, instead of having to pick up trash for a few days in some park and give up his security clearance for a period that won't even prevent him from getting a job in the next Democrat administration. Again, IOKIYAD.
Hiatt advances the interesting theory that Scooter Libby perjured himself and risked (ultimately, destroyed) his entire career for no reason whatsoever. Those who watched the trial generally got the impression that Libby had perjured himself in an attempt to conceal that he had been actively trying to damage the reputations of Joseph Wilson and his wife, apparently at the behest of the Vice President. One of these two theories has greater explanatory power.
What's with the illiterate commas in the sentence, "The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq."?
Al, as i thought i made clear, don't be nonsensical: the clinton case isn't the same as the libby case. are you inventing a new form of jurisprudence in which the punishment doens't fit the crime but rather must be the same for every crime?
the difference in cases between lying about consensual sex in a deposition in a civil lawsuit that had no merit and lying about how you learned about an undercover CIA agent should be clear to anyone not addicted to victimhood.
as for the notion of the country being biased in favor of democrats: well, when you haven't made your sale, stop selling.
PS. if all lewis libby had done was to carry a copy of a memo out of a meeting that he shouldn't have, he woudn't be a convicted felon, although he, like berger, should have lost any ability to function in the executive branch ever again. i'm not quite sure why a lawyer is suddenly so convinced that all punishments should be the same for different crimes....
don't be nonsensical
Howard, you say this as though Al might have some interest in being sensical.
Howard: the crime is lying under oath. Clinton did it; Libby did it. There was no underlying crime in the Clinton case, and there was no underlying crime in the Libby case. I don't believe there is a relevant difference.
And of course I wouldn't expect to make a sale here on the country being in favor of Democrats. That doesn't make the comment any less true.
"What's with the illiterate commas in the sentence . . .
Who you calling illiterate?
-The Commas of the Washington Post Typographic Local 247(motto: it takes all sorts)
"the crime is lying under oath. Clinton did it; Libby did it"
Al- rather, Clinton did it, while Libby participated in a cover-up re: trying to discredit an critic of the Administration. Or, one might say, it's blowjobs vs. blown covers.
Clinton was convicted by a jury of perjury? How did I miss that?
Clinton did it, while Libby participated in a cover-up re: trying to discredit an critic of the Administration.
Neither of which is a crime. So what's the difference such that Clinton get a slap on the wrist and Libby is a multiple felon facing jail?
Clinton was convicted by a jury of perjury?
No, he admitted the crime in a sort of plea bargain.
Was Libby offered a plea bargin?
Al, not a chance.
Clinton was slapped with civil contempt for his misleading answers. He was being held to a higher standard because of his office. Misleading non-responsive answers are definitely NOT perjury.
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Hack, that whosoever believeth Al should not perish, but have everlasting life in the fantasy world of wingnuttia."
Washington Post's hypocricy is breathtaking.
They cheered on the Kenneth Starr jihad against the Clintons for over a decade, praising his "integrity" even as he was illegally leaking grand jury testimony to friendly Washington Post reporters.
The same paper has gone out of its way to defend the Bush regime's lies that led to the Iraq war. Washington Post was a cheerleader for the Iraq war. It worked with the Bush regime to marginalize and smear the opponents of the war as pro terrorist. They continued protecting the Bush regime throughout the Plame investigation, publishing editorials and op-eds smearing the Wilsons.
Washington Post was part of the lynch mob that tried to overthrow a president for lying about his sex life. Now they are arguing that a president lying the country into a ruinous war, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands is no big deal.
This editorial could have been written by Cheney.
"Hiatt, I seem to recall, is either a neocon or neocon-lite; his position doesn't seem all that surprising."
Fred Hiatt is a neocon in the Kristol/Kagan/Libby mold.
In the months leading up to the Iraq war he worked with the WH to smear opponents of the war, using the same exact talking points as the Bush administration. I remember one editorial that called Al Gore a pro Saddam terrorist sympathizer.
Fred Hiatt is as unhinged as Cheney.
"the idiotic donald graham, whose editorial staff is doing so much to destroy the reputation of the post that his mother built up, will oversee its bankruptcy."
Not sure about that. I remember reading a story about how most of the WP company profits are coming from its other subsidiaries. One of them Kaplan is the recepient of govt contracts from the Bush regime.
So even if the WP newspaper loses money down the road they will probably still keep it going with profits from their other divisions, using the paper as leverage with govt officials, to influence govt policy to their liking. This is what Murdoch does. His NY Post loses millions every year but overall helps him as a political weapon.
WP is turning into the WSJ editorial page. Its news pages are still OK but its editorial page is totally wingnut.
No, he admitted the crime in a sort of plea bargain.
no Al - accepting discipline from a state bar association is not the same as a "plea bargain" against a criminal charge by the justice system - not even close.
It doesn't even rise to the same as a plea of "Nolo Contendere" as Republican hero Spiro Agnew - and many corporate malfeasors - turned in. Clinton was never charged with any crime in any court in the land no matter how much fervid right wing imaginations wish to pretend otherwise. Sorry, no cigar.
"Maybe my satire meter is off - or maybe I was asleep - but we had a serious debate about the Iraq War in mid-2004? When? Where? By whom?? If it happened it certainly wasn't covered in the media was it? In my memory they diligently carried water for BushCo until Katrina in 2005."
You're right about this. It seems that the war went from glorious success to hopeless quagmire because Bush dropped the ball on Katrina.
It doesn't really make sense, but I gave up on expecting sense long ago.
1. The Washington Post editorially supported the Iraq adventure so they are naturally reluctant to admit they were wrong (even Richard Pearle has admitted that if he knew then what he knows now, he would not have supported the Iraq invasion).
2. Bob Woodward, who was Bushes little poodle dog until his last book, has publicly proclaimed that the entire Plane investigation is an exercise in triviality.
3. The Washington Post editorial, in trashing Joe Wilson, conveniently forgets that his findings as to the allegations of Saddam attempting to acquire nuclear parts in Africa absolutely correct. There was nothing there.
"I didn't see nothin'" said the accomplice.
don't waste time arguing with al. he is willfully ignorant. and you can't argue with people like that.
al is stupid and proud of it.
Brad Delong nails Fred Hiatt.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/03/why_no_resignat.html
"The gap between the story assumed by editorialist Fred Hiatt and the one reported by newsist Dana Milbank is wider than I have ever seen before within any press organization save the Wall Street Journal itself."
The WP editorial page has morphed into the WSJ editorial page. People who write their editorials don't read their news pages and are cut off from reality.
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