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Originally Posted by Ustwo
And that is called being played.
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I think that the poster who wrote that Rove was becoming a liability is smart enough to know when he is being "played" or not. I do not understand why one would accuse another of being a dupe simply for disagreeing with the Republican side of this issue. There is some really damning evidence in this case, and so it is not intellectualy dishonest to infer that this evidence is a problem.
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After the 2002 and 2004 elections with the 2006 around the corner, there is nothing the democrats would like to see more than Rove go away.
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This is not a valid argument unless you put party before country. I personally do not care about who scores points over this issue as long as the interest of the United States and its people are upheld. There is no benefit for the US in outing Valerie Plame....the whole incident undermined our intelligence assets on weapons of mass destruction. If we fail to get to the bottom of this, then the Republicans can keep their political strategist, but the country loses because our intellignce community can be undermined for political purposes and we have to rebuild some of our WMD inteligence infrastructure (the human intel part, which is the part that we lack). This is in addition to the fact that Americans will know that our leaders do not care about crime if they are committed by people of their own party.
Surely one must admit that the interests of justice and national security trump partisan politics....we are Americans first, and party members second or below.
Oh, and by the way, Rove's claim that the media gave him the name of Plame fell apart over the weekend. It turns out that he is indeed the primary source for Cooper, and now Scooter Libby and possibly Cheney as well are in the hot-seat.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...tm?POE=NEWISVA
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Originally Posted by USA Today
Rove, Libby identified CIA officer
By Susan Page and Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — White House strategist Karl Rove was the first person to tell a Time magazine reporter that the wife of an administration critic worked for the CIA, the reporter said Sunday. Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, then confirmed that fact to the reporter.
An account in the new issue of Time by Matthew Cooper is the first time a reporter involved has described the role two powerful White House aides played in breaking the story that has sparked a two-year investigation.
Cooper testified Wednesday before a grand jury investigating whether laws were broken when the identity of Valerie Plame, who had worked undercover for the CIA, was disclosed to journalists.
In Time and interviews Sunday on NBC and CNN, Cooper revealed details that could be significant in the inquiry by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald — including the first on-the-record confirmation of Libby as a source.
AP File
Lewis Libby
For two years, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Rove and Libby weren't involved.
Plame is married to former diplomat Joseph Wilson. The CIA sent Wilson to investigate whether Niger had sold Iraq "yellowcake" uranium, which can be processed for use in nuclear weapons.
Wilson later accused the administration of exaggerating intelligence about that to make the case for war, a charge the administration denies. Plame's CIA connection was then identified in a column by conservative commentator Robert Novak and a story in Time.
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That is the problem with talking points...they are great for insular one-party discussions, but they are ineffective at standing up to the scrutiny of an onging investigation with new revelations coming out regularly. The truth from the begnning of this story would have served well, and that was 2 years ago.
And neither the CIA nor the Fitzgerald have any compunction about pushing this issue forward regardless of talking points. Obviously they both feel that a crime was committed here, and they have far more information than we do. We can try this case in the court of public opinion, but that will not mean diddly in the end because there is a real trial pending on this where all of the evidence comes out.
And really, even if Karl is not prosecutable under Pappy Bush's law, he still is a traitor in the eyes of a lot of Americans. He still damaged the CIA for political purposes, and he still either lied to the administration about it or had the administration lie to the American poeple about it. Americans can forgive a little indicretion from time to time, but once the trust is lost, then it is all downhill from there.
What do we hear from the administration now concerning this issue? Nothing, but two years ago they were vehement with how "ridiculous" that anyone in the administration could have been involved, assuring reporters that they have spoken with everyone and none of them were to blame. Americans remember being lied to, so they are not buying the argument that they are being "played" by Democrats now.
Besides, it is really hard for Americans to swallow the argument that Democrats are behind this issue when Joe Wilson is a Republican and the special prosecutor was put on the job by John Ashcroft.
This issue stems from the Bush administration trying their best to trump up a case for war. No true
causus belli existed, so we ignored the caveats and brought forth any info at all that would back the case while concurrently omitting information that showed otherwise (cherry-picking). The trashing of Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife were political retaliation against Wilson for violating the Iraq war rationale paradigm set forth by the administration. This issue not only shows administration officials as putting their party before their country, but also shows that they are willing to lie to the American people to get us into a costly, unnecessary war and then cover it up. This is a treason that goes far beyond the treason of outing one CIA agent, and frankly, the American people are tired of it as it is becoming more obvious every day (as evidenced by Bush's decreasing poll numbers, especially on his honesty).
We can't blame Democrats for this; the administration is digging their own hole on this issue all by themselves.