Replies to post #77207 on Discover GOP Opprobrium

[teapeebubbles]

This interview was nauseating. I nearly threw up when Crowley said that had she been President, Libby would have gotten that pardon.

A pardon? He already got a commutation of his very reasonable 20 month perjury sentence! And there is no doubt that he perjured himself before the Grand Jury. Libby himself admits that he told them an untruth---that is not even in contention. Libby claims that it wasn't perjury because he simply got mixed up, but the jury didn't believe him, and neither do I.

As Dick Cheney's top aide, Libby's title was "Chief of Staff," but his actual job should be termed "Smoke Blower" The whole campaign to discredit Joe Wilson can be understood by reading Cheney's own handwritten note across the top of the New York Times article. "Or did his wife send him on a junket?" Cheney wrote. The plan from the start was to confuse the issue by implying that there was some important bit of knowledge related to Valerie Plame's employment as a secret CIA agent that would discredit Joe Wilson and his article.

Reporters were to be told about Plame's CIA connection for three reasons: 1. To punish Wilson for having the audacity to write (correctly) that the President was wrong about his Niger yellocake claims in the State of the Union address, 2. To set an example as to what lengths the White House would go to punish any reporter that dared cross them, and 3. Most importantly, to "blow smoke"---i.e., confuse the issue with a bunch of irrelevant questions such as, "Who actually sent Joe Wilson on his trip?" Numb skulls would be left with the impression that there is something terribly relevant in the fact that Wilson's wife was a secret agent that had to be released in order to understand the issue. And this supposed important fact would somehow discredit Wilson, as if he would lie about his findings in the New York Times just because his wife "sent him on a junket."

That was Libby's mission---to expose Plame as a CIA agent and blow that smoke. And when he was caught, he blew some more smoke, by claiming to the Grand Jury that reporter Tim Russert told him about Plame's CIA connection and not the reverse. And further, when he was caught in that lie, he continued his prevarications by claiming that he was simply confused---confused about an issue that was so foremost in his boss Cheney's mind that he angrily wrote a note on the very article written by Wilson---confused about an issue so important to the White House that two days after the article was printed, three other staffers (Karl Rove, Ari Fleicher, and Richard Armitage) all leaked the same information to at least 5 other reporters on the same day as did Libby.

Libby has learned nothing and shows absolutely no remorse. He evidently thinks that his smoke blowing talents will continue to serve him well, by going on Fox and playing the victim.