Tuesday, July 12

OK, it may be impeachable, but it's not blowjob impeachable.

So now that we know Karl Rove not only leaked Valerie Plame's CIA-agent status to the press but also lied about having done so to everyone from the press to people in his own administration, can anyone make the case he deserves to have any role in the federal government other than that of "defendant"? Anyone at all?

Well, the dipshits at Power Line, faithful to the end, have come up with a reason, and you're never going to guess what it is -- well, no, you know exactly what it is, you just never thought anybody would be moronic enough to actually try and use it with a straight face: It's nothing to get up in arms about because it didn't involve "lewd sexual conduct." No, read the post: That's exactly what they said. See, wingnuts, you guys get all huffy anytime one of us suggests that you're still obsessed with Clinton's cock, but if you don't want us lodging those accusations, you probably shouldn't pull stupid non-sequitur shit like claiming that it was OK for Karl Rove to blow a government agent's cover, potentially exposing her to life-threatening danger, because a Democrat once got his knob shined in the Oval Office.

Or, to put it in the infinitely more eloquent-yet-savage words of Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte:

Yep, this worthless shitstain is arguing that Rove's outing of a CIA agent as a petty bit of Machivellian Worship My Feet political enemy thumping is nothing, especially not compared to the Only Bad Thing You Can Do in the wingnut world, which is fuck.


Amanda, if you're not doing anything the next couple days, marry me. The rest of you, single or not, can go here and sign Rep. Louise Slaughter's petition to demand that Bush fire Rove (as he promised to do) for the leak. Bush may not pay any attention to it than he pays to any of the millions of other people who've dared to venture that someone in his administration may have completely screwed something up, but hey, it's the thought that counts.

48 comments:

Josh M. said...

I know it serves your purposes to claim that Clinton was impeached "because of a blow job," but you're smart enough to know that was not the case.

As for Rove, there is a lot more to be proven before he can be convicted/held accountable of a crime. So far, it hasn't even been proven that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent at the time Rove talked to Matthew Cooper. You need that, as well as proof that Rove was aware of it, as well as proof the CIA was actively protecting Plame's identity. If Plame was sitting behind a desk somewhere (which has been itimated), there is no crime.

Get to work.

WTDT said...

I'll spot you that Rove didn't break the law, even though I suspect he did. (Neither did Clinton, you know.) Why are we so up in arms about this? Call it an "honor and dignity" thing. But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

Doug--you're getting sloppy. Clinton got his knob shined in the HALLWAY ADJACENT TO the Oval Office. I wouldn't insist on such precision, but for Christ's sake, it's right there in the multivolume Starr Report that was produced at a cost of untold (and still counting!) millions of dollars.

Astronaut Mike Dexter said...

Josh, the best response I've yet read to your comments can be found in a post today at Hullabaloo:

It is highly doubtful that the special prosecutor would convene a grand jury and investigate the White House for two years without first determining whether there was any potential crime to investigate since determining her status was the easiest element of the case --- finding out who did it and whether they knew she was undercover, which is obviously what he's been doing, is the difficult part. It's hard to believe that he'd send a journalist to jail and interview the president only to come up later and admit she wasn't actually an undercover agent after all, so fuggedaboudit. And it's pretty clear that the judges who have reviewed the classified documents in the contempt cases agree, by the way. They all say the case concerns a breach of national security.

One might also assume that since the CIA sent the damn referral to the justice department that they considered her undercover too . . .


You may not think this is anything serious, but evidently the CIA does, or they wouldn't have raised this issue in the first place.

Anonymous said...

"I know it serves your purposes to claim that Clinton was impeached "because of a blow job," but you're smart enough to know that was not the case."

The GOP investigated Clinton for years, at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars, and found nothing. I'm not smart enough to figure out how he could still be guilty of something other than the BJ. Maybe you can explain that one to me.
Tony.

Josh M. said...

(Neither did Clinton, you know.)

Committing perjury is legal?

Anonymous said...

Doug,
Is this you?

UAB editor's blog raises legal questions

Friday, August 06, 2004

THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer

Doug Gillett, an editor with UAB's creative services department, is passionate about his politics. He has his own Internet blog, titled "George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!," and is the third-most prolific - and one of the most passionate - contributors to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Politics 101 blog.

By noon Thursday, Gillett had generated and posted to the Internet more than 800 words of commentary, pictures and links to articles on his own blog and contributed almost 700 words to the running arguments on Politics 101.

The problem is that he was at work at the time. He's a state employee and was using a UAB computer, and his activities could run him afoul of state elections and ethics laws.

Election law prohibits public employees from using "state, county or city funds, property or time, for any political activities." The state ethics law has a similar prohibition.

Gillett said Thursday that he didn't realize his activities might violate the law.

"Sorry. I did not," Gillett said. "I apologize."

Anonymous said...

earth to "anonymous" - this is old news. Wake up and smell the coffee! Doug posts on his own time now - check the times of Doug's posts

Josh M. said...

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/49903.htm

Anonymous said...

Just so all you Bush haters/fantasizers don't stray too far from the TRUTH....

July 12, 2005 -- I WROTE a column on Oct. 10, 2003, about the strange case of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.
Wilson was the former ambassador sent by the CIA to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium in Africa; Plame, his CIA agent wife.

In that column, I offered my speculation of what an administration official might have said to a journalist to explain just how Wilson ? a Clinton administration official ? got the assignment in the first place: "Administration official: 'We didn't send him there. Cheney's office asked CIA to get more information. CIA picked Wilson . . . Look, I hear his wife's in the CIA. He's got nothing to do. She wanted to throw him a bone.' "

Hate to say I told you so, but . . .

According to this week's Newsweek, Karl Rove said something very similar indeed to Time magazine's Matthew Cooper:

In the Cooper e-mails just surrendered by Time to the prosecutor looking into the Plame case, "Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a 'big warning' not to 'get too far out on Wilson.' Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by . . . CIA Director George Tenet . . . or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, 'it was, [Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.' "

There's no mistaking the purpose of this conversation between Cooper and Rove. It wasn't intended to discredit, defame or injure Wilson's wife. It was intended to throw cold water on the import, seriousness and supposedly high level of Wilson's findings.



While some may differ on the fairness of discrediting Joseph Wilson, it sure isn't any kind of crime.

Rove was suggesting to Cooper that that folks lower down in the CIA than its own director commandeered the process so that the husband of one of their own could get the gig. And the husband in question then went and misrepresented his findings to various journalists (The Washington Post's Walter Pincus and The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof) and then in his own now-famous Times op-ed.

This Rove-Cooper conversation discredits Wilson, not Plame. In fact, nothing we know so far was done either with the purpose of exposing or even the knowledge that these remarks would be exposing an undercover CIA operative.

But Plame's undercover status at the time was and is a little questionable in any case. How undercover could she have been when her name was published at the time as part of Joseph Wilson's own biography online (see cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html)?

So if the offense wasn't against Plame, what of the offense against Wilson? There was no offense. As many of Joe Wilson's own hottest defenders would no doubt argue in relation to President Bush, exposing a liar is not only not a crime, it's a public service.

And Wilson lied. Repeatedly.

First off, Wilson long denied he was recommended for the job by his wife: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he writes in his book. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

But the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually found the memo in which Valerie Plame recommended her husband for the job.

There were other lies as well. Wilson's own report was far from definitive in any way on the question of whether Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger ? thus giving the lie to his later bald claim that he came back insisting there was no link.

"The report on the former ambassador's [Wilson's] trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002," said the Senate Select Committee, "did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq."

Thus, Rove was telling Cooper the truth. According to one of Cooper's e-mails, "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. He [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger . . ."

A few days later, for reasons that remain unexplained, the United States said it could no longer stand by the claim in the 2003 State of the Union that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa.

But that retraction of Bush's words remains hotly controversial. As a 2004 British inquiry chaired by Lord Butler put it: "We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded."

What isn't controversial is this: Karl Rove didn't "out" Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to intimidate Joe Wilson. He was dismissing Joe Wilson as a low-level has-been hack to whom nobody should pay attention. He was right then, and if he said it today, he'd still be right.

And if Valerie Plame wants to live a quiet spy life, she should stop having her picture taken by society photographers and stop getting stories written about her on the front page of the Times.


E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com

Anonymous said...

Perjury is lying under oath about a fact or facts relevant to the case or inquiry. Exactly how is a blow job in the 90's relevant to a land deal in the 80's? Not relevant? Then not perjury.

Was Plume covert? The CIA thought she was covert enough to not want her outed? Did Rove know it? How else would he know she worked at the CIA? Was this just random knowledge the spook fairies imparted to him in a vision or did he abuse his position to use this info?

Anonymous said...

Btw, a few posts ago one of the neoconmen too ashamed to show thier names was saying there was no mass murders in the Balkans to justify the war there. This interesting tidbit from the White House Press Briefing yesterday:

"MR. McCLELLAN: Good afternoon, everyone. I want to begin with a statement by the President:

On July 11th, we remember the tragic loss of lives in Srebrenica 10 years ago. The mass murder of nearly 8,000 men and boys was Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, and a grim reminder that there are evil people who will kill the innocent without conscience or mercy. This horrific event remains a source of pain for people in the Balkan region, and for all those who believe in freedom and the dignity of human life. I join all Americans in sending the deepest condolences and expressions of sympathy on this solemn occasion."

So apparently the White House doesn't agree with you Anon..... unless of course they are lying....

Anonymous said...

Of course the President meant all Americans except you anon, since you say it never happened....

Anonymous said...

Of course the President meant all Americans except you anon, since you say it never happened....

Anonymous said...

So, general bill, what was the justification for the Bosnian war?

Anonymous said...

To answer your questions....

Was Plume covert? No.
The CIA thought she was covert enough to not want her outed? No.
Did Rove know it? No.
How else would he know she worked at the CIA? Because Rove knew she recommended her husband for the Niger job.
Was this just random knowledge the spook fairies imparted to him in a vision or did he abuse his position to use this info? No abuse here...of any kind.

Now, we're still waiting for your answers....

What was the justification for the Bosnian war?

What was Bush's big "lie"?

Anonymous said...

Damn, general bill, bad news about Srebrenica. The good news is that Bush is a liar, so it probably didn't happen. Right?

Astronaut Mike Dexter said...

Was Plume [sic] covert? No.
The CIA thought she was covert enough to not want her outed? No.
Did Rove know it? No.


Wow, I'm real impressed that you know all this stuff, anonymous. You must have some awesome security clearance at the CIA -- no wonder you don't ever sign your posts! It could get you killed!

Astronaut Mike Dexter said...

Now then, if anyone wants to hear from someone who actually knows what the hell he's talking about, feel free to go here:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340

Anonymous said...

Thanks, doug. Another unbiased source. Right up there with Kung Fu Monkey and moveon.org. Why don't you read the subject email that the lefties are trying to hang Rove with. Even a snappy "journalist" like yourself can discern from the tone, if not the letter, of the email that Rove was not "outing"...uh, strike this, I forgot that I am dealing with leftwingnuts here.

Interesting that general bill knows what perjury is but can't figure out what a "lie" is. Must be a lawyer.

I choose to remain anonymous so that others won't think ill of me for frequenting this leftist cess pool.

Anonymously yours,
Anonymous

Anonymous said...

By the looks of her, I'd like to see her under the covers. Clinton's trying to figure out how she got away.

Anonymous said...

Why did Clinton intervene in Bosnia? I'm so glad you asked.

Clinton was up-front that he was intervening to stop a massacre that was going on. He never argued that Slobodon Milosevic was about to attack the United States. He wasn't talking about massacres that happened 10 years ago with the support of President Reagan.

Then, Clinton gathered large levels of international support to ensure our soldiers weren't isolated in Bosnia. He chose an appropriate level of force for the mission. He did not ignore projections from the army chief of staff in favor of pie-in-the-sky predictions from academics.

Tony.

Anonymous said...

Another thought on Bosnia ... although Clinton did not argue Slobodon Milosevic was about to attack the United States, he could have asserted the nation's security. European wars do have a way of eventually involving America. And there was a threat of Islamic terroism there.

Consider: I have a friend who grew up in Sarejevo. His father was a Muslim, and his mother was a Catholic. During the war my friend and his mother both left the country, but his father stayed behind to fight the Serbs.

After a few years of this, his father renounced his wife and children and married a Muslim woman. He was later killed trying to destroy a Serbian tank.

By intervening in Bosnia, Clinton prevented it from becoming a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Al-Qaida would have had a pool of Western-educated white people from which to draw.

Clinton took a hot civil war and prevented it from turning into a training ground for Al-Qaida. Bush took a brutal but contained dictatorship and turned it into a civil war and a training ground for Al-Qaida.

Tony.

Anonymous said...

Clinton's perjury: Yes, Clinton committed perjury while lying about something that wasn't a crime. It doesn't bother me.

Bush manipulated facts, failed to identify threats to our nation and bungled the invasion of Iraq. He told few clear-cut lies, but his general lack of competence bothers me a lot.

Tony.

Anonymous said...

So ... Rove wasn't trying to out a CIA agent. He was trying to smear a political opponent. That makes me wish I could go back in time and vote for Bush.

BTW, Wilson was right about the yellowcake story and Bush was wrong. Anyone who says otherwise needs to get their head examined.

Tony.

Astronaut Mike Dexter said...

Boy, there are so many Anonymouses (Anonymi?) up in here it's getting hard to keep track. But let me make sure I've got Anonymous #1, the right-wing Anonymous, completely clear.

John Podhoretz, Weekly Standard cofounder and former Reagan speechwriter, is your idea of an "unbiased source." But Larry Johnson, who worked in the CIA throughout Reagan's second term and served as deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism from '89 to '93, is just a "leftwingnut" with an ax to grind. I suppose it makes sense -- as long as you've got your head so far up Dubya's ass you can see out his mouth.

I suspect the real reason you don't sign your posts, Anonymous #1, is because you don't want to give anyone an actual name they can connect with your unbelievable stupidity.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Tony. Finally. A leftist that's willing to admit that Bosnia was all about mass murder. And, in my opinion, a damn worthy cause to invade and occupy a country. Now that we know that genocide is sufficient justification for Bosnia, we must all feel good about our work in Iraq because there were 10s of 1000s more killed by Saddam, not to mention his invasion and occupation of Kuwait and attempted invasion of Iran.
Now, I know you leftinistas have a problem with the WMD info that misled everyone, including Putin, Chirac, etc., but this does not constitute a lie or intentionally misleading anyone. About the coalition...I guess if you don't have appropriate socialist representation in your coalition, it's not worthy of liberal's respect. But we now know that your fellow socialists were making big bucks from the food for oil program. No agenda here? In any event, we should be proud and supportive of our efforts there.
As far as bungling the invasion, I don't have a military background and unless you do, like general bill seems to have, I can only assume that you're deriving your opinion from democrat talking points. On the other hand, are you saying our troops are bungling fools for having taken Baghdad in less than a week?
BTW Bush sent Wilson, now a documented liar, to see if Saddam either ATTEMPTED TO PURCHASE or PURCHASED nuclear precursors in Niger. Wilson only reported that Saddam did not PURCHASE any materials but failed to mention that ATTEMPTS were indeed made by Iraq to source yellow cake from Niger. He did report that Cheney sent him on the mission - a lie. In trying to set the record straight the reporter was told, presumably by Rove, that the CIA sent Wilson and said "you know, his wife is over there."
Hey, Doug, which LOSER's ass are you going to stick your head up this time?
I'm seriously coming to the conclusion that liberals are maybe more dangerous to our lives than the terrorists. I see no positive benefits but lots of failures and harm from liberalism. Oh, sorry, there was that one about a five day work week and guaranteed vacation.

Righteously yours,
Anonymous I

Anonymous said...

"On the other hand, are you saying our troops are bungling fools for having taken Baghdad in less than a week?"

I'm saying Bush was a bungling fool for failing to plan for the occupation. He was a bungling fool for suppressing anyone who suggested we might need a plan for the occupation, like the former Army secretary and the State Department's internal working group.

Your attempt to turn criticism of Bush's plan into criticism of our troops' performance is extremely dishonest.

"I'm seriously coming to the conclusion that liberals are maybe more dangerous to our lives than the terrorists." That's tremendously dishonest. No liberal has ever tried to kill you. It's not liberals who bungled the invasion of Iraq.

If you're going to be righteous, you're going to have to be a little more honest.
Tony.

ACG said...

Oh, my holy God. Ohmigod. I've been waiting for months to use this one. I keep hearing it and hearing it, and I'm, like, "Oh, my God, I've got to find an opportunity to use that sometime." And now that opportunity arises!

Anonymous #1, if you're so much more scared of the liberals than the terrorists, why don't you just go over to Iraq? Not a whole lot of liberals there, I'd wager. And France! The wingnuts keep telling us that France is just bustin' with terrorists. I can link you to some cheap plane tickets, if you want.

Anonymous said...

On a more friendly note, Anonymous, I do recognize you do love this country and believe your ideas will help make it safer. I believe even Bush honestly thinks he's doing what's right.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking Democrats hate their country, and I'll try to do the same for you.

Anonymous said...

From one anonymous to the other, thank yeeewwwww! I do love America, unlike some of the other riff-raff that hangs out here.

acg, I'd rather fightliberals here than terrorists there. Liberals are easier to ID here. They're the ones in the Volvo station wagon with the Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker and the university parking pass on the windshield. The "journalists" are the easiest to ID. They know everything about everything and haven't done anything.

As an aside, did you see where Zarqawi referenced Turban Durbin's rant in his pep talk last week? He urged them on in light of the infidel's elected official's [Durbin] admission that they [the US] was losing the war.

Dick (how appropriate) Durbin should be arrested for sedition and sent to Club Gitmo.

Astronaut Mike Dexter said...

Just keep talking, Anonymous #1. The more you spew, the better we sound.

Anonymous said...

Anoymous I doesn't want to sign up to go to Iraq and fight terrorists?

Why am I not surprised by his cowardice chickenhawkery?

Anonymous said...

The only reason I have not signed up is my mom won't sign the waiver for me to go in until I either graduate or get my GED.

Anonymous said...

That was not me, but an imposter. My mom will sign the age waiver whenever I want, but I have to stay here and fight the liberal leftists.

Anonymous said...

Don't listen to him, that was me and I can't join until I learn to finish my peas and broccoli and get the bed wetting thing behind me. And get my GED.

Anonymous said...

No, you take that back, anything Bush says is holy and must be true. I can join whenever I want, but I have to keep the leftist commie liberals from saying bad things about the president. The real fight is here, not with the WMD tossing terrorists Al-Quida in Iraq. I wish I had it as easy as the soldier over there, but I have to stay here and fight you liberals!

Anonymous said...

Clean up your language! No one likes a potty mouth!

Josh M. said...

Thread over.

Anonymous said...

That's not me, I would join right now except for that horrible "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that President Hillary put in place. How am I supposed to find a date like that? Damn liberal elitists.

Anonymous said...

If I were a lesbian, I'd be asking ACG to marry me right now. ;)

merlallen said...

What does Bosnia have to do with Rove's treason? I don't give a fuck about Bill Clinton or any crimes he did or didn't commit. I refuse to let the wingnuts change the subject, which is all that their pea brains can do.
Rove committed treason, chicken george said he would fire the leaker. He has not been fired. chicken george has told another lie.

Anonymous said...

That's a good point, Merl. While we've been debating how illegal Rove's leak was, we forgot that the president himself promised to fire the leaker. Far be it from us to contradict the president.

Tony.

Anonymous said...

If only you leftists would give the same swift justice to the terrorist bastards at Gitmo that you're giving Rove: guilty and executed until proven innocent.

Righteously yours,
The real anonymous

Anonymous said...

I've thought about this a lot and have come to the conclusion that fighting liberals is just as, if not more, important as fighting terrorists. They both seek to destroy our way of life, the terrorists are just more honest about it.
The good news is that we're winning on both fronts.

ACG said...

HOLY SHIT, THEY EXECUTED KARL ROVE?!

Josh M. said...

Rove committed treason? I hope you can back up a statement like that, Merl.

Anonymous said...

By revealing the name of an intelligence asset during wartime he gave aid and comfort to our enemies. That is if you beleive there is a war on terror.

Anonymous said...

General bill, you liberal pukes give aid and comfort to our enemies every time you open your mouth. Intelligence asset? Shit, Wilson is an intelligence ass, just maybe.