Libby, Plame and the real scandal
Ok. Let's get this straight.
Scooter Libby was not convicted of "outing" a covert CIA agent. The lie that keeps being repeated by the media to the contrary, Valarie Plame was not a covert agent. She was a former covert agent. At the time of Bob Novak's "revelation," she was a CIA analyst whose status as such was a matter of public record.
It is not against the law to reveal the identity of a CIA analyst. The claim by family friend and liberal columnist David Corn that she was a covert agent (in the process of falsely charging fellow columnist Bob Novak of having revealed her supposed status as such) was simply not true. While technically it would have been illegal for Novak to have revealed her status as a covert agent within five years of her service as such, he didn't. Corn himself did, in his column the next day. Novak merely described her as a CIA "operative."
But as we learned from the continued repetition of the slander about President Bush supposedly having been AWOL during his National Guard service (repeated by the media, John Kerry, and Democrats generally years after others who served at the air base in Alabama came forward to share their memories of having served with him there), being a blatant and bald-face lie is not sufficient reason for either Democrats or the main stream media to keep repeating it as true until people finally accept it not only as fact, but as a given. Josef Goebbels used to specialize in pretty much the same technique.
It was just as bogus as the report filed by Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, falsely reporting that Saddam Hussein had not sought to acquire yellow cake uranium in Niger- the report which is alleged to have provided the motivation for Libby, or Dick Cheney, or Novak, or Jenna Bush, or someone close to the President to have "leaked" what in fact was a matter of public record which- as Novak has pointed out- was not only not a secret, but accessible to anyone with a copy of Who's Who- and who happened to know that Joe Wilson and Valarie Plame were husband and wife! This is said to have been done in retaliation for Wilson's statements critical of the administration's Iraq policy. As a form of retailiation, it was in fact right up there with that practiced by Monty Python's Knights Who Say "Nih!" To You.
Libby is going to jail for giving what the jury believed were false statements about where he learned information which was not a secret and which it was not illegal to repeat to anyone who would listen. He was convicted of obstructing justice and giving false statements under oath concerning something that was a matter of public record.
Remember- as we discovered when Bill Clinton was president- that lying under oath is not an impeachable offense, much less one deserving jail time- when one is a Democrat. Ann Coulter is apparently right: the real lesson of the Libby trial is that you can go to jail for being a Republican.
The real scandal here has nothing to do with Scooter Libby or Valarie Plame or Joe Wilson. The real scandal is how a pack of lies can be peddled to the American people with the complicity of a media whose job it supposedly is to uncover the truth- but who apparently can't be bothered when even the most basic facts of such a controversial incident are staring them in the face.
The real scandal is not that Scooter Libby lied to prosecuters. It's that the Democrats and their allies in the media have lied, and continue to lie, to the American people about the most basic fact of this whole farce.
Scooter Libby was not convicted of "outing" a covert CIA agent. The lie that keeps being repeated by the media to the contrary, Valarie Plame was not a covert agent. She was a former covert agent. At the time of Bob Novak's "revelation," she was a CIA analyst whose status as such was a matter of public record.
It is not against the law to reveal the identity of a CIA analyst. The claim by family friend and liberal columnist David Corn that she was a covert agent (in the process of falsely charging fellow columnist Bob Novak of having revealed her supposed status as such) was simply not true. While technically it would have been illegal for Novak to have revealed her status as a covert agent within five years of her service as such, he didn't. Corn himself did, in his column the next day. Novak merely described her as a CIA "operative."
But as we learned from the continued repetition of the slander about President Bush supposedly having been AWOL during his National Guard service (repeated by the media, John Kerry, and Democrats generally years after others who served at the air base in Alabama came forward to share their memories of having served with him there), being a blatant and bald-face lie is not sufficient reason for either Democrats or the main stream media to keep repeating it as true until people finally accept it not only as fact, but as a given. Josef Goebbels used to specialize in pretty much the same technique.
It was just as bogus as the report filed by Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, falsely reporting that Saddam Hussein had not sought to acquire yellow cake uranium in Niger- the report which is alleged to have provided the motivation for Libby, or Dick Cheney, or Novak, or Jenna Bush, or someone close to the President to have "leaked" what in fact was a matter of public record which- as Novak has pointed out- was not only not a secret, but accessible to anyone with a copy of Who's Who- and who happened to know that Joe Wilson and Valarie Plame were husband and wife! This is said to have been done in retaliation for Wilson's statements critical of the administration's Iraq policy. As a form of retailiation, it was in fact right up there with that practiced by Monty Python's Knights Who Say "Nih!" To You.
Libby is going to jail for giving what the jury believed were false statements about where he learned information which was not a secret and which it was not illegal to repeat to anyone who would listen. He was convicted of obstructing justice and giving false statements under oath concerning something that was a matter of public record.
Remember- as we discovered when Bill Clinton was president- that lying under oath is not an impeachable offense, much less one deserving jail time- when one is a Democrat. Ann Coulter is apparently right: the real lesson of the Libby trial is that you can go to jail for being a Republican.
The real scandal here has nothing to do with Scooter Libby or Valarie Plame or Joe Wilson. The real scandal is how a pack of lies can be peddled to the American people with the complicity of a media whose job it supposedly is to uncover the truth- but who apparently can't be bothered when even the most basic facts of such a controversial incident are staring them in the face.
The real scandal is not that Scooter Libby lied to prosecuters. It's that the Democrats and their allies in the media have lied, and continue to lie, to the American people about the most basic fact of this whole farce.
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