<p>So now we find out the truth: that Bush authorized the release (via Libby) of classified information to discredit Joseph Wilson, including info that Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame was a CIA employee.</p>
<p>Did he break the law? Of course not. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the president has the “inherent authority to decide who should have classified information.” </p>
<p>These logic these guys use is unbelievable. Bush cannot break the law because he’s the President. Come on… Whether you are Republican or Democrat, this kind of logic cannot be blindly defended.</p>
<p>Digi:
I must admit a guilty pleasure here. When my radio-alarm went off at 6AM, the newsreader was breathlessly misreporting this “event,” and I wondered to myself: Which of CC’s Nattering Nabobs of Naivete will be the first to step in this pile of manure? I was expecting someone other than you, but you’ll do. Congrats.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll sign up as a proud NNN. If circumstances are true as reported, the act may not be illegal, but, by jiminy, it certainly would be unethical.</p>
<p>OK, you are officially NNNs, both of you. Now…explain if you can what is unethical about a president authorizing the release of declassified information. I hate to break it to you, but this is just more hopeful Wile E. Coyote anti-Bushism, and you are once again going to ride your giant Acme mega-rocket down the canyon. I will watch from above for the always amusing <em>poof</em></p>
<p>I’m still confused by this one. Did anyone read the whole article? The information that Libby was authorized to disclose was already in the process of being declassified and was available to anyone to read and discusss only a short time later. As the NIE typically is treated. </p>
<p>Given that Wilson’s farcical claims have been proven wrong, that if the President ignored his report, the Administration had to be cherry picking data, why shouldn’t they defend themselves? Wilson’s opinion didn’t change anyone’s intelligence estimate because he didn’t do anything other than reinforce what the CIA already believed.</p>
<p>As for that, I’m appalled that the media keeps referring to this as a “leak”. There’s no such thing as an authorized lead. By that standard, the Federal Reserve folks near my house are counterfeiting currency.</p>
<p>Of course the NY Times knows that if they had label what happened honestly they’d never get much attention from this story. I mean, who’d pay any attention to a headline that said “Aide says Bush Authorizied Him to Give Times Reporter a Scoop!”</p>
<p>Driver, the President undoubtedly has the authority to declassify information. However, if the purpose is for political vendetta and retaliation, it would make him a low-life scumbag…if he hadn’t been one already.</p>
<p>But even if he were breaking the law, it would have still been legal, because the President can ignore laws he doesn’t like. He says so himself.</p>
<p>“low-life scumbag” - I LIKE that! Poetical somehow, know what I mean?</p>
<p>It is difficult to refer to or describe this “President” in a civilized manner. I gave up long ago, right after he stole the election in 2000 - since then I have listened to only ONE speech - the post 9/11 address. When I hear the $%#%#!#@ on the radio, I turn it off, and if his image crosses the TV screen, I change the channel. </p>
<p>When this regime is finally overturned (fingers crossed for Nov 2006), my blood pressure will drop significantly as the stress hormones finally begin to recede, and I will be able to lay off the Tums.</p>
<p>A leak is seepage you don’t want…a faucet is seepage you control at will…now the involuntary anal emissions…the hazmat stuff. That would be another thread.</p>
<p>But despite all the irresponsible claims that Wilson made about being the victim of a vendetta, this report offers nothing to support the claim. This release of information wasn’t even aimed at Wilson per se, it was to put the intelligence the Administration had available out so the public could see for themselves what they were working with.</p>
<p>That’s one of the crucial points, of course, since even the Times and the Post and everyone trying to mischaracterize this as a “leak” points out that this had nothing to do with the Plame leak or Wilson personally.</p>
<p>Even the Plame leak doesn’t really measure up to the claim of a vendetta against Wilson when you really look at what’s come out of the leak investigation. Where Wilson claims that someone was calling reporters intentionally outing his wife, neither Libby nor Rove called the reporters they spoke to. Where Wilson claims that they spoke to multiple reporters in their scheme, they spoke to, count 'em, two. </p>
<p>They weren’t even the primary source of the information, it was another leaker that Fitzgerald refuses to name because he did nothing that he could be charged with a crime for doing. Essentially all that either of the two the Left point to for this said on the matter was “Oh, you heard that, too?”, hardly the most devasting of revelations on record in the matter. Surely if Karl Rove or Scooter Libby were the evil geniuses they’re made out to be, they’d have done a little better than that.</p>
<p>So, unless you can show me some legitimate evidence that there was anything a reasonable person would call a vendetta rather than just an honest attempt to refute Wilson’s bad assumptions and self serving statements, TheDad, you haven’t justified your point.</p>
<p>This is why I love the Parents Cafe. A quick visit to one of the tinfoil hat anti-bush threads, and I’m ready to face anything, confident that P.T. Barnum was right. The problem you NNNs face is that you still have your lowlife scumbags confused. The LLS, as was conclusively demonstrated by every group that studied this affair, was your hero, Joe Wilson, who lied in his NYT op-ed, in his book, in interviews. The only time he didn’t lie was when he was under oath, at which point he basically admitted to being a lying LLS. It is standard practice to declassify the National Intelligence Estimate, and using the information to discredit a lying LLS is simply common sense.</p>
<p>This old news, folks. We’ve been through this time and again. But, as they say, hope springs eternal. I will continue buying stock in Reynolds Wrap throughout the rest of this administration.</p>
<p>I must admit a guilty pleasure here. When my radio-alarm went off at 6AM, the newsreader was breathlessly misreporting this “event,” and I wondered to myself: Which of CC’s …</p>
<p>You actually think about posts on a message board as soon as you wake up?
weird</p>
<p>Ha. Hey there, FS.
No, I don’t usually wake up thinking about posters on a message board, but when my clock alarm turned on to a news story that sounded as if it were being read by one of CC’s 3Ns, I guess I just free-associated. Or multi-tasked. In any event, you didn’t disappoint me, none of you.</p>
<p>I was actually surprised it took so long to make it to CC. I’ve been listening to the radio voice of the NY Times breathlessly talking about this since yesterday afternoon and expecting the 3Ns to weigh in with all guns blasting since then. The fact that it took until late morning for it to be posted is quite a fete of restraint. But, I agree this is only big amongst those who make a hobby of looking for things on which to bash Bush.</p>
<p>I don’t really think about the CC politics so much- when I have been thinking about CC off line lately is the threads where parents sigh about the freedom they had to do “dangerous” things, as kids and the teens who chafe under the guidelines that the parents on the board if not their own , hold.</p>
<p>With the killings(6+) at an after hours party just a couple weeks ago, to the baby that was found by the side of the road, and the 10 year old who disappeared while walking to school in Dec.- but whose remains were just found just yards from the searched area,I worry that these very intelligent teens who think they “know it all”, are book wise but not street smart.</p>
<p>( Of course, unfortunately Lucifer brought that home pretty hard)</p>
<p>To be perfectly fair, I’d have to argue that Wilson did not lie in his op-ed piece. It was a reasonably balanced discussion of what happened up to the point where he assumed that anyone else thought his mission to Niger was decisive. Frankly, not many people considered it of any value from the beginning, with the State Department thinking it would fail to add any clarity to the issue before he went and the CIA hearing his report and deciding that, if any thing, it tended to confirm reports that Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake.</p>
<p>I’d accept that he was arrogant, self-important and wrong, but he didn’t lie in the op-ed piece. That came later.</p>
<p>So some of you don’t see anything the least bit hypocritical about a president who condemns leaks in no uncertain terms, but is more than willing to authorize leaks himself if they will help him politically? If this was no big deal and the info was to be declassified soon, then why didn’t he just announce it up front, rather than sneak around and have Libby leak it to a sympathetic reporter?</p>