National Review comes to Libby's rescue

"Conservative" media has truly outdone itself in the field of self-serving dishonesty.

This morning, Mona Charen at the National Review - whose husband works at the law firm representing Libby (a small 'fact' she discloses only AFTER her tirade of lies) - stops at nothing to exonerate Libby "the Liar" and his co-conspirators, in a trial she describes as "a farce and an outrage."

The man on trial did not do the leaking. The man who did the leaking is not on trial. The woman who is the subject of the fictional leak was probably not covert. The person who leaked her name did so in the course of gossip and almost certainly did not, as the law requires, “know that the government had taken affirmative measures to conceal” her identity (because if she wasn’t covert, the government would have taken no such steps).

Are you following? No? good. Then you're okay.

Accordingly, there was no crime. And yet, a prosecutor presents evidence, a jury lobs questions, and “Scooter” Libby may go to jail for 30 years.

I will make no effort to conceal my disappointment that he is not eligible for the death penalty, for his treacherous lies.

This charade competes with the Duke “rape” case for prosecutorial misconduct, brazen defiance of common sense, and unbelievable jeopardy to the innocent.

Ah, the fine art of media distraction. Compare apples to oranges, yet evoke plenty of emotions and indignation from both sides of the aisle. Pure chicanery. It works like a charm.

To review: Bob Novak mentioned Valerie Plame’s name in a 2003 column. Left-wing writer David Corn, together with Joe Wilson, charged that the White House had intentionally blown Plame’s cover in order to punish her husband (Wilson) for criticizing the Bush administration.

The press went into full battle cry demanding a criminal investigation (in the hope that a high White House official could be snagged). Washington, D.C. went into one of its periodic spasms of investigatitis.

Don't you love it when they make words up? It's a sign of desperation.

The CIA referred the matter to the Justice Department. The Wilsons became the toast of the town, posing for the cover of Vanity Fair in a white convertible and granting interviews to the anointed.

So, according to Mona, this whole thing - the forged documents, the unjust war, the hundreds of thousands dead, the billions of tax dollars wasted - all of it was a media stunt by Wilson and his wife to garner some attention.

Enter Patrick Fitzgerald, independent counsel. Fitzgerald does not even address the question of whether or not Plame was a covert operative (according to the New York Times, she had abandoned her covert status nine years before the Wilson op-ed).

The Times, of course, never lies.

Fitzgerald spends hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on an investigation, interviews every famous name in Washington journalism and politics, and sends reporter Judith Miller to jail for 12 weeks.

Now, THAT is an outrage! She deserved far more than that.

The prosecutor accepted Joe Wilson’s “retaliation” theory from the start, looking for a White House conspiracy to harm Wilson. Fitzgerald tamely followed this line despite learning later that Wilson lied about how he was chosen for the mission to Niger (contrary to Wilson’s hot denials, it was his wife’s suggestion according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report), lied about what he found there (his report actually tended to confirm not deny Iraq’s uranium shopping), and lied about discrediting certain forged documents (they did not even appear until months after Wilson’s trip).

It is truly and utterly amazing that this woman and those who see fit to publish this garbage have the gall to deny that which practically every man, woman, and child ON THIS PLANET now know to be an indisputable FACT - that this war was based on LIES.

This entire article, from start to finish is nothing but pure unmitigated and shameless propaganda designed to sow confusion and controversy in a matter where there is none.

Libby, Bush, and Cheney LIED and hundreds of thousands of people DIED. Case closed.

But, no - this lunatic raves on.

Yet Wilson’s word was good enough for Fitzgerald.

More astonishing though is this: In late August 2006, the world learned that Robert Novak’s source was actually former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Patrick Fitzgerald has known this since 2003.

Despite knowing that Armitage was The One — the principal leaker — Fitzgerald plowed on, calling Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to the grand jury again and again, causing the media to salivate and the administration to cope as best it could with the stress and distraction. [oh, boo-hoo!] (On the morning of Libby’s indictment, a leading talking head crowed privately that it was “Christmas morning!”)

Libby’s crime, according to Fitzgerald, is perjury and obstruction of justice. The grounds? People’s memories of who said what to whom more than three years ago differ. Good Lord, may I never be subject to a grand jury inquest as I forget appointments, names, faces, passwords, jokes, what I told my husband yesterday, and whether or not I paid the phone bill last month.

Nothing could be more insulting than comparing an incident that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with this banal nonsense.

Where, I wonder, are all the folks who worry about attracting good people to government service?

They are in their right minds for demanding that these 'good people' be 'attracted' from someplace other than the zionist corporate sewer.

Libby gave up a lucrative private practice to serve his country and now may lose everything including his liberty for the trouble.

Tough luck!

If you dance with the devil, you have to pay the piper.

However, Scooter is lucky in one respect - that Mrs. Charen is NOT his defense counsel. Then, he would really be up sh*t's creek without a paddle.