Tag: Worst President Ever
British Government Censors Documents That Show Bush Efforts to Bomb al-Jazeera
Another scandal quashed : Guardian:
The [British] attorney general last night threatened newspapers with the Official Secrets Act if they revealed the contents of a document allegedly relating to a dispute between Tony Blair and George Bush over the conduct of military operations in Iraq.
It is believed to be the first time the Blair government has threatened newspapers in this way. Though it has obtained court injunctions against newspapers, the government has never prosecuted editors for publishing the contents of leaked documents, including highly sensitive ones about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, last night referred editors to newspaper reports yesterday that described the contents of a memo purporting to be at the centre of charges against two men under the secrets act.
The Bush Admin Burnout In Headlines
It’s the news, stoopid: In Asia Times, Tom Engelhardt parses the disintegration of the Bush administration in recent weeks and finds the tide has turned — big time. While the entire article is worth a read for its insights, Engehardt’s assessment of the headlines of the day is really telling:
If you want to wet an index finger yourself and hoist it airwards to see which way the winds are blowing, then just check out how the media has been framing in headlines the recent spate of administration attacks. Headline writing is a curious in-house craft – and well worth following. Changing headline language is a good signal that something’s up. When the president attacks, it’s now commonly said that he’s “lashing out” – an image of emotional disarray distinctly at odds with the once-powerful sense of the Bush administration as the most disciplined White House on record and of the president and vice president as resolutely unflappable. Here’s just a small sampling:
The Miami Herald, “President lashes out at critics of Iraq war”; the Associated Press, Cheney latest to lash out at critics; the Buffalo News, Bush lashes out at war critics; even the Voice of America, Bush lashes out at political opponents over Iraq accusations.
In other headlines last week, the administration was presented in post-Oz style as beleaguered, under siege and powerless to control its own fate: The Associated Press, for example, headlined a recent Jennifer Loven piece, Iraq war criticism stalks Bush overseas; the New York Times, a David Sanger report, Iraq dogs president as he crosses Asia to promote trade; and CNN headlined the Murtha events, A hawk rattles GOP’s cage.
The language used in such recent media accounts was no less revealing. Sanger, for example, began his piece this way:
“President Bush may have come to Asia determined to show leaders here that his agenda is far broader than Iraq and terrorism, but at every stop, and every day, Mr Bush and his aides have been fighting a rearguard action to justify how the United States got into Iraq and how to get out.”
While Loven launched hers with, “His war policies under siege at home …”, attributing the siege atmosphere and the Bush “counterattack” to “the president’s newly aggressive war critics”.
Lashing out, stalked, dogged, under siege, counterattacking, fighting a rearguard action – let’s not just attribute this to “newly aggressive war critics”. It’s a long-coming shift in the zeitgeist, as evident in the media as in the halls of Congress.
President Succumbs to Jet Lag
Is President Bush too mentally unstable to serve?
The president had called the news session with US reporters at his hotel.
His earlier meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao did not permit media questions.
Mr Bush answered a range of questions before one reporter said:
“Respectfully, sir … in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?”
The president answered: “Have you ever heard of jet lag? Well, good. That answers your question.”
The reporter asked for a follow-up question but the president then thanked the attending journalists and said: “No you may not.”
He strode from the lectern to the door, trying both handles and then breaking into a laugh.
An aide escorted him to the correct exit and on to dinner at the Great Hall of the People.
New, Unbelievable White House Spin: Rove Lied to Bush about Leaking Plame’s Name
They’ve got to be kidding: Last Sunday, George Stephanapolous dropped a bombshell on his ABC show when he said that a source told him that both the President and Vice President were aware of the efforts of their flying monkeys – including Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and others – to smear ambassador Joe Wilson that led to the leaking the secret identity of his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame. Now we get this malarkey from the spin room at the White House:
Maybe the Unsmart Americans who comprise Bush’s base will buy this load of crap but count us out! What did the president know – and when did he know it?
Senior aide Karl Rove denied to President Bush that he engaged in an effort to disclose the identity of a covert CIA operative to discredit her husband’s criticism of Iraq policy, say people familiar with Rove’s statements in a criminal investigation…
Beginning two years ago, the White House flatly denied that Rove had been involved in unlawfully leaking the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The White House denials collapsed in July amid the disclosure of Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper’s conversations in July 2003 about Wilson’s wife with Rove and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
Bush asked Rove in the fall of 2003 to assure him he was not involved in an effort to divulge Plame’s identity and punish Wilson, and the longtime confidant assured the president so, people familiar with Rove’s account say…
Bush’s discussion with Rove did not get into specifics concerning Rove’s conversations in July 2003 with syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Cooper, who wrote stories identifying Plame, the people familiar with Rove’s account said.
Maybe the Unsmart Americans who comprise Bush’s base will buy this load of crap but count us out! What did the president know – and when did he know it?
If It Wasn’t Cheney or Valerie Plame, Who Sent Joe Wilson to Niger?
Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleisher and others had an irresistable impulse to smear Joe Wilson simply because he dared to challenge them in public, and even though they and their Dear Leader were, in fact, wrong.
After President Bush was caught lying in his 2003 State of the Union speech about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities – the infamous “16 words” about Niger and yellow cake uranium – a Rovian blame game was contrived that successfully confused and blurred the responsibility for the falsehood in the minds of the media and the rest of us.
(Ultimately, the Administration laid the blame on Stephen Hadley, an assistant to Condi Rice, who was National Security Adviser at the time. In classic Bush fashion, rather than being punished, Hadley was promoted. He was given Rice’s job when she moved over to State.)
However, a secondary blame game also ensued that has still not been resolved – and that has now become a central issue in the investigation into the Bush CIA Leak scandal, according to the Washington Post:
The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV’s trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald…
Scooter Libby Said He Met with Judith Miller about Plame
The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald’s grand-jury probe.
American Prospect has a new leak in the Bush CIA Leak investigation – this time not from Karl Rove’s attorney but from “legal sources familiar with” the testimony of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
[Libby] has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby’s account.
The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame’s identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.
Novak Became Fair Game After He Broke His Silence on Plame
Jay Rosen at PressThink has a good analysis of the imbroglio that led to the on-air meltdown of rightwing propagandist Bob Novak earlier this week.
Rosen points out that in the two years since he published the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame, Novak had maintained a strict policy of not commenting on the case – until last Monday when Novak broke his silence – in his own column – to deny assertions by Bob Harlow, a former CIA official, who said he warned Novak not to publish Plame’s name in his July 2003 column. Novak complained in his column on Monday that the CIA official had not warned him enough. (He should have said, “Bob, Plame’s identity is extra-super-secret,” we suppose.)
Here’s Rosen’s reasoning:
Novak, in order to counter the suggestion that he had been properly warned but went ahead anyway — which he said would be “inexcusable for any journalist and particularly a veteran of 48 years in Washington” — decided to take up his pen. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, people have got to know whether their columnist is a crook. Or a jerk. Or a tool. Did I go ahead with the name of a CIA covert operative despite being warned? No, I did not.
Old Novak rules: sorry fellas, can’t talk. New rules: Novak chooses when. When to take the Fifth on advice of counsel, when to ignore counsel and respond to the news with his own explanations of what happened to reveal Plame’s name.
This, I believe, is the real cause of Thursday’s break down of professional discipline on air. The legitimacy of Novak’s exemption from questioning had collapsed earlier in the week. Ed Henry knew it and was ready with that news. Novak was not ready to receive it. So he invented an out.
Plame Leak: Why Time Inc. Caved
In a long, comprehensive (and free on-line) page one article in the Wall Street Journal the reporters explore “the legal differences between defending an individual and defending a corporation.”
Time Inc. technically owned an electronic file that contained Mr. Cooper’s notes, he says. As a result, the parent company could potentially be held in contempt of court and forced to pay large fines if its magazine and reporter didn’t cooperate.
Ms. Miller, by contrast, apparently kept personal possession of her notes, and the Times’s view is that it never had them.
Here’s the legal difference in a nutshell: corporations don’t go to jail, people do.
