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I don't get this Scooter Libby thing
By: Anonymous

I don't get this Scooter Libby thing

October 30, 2005

Many people think Scooter Libby is a guy who worked at the White House and lied to a jury, and it didn't have anything to do with anything.

But the Scooter Libby thing has everything to do with everything, including the deaths of over 2,000 American kids, and whether America will be free in the future.

Here is what happened.

Long ago, the U.S. Head of Counter-Terrorism, Richard Clarke, attested that President Bush forcefully told the CIA to find a reason for a war against Saddam Hussein.

A few foreign reports surfaced. However, some people inside the CIA reported to the Bush administration that those reports had been false.

Regardless, President Bush and his administration told Americans that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, was close to nuking the United States, and had been buying enriched uranium (used for making nuclear weapons) from Africa.

Former U.S. Ambassador in Iraq and then Africa, Joseph Wilson, had investigated and already reported to the administration that evidence refuted the claim that Saddam had obtained any enriched uranium from Africa.

Rather than to live with Bush's false claim to the American public supporting the launching of a war, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times reporting the truth.

It was in apparent retaliation against Wilson that the Bush administration, through Dick Cheney's office, revealed to reporter Judith Miller that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA spy.

Valerie Plame had been a CIA operative for three decades and a Director of covert agents in the field. Her only means of safety was her meticulously crafted cover that took her 18 years to build. All those years, she risked her life to protect her country. At the moment the Bush administration flipped her identity out in front of the world, they instantly destroyed Plame's 30-year career and endangered her life. Since, she has received death threats.

After some CIA officers' identities were revealed in the '70's and they were murdered, the act of deliberately revealing the identity of a CIA spy was made a federal crime.

"Outing" a spy also threatens the lives of all agents linked with them, and of anyone abroad who innocently met them. And when an American spy is outed by his or her own government, other spies and potential spies feel betrayed and lose motivation to risk their lives for that government. Plame was not betrayed by enemy nations, but by her own country.

In addition, "outing" a spy threatens and can destroy covert CIA operations, including ones that protect us from terrorism, or even cause them to backfire on the U.S. Plame was abroad on an extremely dangerous assignment to uncover information on weapons of mass destruction. She is an expert on them, and needed by the CIA. But the White House ended her service to our country and jeopardized the national security of the United States. The CIA cannot control the damage and fallout from the leak.

Some dare call it treason. The Bush administration was to protect Americans from terrorism. By all appearances, they leaked Plame's identity to avert further publication of information that could prevent their war, and control what Americans would know.

Valerie Plame was extremely knowledgeable about, and had been working on, areas with weapons of mass destruction. After she lost her career, neither she nor her husband (who no longer worked for the government, either) would have access to further information on the subject.

What the Bush administration did to Plame and her husband was to use a Mafia-type tactic that jeopardized their and others' lives, and cut them off, apparently to silence them and intimidate others to hush about what the White House did not want Americans to know.

A grand jury investigation was warranted on whether Cheney's aides and other senior Bush aides waged a criminal campaign to punish Wilson for exposing the enriched uranium claim as false, by outing his wife's identity.

When called before the grand jury, reporter Judith Miller chose prison rather than to name her source. Three months later, she testified, and named Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Scooter Libby. Libby's notes show that the U.S. President's closest right-hand man, Karl Rove, was his source. A senior White House official confirmed to the Washington Post that the administration leaked the information to at least six journalists.

The investigation, lead by Patrick Fitzgerald, uncovered that Cheney led the White House effort to build the case for war and then defend the claimed justifications for war. (Cheney has been a longtime proponent of taking down Saddam Hussein.)

Cheney's closest right-hand man, Scooter Libby, has been indicted for crimes that together are serious enough to carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, more than the maximum for highjacking an airplane or kidnapping and demanding a ransom.

The investigation continues. Why?

Would senior White House officials have been willing to commit such grave crimes at that level of government, all on their own? Would they have made the decisions to leak Plame's identity to specific reporters at different times, all on their own? Is it plausible that their immediate bosses not only had no clue, but were innocent victims of their highest-level closest right-hand staff?

Before the war began, other countries had seen through the have-to-go-to-war scam. In virtually unprecedented protests, people around the globe cried out against the impending senseless killing and destruction. But the Bush administration listened to no one, and made fun of all who undermined the basis for their war plan. Ironically, Bush kept reminding Americans that Saddam fed his citizens propaganda. Many Americans saw through the American propaganda, and tried to prevent the destruction at home and abroad. Conveniently, they were labeled unpatriotic.

Many Americans accepted the justifications for war without scrutiny or question, and supported their leader, even as he sent American sons and daughters in to attack a country's military, and later its citizens.

The honorable and dutiful United States military did its job, unquestionably following its Commander in Chief, and went into Iraq for all the right reasons. The U.S. military was brutally misled and betrayed.

Once it was widely known that there were no weapons of mass destruction, Bush claimed that Saddam had been aiding terrorism, and had something to do with 9/11. Nothing was found to support those claims, either.

As these grounds for war also became widely exposed as bogus, Bush began pushing a third and new claim, this time a set of 'war benefits'. America's young people in Iraq were winning the hearts and mind of the people of Iraq, bringing them peace and democracy, keeping Americans at home safe, and spreading freedom (which includes freedom of information and the press.)

The very survival of troops in wartime depends on their belief in a noble cause. Our troops absolutely cannot and should not be the ones to realize that the war was and is a massive senseless tragedy. It is up to U.S. citizens to stop the carnage and try to safeguard the troops and country by becoming thinking, learning, discerning people, and tuned-in stewards of the freedom to speak out and to vote.

The truth is, today Iraq is without solutions and full of chaos and violence far surpassing the violence that took place under Saddam. Over 2,000 funerals for young American men and women have taken place in towns and cities across America, attended by devastated families, friends, and neighbors. Tens-of-thousands more young Americans live permanently maimed. Massive numbers of Iraqi fathers, mothers, and children are dead (but the administration keeps their numbers hidden.)

Killing elicits immeasurable human suffering and usually hatred of whoever does the killing. Bush was warned in advance. Yet, through his war he multiplied hatred of America, now a bigger target for more people dedicated to destroying it.

But the biggest threat to America appears to be inside our White House. Launching a war based on lies is a crime against the United States of America resulting in unspeakable devastation. Without freedom of information and the press, an administration is a régime and a democracy is a controlled society, a dictatorship. I, the author of this article, am profoundly and rightfully concerned about the future of this country.

Sometimes the truth is terrible. Nobody would want to realize it. Denying it, however, sometimes results in something more terrible. If we face the truth, we can prevent more horrors. Facing the truth can set us free.

I hope you help our country by passing on this article.