rather bizarre then, that the WaPost editorial staff doesn't read their own paper, don't you think?
Quote:
A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic
Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; Page A01
As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.
Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
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and while the Post editorial left out the most important detail, the Post journalists did not:
Quote:
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One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.
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in other words, the "evidence" of Saddam's wmd's that was being leaked was not true - and Bush, Cheney, and Libby knew it.
Quote:
By the time Libby disclosed portions of the NIE, the Niger allegation already had been largely discredited, and much of the other classified information that administration officials revealed about Iraq was wrong, exaggerated or disputed.
Additionally, the court papers suggest that Libby mischaracterized the NIE.
The court filing said he "understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was `vigorously trying to procure' uranium."
But the key judgments of the NIE, which were released publicly days after Libby briefed Miller, made no reference to the uranium allegation, which the State Department disputed in the body of the estimate.
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like my cop friend says, it is what it looks like - a campaign orchestrated out of the White House to discredit a war critic, for political reasons.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040800916.html
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...n/14311340.htm