Having just been regaled by news via Jane Hamsher that Judy Miller “will pick up a First Amendment Award at the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Convention & National Journalism Conference on Oct. 18 in Las Vegas,” it was heartening to read A.P. reporter Pete Yost’s latest.
Yost’s article, posted minutes ago at the S.F. Chronicle site, is optimistically titled, “Prosecutor Nears Decision in CIA Probe.”
Yost reveals how Fitzgerald — who “has burnished his reputation as a tough, hard-charging prosecutor” — engineered the personal contact between Scooter Libby and Judith Miller.
It was Fitzgerald’s letter to Libby’s lawyer in September that helped resolve the impasse over Miller, resulting in her testimony.
Yost also sums up how the White House’s strategy has shifted
“[a]s the evidence has emerged.”
Bush now says he will fire someone only if the person committed a crime. Also, lawyers no longer contest that their clients discussed the identity of Wilson’s wife with reporters. Instead, the lawyers are trying to make the case that exposing her covert status was inadvertent and not part of a conspiracy.
About that tantalizing headline — “Prosecutor Nears Decision in CIA Probe” — Yost writes:
…[Fitzgerald] is nearing a decision on whether to file criminal charges after assembling evidence that top presidential aides had numerous contacts with reporters in the matter.
… Fitzgerald has a variety of options as he weighs whether anyone broke a law that bars the intentional unmasking of a CIA officer. Defense lawyers increasingly are concerned Fitzgerald might pursue other charges such as false statements, obstruction of justice or mishandling classified information.
Before those decisions are made, presidential confidant Karl Rove will make a fourth grand jury appearance, as early as Friday. …
Lest we get too elated, there are these sobering words from the ever-angry Moscow Times columnist, Chris Floyd … Below:
… These murdering liars: it just chokes you with fury, what they’ve done — and what they will get away with. For be assured: even if Patrick Fitzgerald makes all our dreams come true, handing down indictments for Karl Rove, “Scooter” Libby and even the great sulphurous belch of corruption that is Dick Cheney, Bush will simply pardon them all — just like Papa did in his last days in office, with a bagful of pardons that quashed the investigation into the Iran-Contra scam (which was, in many respects, a very similar act of warmongering treason).
What’s more, even if — in the wildest dream on the edge of possibility — Bush himself gets caught in the cross-hairs, there’s always the old Nixon-Ford ploy. You take a pliable outsider and say: “I’ll make you Vice President if you promise to pardon me when I’m gone and you take over.” Cheney — an old Nixon White House hand who became Ford’s chief of staff and was a top insider in all the Bush I machinations — knows how to play this game. Sure, if worst comes to worst, you may have to step down from office — but nobody does time, and more importantly, nobody loses any money.
No, these guys will sleep on feather-beds for the rest of their lives, feted — and fattened with cash — in the gilded bubble of the right-wing elite. The fix is in — and as always, it is the innocent, the weak and the most vulnerable in the world who will pay the cost for the crimes of these bloated, bloodsoaked liars.
God I hope he’s wrong. And I bet he does too.
Sleeping in feather beds for the rest of their lives won’t stop them from burning in Hell. Or at least I hope not.
Even if the USA could not lay a hand on them… we just send them to the Hague after an extradition request.
The Bushiter can not pardon anybody from international crimes or European countries like Belgium and Germany who CAN charge them pardon or no.
Plus I think you could use material witness rules to hold them and make them testify.
It is as always a matter of ‘will’.
‘Will’ we let them get away with murder?
LL
I remember Iran/Contra well enough to remember how much steam is let out of investigations once they aren’t criminal investigations (because people have been pardoned). And that was with a (nominally) Democratic Congress, too.
On the other hand . . . pardons right now would only fuel the current feeling that the Republicans are corrupt and crony-istic. People didn’t feel that way about Reagan. They felt he was well meaning and this was something that just sort of happened.
Bush should have gotten all of this out two years ago when people weren’t ready to think anything bad about him. Now, I hope and believe, they are.
that regardless of where the dems come in affection from the public, the repubs are now pukes to the vast majority, except for the repubs themselves who are, what 35% (and those are the ones who haven’t sicken on the repub nonsense and left!)
American kids didn’t die in Iran-Contra. There are too many Cindy Sheehans who lost their children or husbands, or who saw them returned maimed and psychologically damaged for life for any of these criminals to get off on something as easy as a pardon. The American public won’t allow it. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of the NRA, they will be marked men.
The critical step is indictment and exposure. Since so much of this stuff is classified, it’s difficult to believe that it will come out in open court, especially as the Supremes have been generally supportive of the Administration on these matters. It will take massive outrage to move that rock.
But as things are, it’s better things are going the way they are going, than not at all.
I postulated that exact scenario about a week or so ago…
Write him! He’ll reply.
As did I. I think you saw my post, and I had links to my comments over at dKos. (where, btw, people thought I was mostly crazy)
Anyway, like I’ve been saying, Nixon/Agnew/Ford redux. You can bet on it. The RW pundits have all turned on Bush, there’s a supposed split between office of VP and preznit, and the Miers nom is a scared prez trying to CYA.
For this to be the perfect crime, they just need to do this all right before the ’06 elections and appoint a sufficiently charismatic VP/president-to-be to make the RW base forget all about the abomination that was Bush.
The only question that remains is who will this new VP be? For many reasons, I favor Giuliani, though I know most here and at dKos don’t buy into that.
My take:
The negatives, of course, is that he’s too liberal for the fundy base (since when did that stop Republicans), may be an abortion-rights supporter, and has marriage “issues.” But don’t underestimate the RW image rehabilitation Machine ™. I look for an annulment from the Pope and a born-again Catholic Giuliani. I’m sure some tit-for-tat could be arranged with Benedict (e.g. make the abuse scandals go bye-bye, disclaimer: I am a practicing Catholic, though if my archdiocese goes full-bore on opposing the upcoming Missouri constitutional amendment battle on stem cell research, I may have to vigorously reasses that).
Oh, and if he becomes our defacto Big Brother, he’s potentially got a 10-year presidential term (and maybe longer if that fascism part comes true).
I think you saw my post, and I had links to my comments over at dKos. (where, btw, people thought I was mostly crazy)
We like crazy people. In fact, I think that should be BT’s new slogan.
The small solace I can take in that scenario is that Dim Son cannot “appoint” a vice-presidential successor to Darth Dick. Such a person must, by the Constitution, be approved by majority vote of both houses of Congress.
Now, we know how closely this administration has followed the Constitution and how much respect it gives the Congress as a separate arm of government, but I do think the public, and the now-awakening MSM, would raise an enormous ruckus at any attempt to short-circuit the process. At least, I hope they would . . .
The lawyer for the NO cops who were able to escape unharmed from their terrifying confrontation with the 64 year old retired schoolteacher in New Orleans.
I’ve been watching him on CNN and he strikes me as definite Washington material.
when any reporter (even if it is for The Moscow Times) can come up with a line like “the great sulphurous belch of corruption that is Dick Cheney.”
He has a huge vocabulary and an encyclopedic knowledge of literature. He’s a lot of fun to read.
beautiful – my fave was “the mooing herd of punditry”
I’ve got to admit that Chris Floyd’s post (whom I really like and respect) surprised me. This says more about me than Floyd, but I never, not for a moment even thought, or had even a gleam in the farthest reaches of the mush that I call my brain, that these people will ever do jail time. Indictments was all I am hoping for. And its not a case of being single-focused or anything, just that my expectations over all these years have been lowered so consistently, that I can’t even imagine the possibility of any further punishment. Still can’t. That Floyd cannot only imagine it, but also feel angry that it won’t happen, speaks to his immeasurable optimism, I think.
Iran Contra took place with a Democratic controlled congress. This certainly won;t result in anyone going to jail. But indictments could casue Bush some damage. Then again just how much “damgage” does he have to cause for the American Public to take to the streets, not just against Bush but against the Media that protects and fears him?
It seems probable that if there are indictiments there will be something to offset it. Sometihing manufactured, something serious, I suppose….not just a threat but a real event. And this event will take your breatdth away and the news will focus on it and not those indicted.
The next step will be that the indictments will become more “background noise”. Stuff you can’t quite make out because what;s in front of you will be much louder.
…you’re saying, “get ready for another 9/11,” no?
Is this just “I have a hunch” or do you have other reasons to believe it to be true?
I have to admit, that “It’s going to snow soon” diary over at dKos a couple of days ago scared the bejeezus out of me. I hope the “snow” isn’t from a nuclear winter.
Or it could just be everyone freezing to death from lack of NG for heating this winter. Or massive die-offs from avian flu.
You know, take your pick.
No , I don’t think 911. Just a back pack expoding on an empty train will drive everybody crazy. It doesn’t have to result in the deaths of people. Maybe a car bomb with no one around. I don’t think they are ready for major 011 stuff yet.
It all comes down to just how much and in what way the MSM will cover this…although they are beginning to show a slight sense of revolt…which of course isn’t really saying to much.
The print journalists can say what they want but it’s the tv media that will be what the majority of people will be listening to so I’m not particularly optimistic..I’ll believe it when I see it, in other words-that they are frog marched out of office.
“these sobering words” I immediately saw the close-up of GWB and Karl Rove and thought, “It would not be so bad, two friends together, if they were not a couple of murdering bastards.”
Then I read the script and Chris Floyd writes, “These murdering liars: it just chokes you with fury, what they’ve done — and what they will get away with.”
Exactly.
It always is. Kissinger, North, Nixon, every fucking one of those sick bastards who destroy humanity.
So great, it is. Now what? Do we just hang our heads and say “gee, I hope history doesn’t repeat itself” or do we start making an issue NOW to cotton the masses to the fact that Bush probably WILL pardon these traitors. These warmongers. And that when he does it will show once again that the Republican party does NOT speak for American’s, or the American soldiers dying on the battlefield… or for humanity, or for national security, they speak only for their own pathetic lives.
I say we start writing our own history (which we are doing) now. Fuck the victors writing it. I’m sick of that shit.
I thought Wilson had a civil suit going. Maybe one of the lawyers can tell us if anything can stop that from going forward. Likewise the ACLU case against Rummy, et. al.
A pardon will not stop a civil suit.
JW will see it through.
This has been discussed over at firedoglake and the President does not have the powers to pardon anyone convicted in a state court. There is speculation Fitzgerald may indict, at some of the charges, in the DC court just to close this option.
Something just hit me. Fitzgerald does have the RICO law to work with as well. These clods may not sweat doing time in Club Fed but they will start to sweat when they know their Mutal Funds can be got at? I think? IANAL. BostonJoe? Where are you?
No, these guys will sleep on feather-beds for the rest of their lives, feted — and fattened with cash — in the gilded bubble of the right-wing elite. The fix is in — and as always, it is the innocent, the weak and the most vulnerable in the world who will pay the cost for the crimes of these bloated, bloodsoaked liars.
They will retire on our dime, we won’t have retirement benefits at all. They are temporary workers; compensate them like they are.