For months and months we have heard how outrageous it was that somebody in the Bush administration leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media. A special prosecutor was appointed...and no crime was found to have been committed regarding the "outing" of Plame. All indications are that her identity was an open secret, and even her husband was running around telling people she worked for the CIA. But since the imagined "scandal" involves a Republican president, we will never hear the end of it.
So it is with a bit of hypocrisy that we see the Democrats jump up and down about the national security implications of the leaking of Plame's name....but when it comes to somebody leaking the existence of secret CIA prisons...well, they don't care about that as much. The CIA has started an investigation into who leaked the information about the prisons to the Washington Post. One could assume there are covert operatives working in those prisons at some point....having their locations outed would put them in danger.
Not that anyone on the left cares. They're more concerned with debating the existence of the prisons themselves. Suddenly their outrage about leaking classified information has disappeared. What happened? Liberals only care about national security when it serves their political purposes. As outraged as the left was over the leaking of the name of one pencil-pusher at the CIA, they just can't seem to work up an ounce of indignation over the outing of an entire operation abroad.
And what if it is found that a Democrat leaked the information to the Washington Post about the prisons? Will Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi take to the floor of the House and the Senate and demand they be fired? I wouldn't hold my breath, though I would like for them to hold theirs.
HARRY REID IS DERANGED
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to the White House and demanded that President Bush promise not to pardon Scooter Libby. He then made the most ridiculous statement that shows either a.) he has no grasp of the facts in the Plame investigation or b.) he is capitalizing on the general public's ignorance and he knows the media won't call him on it. Here's what he said:
"We're demanding President Bush make a commitment to the American people that he will not pardon Scooter Libby, who was involved in this mess, nor will he pardon anyone involved in this mess. Unless a pardon is ruled out by President Bush, the American people will certainly not learn the truth." What?
Not learn the truth about what? Does he not know that Fitzgerald found no evidence that a crime was committed regarding the outing of Valerie Plame? The truth has been learned, Senator Reid. Of course, he knows that. Furthermore, it is an outrageous request that they never made of Bill Clinton.
Where was the letter to Clinton asking him not to pardon his cronies? What about his last-minute pardon of Henry Cisneros...his former HUD secretary convicted of lying to the feds? They seem to have forgotten about that one. Well ... they haven't actually forgotten, but their hatred of George Bush overpowers all other emotions, including love of country and concern over the threat of Islamic terrorism.
ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE----Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigghhhttttttttttttt.
The people who shot those school children in the back in Chechnya were ... Muslims.
The people who cut off the heads of those Christian school girls in Indonesia were ... Muslims.
The sniper who terrorized the Washington beltway area a few years ago was a .... Muslim.
The people who flew those jets into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were ... Muslims.
The people who invaded those American-built schools in Baghdad and killed the teachers were ... Muslims.
The so-called "pirates" who attacked that Miami-based cruise ship off the coast of Africa were ... Muslims.
The people who are rioting in Paris, shooting at police and paramedics, are ... Muslims.
The people who are rioting and burning cars in Germany are ... Muslims.
One of the first things you should do if you want to stay alive and healthy is to identify the people out there who want you dead. Pay attention.
It is now being reported that the three bombs that went off earlier today in Jordanian hotels were detonated by suicide bombers. The confirmed death toll is at least 67. (See Power Line News.) The photo below was taken at a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman, just moments before one of the mass murderers set off his bomb.
The fathers of both bride and groom, at the far left and right, were murdered. The bride and groom were both wounded, but, thankfully, survived. The groom, Ashraf Mohamed al-Akhras, said from his hospital bed:
I lost my father and my father-in-law and I saw many other dead. This is a horrible crime. The world has to know this has nothing to do with Islam.
I understand his sentiment, but the fact is that this mass murder, like all the others committed by al Qaeda and like-minded groups, has everything to do with Islam. It is up to sane Muslims everywhere to reclaim their religion from the sadists and fanatics.
MARY MAPES--STUCK ON STUPID
What a difference a year makes, eh Mary Mapes?
Just think…a year ago you were a big shot producer at the “Tiffany Network” of CBS. You had gofers at your beck and call. A nice, fat, expense account. A couple of awards under your belt. The fawning admiration of your colleagues. Dan Rather even said hello to you in the CBS cafeteria.
Now, you’re a wreck:
I was extremely battered,” she said in an interview yesterday. “I’d had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup.”
Just goes to show that the more elevated your own opinion of yourself, the farther you fall when you blow it. And Mary, let’s face it; you screwed the pooch big time.
But don’t worry. It appears you are landing on your feet, as your ilk usually does. And what better parachute to hang on to than a chatty, tell-all book in which everyone is accused of being against you, or undermining you, or trying to destroy you. It makes for great copy if not very accurate story telling. But hey! At this point, who’s keeping track?
“I’m a human being; I do things wrong from the first breath I take in the morning,” Mapes said. “I don’t in any way feel I am without responsibility in this. . . . I probably shouldn’t have been as pliable or as malleable as I was” when her bosses were finalizing the story. “This is a huge shortcoming. I didn’t know how to say no. . . . I was trying very hard to please them.”
There, there, little one. You also seem to have trouble saying “no” to partisanship. Remember that call to Kerry campaign mouthpiece Joe Lockhart offering to put serial liar and mentally disturbed Bill Burkett in touch with the Kerry campaign? Of course, that was just in furtherance of the story, right? It had nothing to do with trying to get the opposition party to help you smear the President of the United States in a time of war. After all, you’re just a victim of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
“Truth and Duty” unloads on Rove, the White House senior adviser, calling him “the mastermind of the Republican attack against the story.” Asked about this, Mapes said Rove was “an inspirational figure” for the critics. “I’m not saying I had any proof at all” of his involvement.
I am continually fascinated with the left’s fear of Karl Rove. It reminds me of the way the Union Army looked upon Robert E. Lee during the civil war. Prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, Union Generals were fretting that Lee would slip around their flank as he had on numerous occasions. The usually phlegmatic Ulysses S. Grant exploded upon hearing this saying “Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time.” This is the way the left sees Rove – as some kind of magic man who can not only cast a spell to bewitch the American people but also call upon his minions to do his evil bidding. I wonder if Captain Ed, the Powerline boys, Charles Johnson, and Michelle Malkin – the biggest conservative bloggers – laugh out loud when they read that they’re in Rove’s pocket and can be activated whenever The Evil One feels the need.
It takes a special kind of stupidity to believe that you are right when everyone else on the planet says you’re wrong:
She is disdainful of Moonves, the CBS president who ordered the outside investigation. “He doesn’t know journalism from dirt farming,” Mapes said. In the book, noting that Moonves courted and then married “Early Show” anchor Julie Chen, she writes: “I used to say everything Les knows about journalism had been sexually transmitted. Now I know even that hasn’t taught him much.”She says Viacom, CBS’s corporate parent, threw her overboard because Chief Executive Sumner Redstone feared regulatory retaliation by the Bush administration.
There’s a clinical term for that kind of fantasy; paranoid delusion. There is not one shred of evidence that the Bush White House has ever even contemplated using the FCC to “intimidate” networks. In order to posit that notion, you’ve got to make it up out of whole cloth; something Mary Mapes is an expert at doing.
She’s also an expert at the put down:
Mapes is dismissive of Marian Carr Knox, the 86-year-old former secretary to Bush’s late squadron commander, who told Rather she believed the memos were fake but the substance of the documents was true. Mapes called her “maddening” and “a quite self-righteous typist.”
Being an expert in “self-righteous,” I can see where Mary Mapes would recognize that personality trait – especially in an 86-year old woman who by all reports knew a helluva lot more about the authenticity of those memos than you did.
But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why?” Why go after a story that’s 30 years old?
“Bush didn’t keep his promise to the country,” Mapes writes. “He swore he would fly military jets until May 1974 . . . .”
No Mary, he swore to serve the country until May of 1974 , something he did honorably which is more than can be said about you . The last time I looked, the oath taken upon entering military service does not specify anything like “I will faithfully drive a tank” or “I will gladly work as a PR flack” or even “I will command a swift boat for a couple of months and then carry on with traitorous anti-war activities while still in uniform.”
And what about us, your favorite people, the bloggers?
Perhaps her greatest fury is reserved for the “vicious” bloggers who pounced on the “60 Minutes II” report within hours—and who she believes provided the map that major news organizations, including The Washington Post, essentially followed.“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names,” Mapes said. “I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.” Some of the key bloggers, however, posted criticism under their own names.
Okay, let me get this straight. The “map” supplied by bloggers to newspapers like the Washington Post contained information vetted by thousands of individuals with more expertise than any of the “experts” you retained to authenticate those memos (whose judgment you ignored anyway) and you have the unmitigated gall to say that bloggers were “attacking” you? Could it be because you were standing by a bogus story that you had cooked up for partisan political purposes?
The story of Mary Mapes is classic tragedy. There are two elements that mark the difference between tragedy and melodrama. The first is the main character’s “tragic flaw” which is usually one of the seven deadly sins. In Mapes case, you can take your pick; pride, envy, or anger will do. But it is the second element in tragedy that is the most difficult to achieve for both the playwright and the actor playing the tragic character. And that is the character’s cluelessness regarding why they are suffering this downfall. Look at the great tragic characters in literature and you will see that they go to their deaths without any idea of why their world collapsed around them. In that respect, their sin is always the sin of overweening pride and ambition.
Reaching for the brass ring carries with it the danger that eventually, you’ll fall of the horse. Mape’s fall may have been written in the stars long ago when she ceased being any kind of an impartial journalist and decided to become an advocate. It may have been emotionally satisfying for her to see herself on top of the battlements waving a bloody shirt. But in the end, her belief in her own moral superiority was her achilles heel. How can anyone so good she might have asked herself, be wrong?
The fault, dear Mary, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.
Dear Yasser,
Publicly, I'm condemning the blasts in Amman.
Privately, I'm thankful for them.
That means I can cancel my trip there and spend more time with you on the anniversary of your death.
I hear that meadows upon meadowns of flowers have been laid bare to make the garlands and wreaths that shall be heaped upon your tomb.
A fine, fitting place for the flowers to spend their final days than stealing nutrients from the soil and occupying land that should be used for launching rockets and building training camps.
Love,
Kofi
