SocraticGadfly: Here’s Bob Novak: Your mission? Count the lies about “pardon Libby”

March 09, 2007

Here’s Bob Novak: Your mission? Count the lies about “pardon Libby”

Conservative columnist Bob Novak, the man who’s “outing” column about CIA covert operative Valerie Plame got Scooter Libby four counts of conviction for lying and obstructing justice, says President Bush should pardon the guy.

Here’s a few examples of deception, with my comment:
The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House.

No, it was hatched by Vice President Dick Cheney, not Bush. BUT, as with Nixon, the question is, “What did Bush know and when did he know it?” Funny that Novak isn’t asking for that to be answered.
In fact, her being classified — that is, that her work was a government secret — did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine U.S. intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage.

That’s not what the case was about; it WAS about perjury and obstruction of justice. (Obstruction of rational thinking, as being committed by Novak in this column, is not yet a crime.)
George W. Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political.

Anybody who knows special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will attest that he, unlike Bob Novak, is NOT inherently political.

Wanna give us some more lies and deceptions, Bob?

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