Reaction to Indictment of Cheney Adviser AP

[IChing]

"I have accepted his decision with deep regret." - Vice President Dick Cheney, in a statement accepting Libby's resignation following the indictment.

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"When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth. Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens. The requirement to tell the truth applies equally to all citizens, including persons who hold high positions in government." - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.



"Thanks for the chance to get out of Washington." - President Bush, in an address earlier in the day as Washington awaited the indictment, to members of the military in Norfolk, Va.

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"Today's indictments represent the beginning, but not the end, of the process of finally holding the Bush administration accountable for its conduct in foisting a pre-emptive war on this country." - Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.


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"What brought down the Nixon administration wasn't the burglary itself, but the cover-up of it. What caused Clinton's indictment wasn't that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky but he lied about it. It's consistent with what we've seen in scandals for a long time." - Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke Law School professor.

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"They suggest that a senior White House aide put politics ahead of our national security and the rule of law." - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

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"It appears to be a case of revenge run amok." - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on allegations that the CIA leak was an effort to undermine a critic of the Iraq war.

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>>>>>SNIP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CIA_LEAK_QUOTES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-10-28-14-18-45

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Paragraph #3 certainly shows how bright Chimpy is.

[IChing]

2. I thought was also the most telling....run away..thanks for hiding me

today...coward

[Inland]

3. Yes, that was great juxtaposition.

[oneold1-4u]

5. He is actually brilliant

But the "brilliant" simply smells of more "rove strategy"!
"Just go somewhere, anywhere! We can set up some kind of scene for a distraction" It really wasn't much, but a military person ejected a would-be heckler! Odd?? They let the person in with a anti-bush shirt on??? ROFL
If you go into their "outhouse" you will at least have a small bad smell on you! Don't laugh! They likely fooled several thousand who believe bush haters are the stupid people!

[crossroads]

9. Laughing Out Loud!

So true... CR

[Blaq Dem]

4. I can tell you my reaction to Libby's indictment: champagne, anyone?

[oneold1-4u]

6. Just water please!

To wash a grain of salt down! When they all resign and a few commit suicide, there will be a larger celebration than VJ day!
There is no way that any one of them does not have a share in any and all guilt, right to the top!

[The Judged]

7. Orin Hatch: belittled the vindictive and vengeful outing of a CIA agent.

All because Valerie Flame wasn't outside the country in the previous five years, according to his understanding, and as a result she could not have been a COVERT CIA agent.

Herein, you have a United States Senator who fails to mention even a remote wrongfulness of outing a CIA agent, even in terms of national security, but instead focuses on the "fine" gentleman Libby who has been indicted and for Libby having been wrongfully indicted for Obstruction of Justice as a result of Senator Hatch's reading of the statute and his perception of Valerie Flame's status not being COVERT, despite being classified.

My impression is that you cannot have it both ways: If there could be no crime for outing Valerie Flame, because she was not a covert CIA agent, then why would the Department of Justice and the US Attorney General appoint a Special Counsel to investigate a non-crime?

Why wait until now to attack the entire investigation, if their was no legal basis for inquiry?

The answer is political spin, even publicly and first hand by a Republican United States Senator.

The rage has already begun, just a moment ago, a former US Attorney spoke on CNN and indicated that the Special Counsel wrongly brought the the Obstruction charge, because in order to do so he would have needed to be able to demonstrate that the perjury and false statements were given as a result of committing a crime.

The false notion imparted by this US Attorney, and being advanced rapidly by Republican's, is that there was no crime, Fitzgerald can't prove a crime, and that he is trying to get around the legal restraints imposed on his investigation by charging Libby with Obstruction.


All of this while the Special Counsel continues to conduct his investigation.

Lost in the pea sized minds of the strategists behind this Republican publicity campaign is the fact that the American People see the Republicans pointing at the Special Counsel as having indicted Libby on a technicality, while out of the other sides of their faces those same Republicans state that outing Valerie Plame was not illegal, because of a technicality, that they allege, outside of the restraints of oath and affirmation, despite the United States Attorney General's office appointing a Special Counsel as a direct response to its review of an allegation by the CIA of crimes having been committed in the outing of a classified CIA officer in Valerie Plame.

You would think that these morally driven Republicans would not trample over American citizens acting in a patriotic capacity for their country as a classified CIA agent and with reckless regard for national security in their effort to mislead the American Public to wrongfully believe the falsehood that their own US Attorney General's office cronies did not detect the non-criminal nature of the CIA's allegation of a crime, and that even if the CIA's allegations were true that there was not a crime, prior to appointing a Special Counsel to investigate such a crime, that ultimately would have a senior WH staffer and NSA aid lie to a Grand Jury in order to obstruct the Special Counsel's CONTINUING investigation.

[katty]

8. I go with Conyers statements--spot on!