You guys are making history.

Thank you.

mahopac maze @ 151

Here’s one from BTC news that someone linked to a couple of days ago. (h/t to whoever that was!)

Hey thanks Peterr — this is my new Bible!

BTW, hope one of the live bloggers will gently tell Nina Totenberg that her characterization this morning on NPR of Joe Wilson as a Bush dissenter is inaccurate and sounds biased.

Wilson is not a partisan, or a dissenter in general; he disagreed with the Bush administration’s slough-off of intelligence that said there was no evidence of sales of yellowcake to Iraq. How is a citizen with a highly-informed opinion based on research on a specific matter to the contrary of an administration to be so broadly painted as a “Bush dissenter”? There are a lot of Republicans who disagree with Bush on one thing, or maybe two — are they “Bush dissenters” as well?

It would be wonderful, though unlikely, to get her to admit that the characterization was inserted by her editor.

I hope you will make this into a post.

What a great explanation.

Scarecrow @ 69

perris — occhams razor version:

Cheney and his man are the principal perpetrators of the fraud that claimed Saddam was both a WMD threat and a terrorist/al-Qaeda threat. They put their people in key intelligence spots throughout the intelligence community to stovepipe faulty intelligence right into the WH and into the media (Miller); where that is not possible, they create new intelligence offices, at CIA, at DoD, in the WH. It’s a rogue operation, outside the normal channels of accountability.

The normal intelligence community fights back. There is constant war between Cheney’s liars and the normal truth tellers. They jockey for for the President’s ear and fight over the contents of his speeches. But the truth tellers don’t know that the liars have backdoor access and provide private briefings from which they are excluded. The Cheney team uses a negligent, lazy (or worse – Miller) media to further the lies/threat memes, while the truth tellers are still playing by the rules.

Wilson is allied with the truth tellers. He’s married to the head truth teller, the head of the CIA group responsible for the finding out the truth on exactly the WMD issue that is the basis for war with Iraq (and later, Iran). They send Wilson to help debunk the bogus Niger claim that will not die — see SOTU. Cheney et al cannot tolerate contrary view because (1) it undermines their lying (2) it exposes the VP and team to censure and (3) when you lie your country into a war, it’s an impeachable offense.

Wilson is the truth tellers’ way to fight back; they can’t go public, but Wilson can. When Wilson starts to go public, first with leaks to the media, then with press his op-ed, Cheney has to do two things: (1) discredit Wilson and (2) intimidate/dismantle the truth tellers within the intelligence community. He succeeds in (2) with Valerie’s outting.

Now we are seeing it all come out, but not enough. The narrow criminal case can’t reveal the total picture of Cheney’s treachery and who were complicit. We get snippets, but not the full picture. Hearings will be needed, unless there are follow on indictments, which remain uncertain at best.

Actually that’s his halo.