Anyone interested in Czech lit. might like to take a look here:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/wo…..89,00.html

On one end are those of us who correctly see Wilson and his wife as the administration did: dissenters who fatally undermined the edifice of lies and crimes on which the political consensus for invading Iraq was erected. On the other are those who support the continuation of the Iraq war at any cost and who are therefore desperately, angrily, slapdashedly trying to cement the crack with further lies, as the Washington Post did this morning with its proclamation that, “The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby’s conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.”

You know, that’s something like what I thought you’d say, but you sure put it better. I have been heartsick at the abuse–and I think it is abuse–hurled at Patrick Fitzgerald the past few days. The Dana Milbank column on 3/6 was atrocious. Milbank or the WaPo has had it edited since, but the pettiness, the low-mindedness, was a perfect example of what about the pundits makes me heartsick.

These threads, spurred by the insights of Marcy and TRex, are breathtaking.

dmac -

couldn’t find it at huffpo either, got this from NSWC website

NSWC

It was in one of the little boxes on the right, breaking news.

We refer to The Chimp. Perhaps Hasek gives it better:
“There’s a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of. . . . Everyone could say exactly what he pleased and what was on the tip of his tongue, just as if he was in parliament. . . No one would come to you and tell you: ‘You mustn’t do that, sir. It’s not decent. You should be ashamed of yourself. . . ’ As I say it was very pleasant there and those few days which I spent in the lunatic asylum are among the loveliest hours of my life.”

with apologies to Terry Hallinan: someday I’ll learn the mechanics of how to quote and respond. Sorry. He ends at “end of trial” I begin This is the perfect coda….

That tears it. I was so proud to have written so beautifully even though I hadn’t. :-)

In another lifetime far away, I listened for the screams of the tortured when I visited the compound of the Vietnamese secret police in Saigon. A week before an American major in the same room I occupied had asked his interpreter what the gawdawful screaming was next door.

“They are beating him with electricity,” said the major’s informant.

The secret police were attentive to the discomfort of American visitors. They moved the detention room across the compound.

Back in the states after discharge a year or two later, I took more punishment from an enraged JFK fan than a Viet Cong bomb when I told the fine gentleman the nomination of JFK would lead to a terrible war and defeat whether JFK or Nixon won the election.

Since that time it has gotten worse.

God bless those who are not confused as I have been all my life. I was not enchanted by the war protesters overall who were represented far more by Jane Fonda than Eugene McCarthy. Gene McCarthy was a true hero suffering a crueler fate than Ned Lamont. Little was more ironic than Bill Clinton eulogizing McCarthy. McCarthy thought Clinton should have been convicted of his impeachment as did I.

Hard to find the good people at times among the silent screams.

Best, Terry

If I had been a member of the press corps present for Fitzgerald’s post-verdict press conference, I think I would have come away feeling that this top-notch prosecutor and his serious-minded and extremely competent colleagues expected few of Fitzgerald’s post-verdict comments and opinions to be taken seriously or reported honestly by those there to record them. In short, I would feel like a member of a disreputable and disrespected group of people who (the honest, modest and very savvy) Fitzgerald saw little or no value in addressing except that his professional duties required him to provide us a chance to query him – knowing in advance the “spin” and politicized questions to come – at least for a short while after his hard-fought verdict.

During his indictment press conference, on the other hand, I thought Fitzgerald treated the members of the media as equal partners in the search for truth on behalf of the American people, and went out of his way to accommodate them and to treat them with respect and deference, just as he doubtless expected them to treat the legal process that was launched by the Libby indictment with respect and deference.

I think perhaps the phrase “sadder but wiser” applies here to the government team, if I’ve read their reactions accurately. [I’m also assuming that the gall of knowing you’ve been conned by a cover-up conducted by those at the highest levels of our government, without having the evidence in hand to expose the misdeeds and prosecute the perpetrators, and without the freedom to explain the situation to the public (or the jurors), played into their mindsets and post-verdict expressions, exhausted as I assume many of them are.]

I feel for them. As I did for the purged United States Attorneys appearing before Congress the same day, as though they were to blame in some way for doing their jobs with integrity, and doing them well… [I swear the actor Edward Arnold from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was on the House Judiciary subcommittee questioning them - don’t know who that Republican Congressman is, but talk about type-casting.] As for the press corps at Tuesday’s press conference (perhaps Carol Leonnig and a few others excepted), EP’s word choice @ 156 above of “embarrassed” ought to apply to them, I think – I feel embarrassed for them, even knowing that many reporters (in large part due to the dictates of the editors and owners of their publications) have earned the contempt of the American public, but sadly, I doubt that many, if any, of them feel that same sense of embarrassment on their own behalf.

2.) John Dean said on Randi Rhodes said that this event started with a ‘break-in’ as did Watergate. This break-in was in Rome to take the materials for the Niger forgeries.

kim @ 173

“Swordfish, salad, bread. Simple.

But I do make the very best pie in the world.”

No doubt, baking rewards attention to detail.

EW, I’ll repeat that the JOMers are preparing something – either recommendations for the Repubs on Waxman’s Committee or some sort of 501 fund.

they have nothing better to do. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves. I never saw so many idiots together on one blog since……..

I don’t think they’re all that harmless, give them a figurehead speaking talking points and they’re suddenly quite powerfull.