President Bush is quite the extraordinary man (boy). At a press conference today he pretty much let out what we already know, one (or two or whatever) of his men leaked Valerie Plame's name, committing treason and then covered it up. The admission came after he was asked about Scooter's commutation, but Bush didn't want to talk about it, so he passed over certain reporters for follow up and went to a Fox News reporter.
From RawStory:
Abramowitz stated, "You spoke very soberly and seriously in your statement about how you weighed different legal questions in coming to your decision on that commutation. But one issue that you did not address was the issue of the morality of your most senior advisers leaking the name of a confidential intelligence operator. Now that the case is over ... can you say whether you were at all disappointed in the behavior of those senior advisers, and have you communicated that disappointment to them in any way?"
"First of all," responded Bush, "the Scooter Libby decision was, I thought, a fair and balanced decision. Secondly, I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the testimony that people throughout my administration were forced to give as a result of the special prosecutor. I didn't ask them during that time, I haven't asked them since. I am aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and, you know, I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, 'I did it.' Would we have had this -- endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House and it's run its course and now we're going to move on. Wendell..."
Bush neither gave Abramowitz the chance for a follow-up question nor apparently remembered that he had already promised to call after Abramowitz on a different reporter, who interjected an objection to being passed over. Instead, Bush called on Wendell Goler of Fox News, who stated, "Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?"
Michael Abramowitz's question and the subsequent answer left the press corp and the American people feeling more violated than inmate who dropped the soap in the shower every two minutes from shaky hands. Bush mentions the news in a very nonchalant and apathetic way, just as he did about how he doesn't
spend much time anymore on Osama bin Laden.
What makes the story more disturbing, yet not surprisingly is how he ignores the history of his own actions. When the focus was on the White House initially to come clean about who leaked what to whom, he said he would fire whoever leaked the information. Now that it is obvious that Scooter was helping his boss Dick Cheney to exact revenge on Joe Wilson and his covert wife, he conveniently forgets his own words.
This is just another reason out of many to impeach the President and Cheney, there are so many to count, but the Congress fails to act. Where's the action? The strength? The courage? Someone needs to stand up for our democracy before there is no democracy left.
