Bubble Boy Chuckles? You Bet! Traitorgate's Apparently Just as Funny as Not Finding Those Pesky WMDs

Via Rawstory:

Bush spoke today at the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, at The Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.

STUDENT: First let me say thank you very much for being here. And thank you for taking questions. I know we appreciate that. My name is Ben Deering. I'm a second-year Masters student studying international energy policy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: International -- ?

STUDENT: Energy policy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Oh, good!

STUDENT: Sorry. (Laughter.) My question, sir, is -- well, as Anthony alluded to earlier, and as you're aware, we have many students at SAIS who are currently working for or considering working for the State Department, the various intelligence agencies, and such.

And, how do you respond to the recent report by Prosecutor Fitzgerald that there is, in his words, "evidence of a concerted effort by the White House to punish Joseph Wilson," who himself has a distinguished record of government service?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. No. I -- this is -- there's an ongoing legal proceeding which precludes me from talking a lot about the case. There's also an ongoing investigation that's a serious investigation. I will say this, that after we liberated Iraq, there was questions in people's minds about, you know -- about the basis on which I made the statements, in other words, going into Iraq. And so I decided to declassify the NIE for a reason. I wanted to see people -- people to see what some of those statements were based on. That's what I wanted to see. I wanted people to see the truth. And I thought it made sense for people to see the truth, and that's why I declassified the document.

...And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing, you know, ongoing intelligence matters, and so I did. And as far as the rest of the case goes, you're just going to have let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that. It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it. (Chuckles.)

Chuckles? Chuckles? Chuckles?? Bet Bubble Boy's Daddy don't think this stuff is funny anymore.

Bubble Boy may find it less funny as time goes by.

From Jason Leopold at Truthout:

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger [which is untrue] to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media. . .

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.

Care to place bets, anyone?

But, wait, there's more!!

According to four attorneys who last week read a transcript of President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to the special counsel that he was aware of any campaign to discredit Wilson. Bush also said he did not know who, if anyone, in the White House had retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.

Lucky that Bubble Boy thought to get himself all lawyered up way back when, eh?

Bush
Libby
Plame
Fitzgerald