Judy Judy Judy Fingers Scooter "What kind of a name is that for a grown man?" Libby -- PLUS, my favorite parts of trial testimony to date!

Judy Judy Judy.

Your and Scooter's aspen-roots all intertwined, and a-turnin'. "They turn in clusters, for they are all connected."

Ah, yes. Turn, turn, turn.

That makes five people who have turned in Scooter and undermined his feeble spin so far, does it not?

WaPo here.

PLUS -- my favorite trial part. So far.

IN WHICH Scooter "What kind of name is that for a grown man?" Libby asks Addy the age-old burning question: how do you know an undercover agent is undercover when you're introduced to him or her?

Firedoglake liveblog paraphrase excerpt:

Fitzgerald: What else was said?

Addington: He (Libby) asked me how you would know if you met someone from CIA if they were undercover. . . . He asked if they introduced themselves how you'd know.

The answer is, of course, YOU KNOW THEY'RE A CRUCIAL TOP-SECRET DEEP-COVER CIA AGENT WHEN THEY INTRODUCE THEMSELVES BECAUSE OF THE BIG SPARKLY NEON PINK "NOC" BADGE THE CIA MAKES THEM WEAR!!!


God I hate having hopeless retards running the country.


Libby trial
CIA and Valerie Plame
Judith Miller testimony

ARI FLEISCHER FINGERS I. "SCOOTER" (What kind of name is that for a grown man?) LIBBY

Via WaPo.


How stupid is Scooter Libby?

Stupid enough that his flimsy slimy cover story, of learning a CIA NOC's identity from reporters, just exploded fully in his face.

Ari Fleischer just testified that Libby was telling him all about Valerie Plame's identity days before Libby claims he "heard it" from reporters.

Scooter told him the "Valerie Plame" name (not "Wilson's wife").

Scooter told him she worked for CIA.

Scooter told him Plame worked on weapons nonproliferation -- part of CIA's Operational Directorate. As in -- secret. As is -- "NOC, NOC -- who's there?"

FLEISCHER TELLS JURY THAT LIBBY TOLD HIM ABOUT PLAME

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told a jury today that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff was the first person to disclose the identity of an undercover CIA officer to him in July 2003. Valerie Plame's identity was revealed in the press days later.

Taking the stand just before noon in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fleischer said that in an unusual lunch in the White House mess, Libby told him that the wife of a prominent war critic worked in the CIA's counterproliferation division. Fleischer, a crucial prosecution witness, said Libby told him at the July 7 lunch that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was sent to Niger not by the vice president, but by Wilson's own wife at the CIA.

So much for Scooter's tall tale about learning about Plame from reporters. So satisfying to have it smashed to smithereens.

Ready for the big house, Scooter?
I'm sure the big house denizens are all ready for you.

My favorite interchange:

Prosecution: Did you have any hesitation about sharing this?

Fleischer: I never would have thought this was classified. Never in my wildest dreams believed this involved, as I've read since, this involved a covert officer.



(NB -- Note that the information Scooter is passing on to Fleischer includes inaccuracies that are specific to the spin of the Vice-President, and are not factual. Wilson's wife did not "send" him to Niger. The Vice-President made a sexist attempt to undermine Wilson's credibility by suggesting that he went at the behest of the little woman, because as we all know, females are inferior beings who can't send anyone anywhere, and if they do, it therefore must be bullshit. This is also why Valerie Plame cannot be a NOC, even though she was. Because women are just secretaries, pencil-pushers, hors-d'oeuvres-passers, babymaker housekeepers, yada yada yada. So very fifties mindset, is it not?)


More via RawStory/MSNBC, here.
Liveblogging trial via firedoglake, here.
Libby trial
Plame
Ari Fleischer

What? Cheney Lying In Order to Foster War? We're Shocked, Shocked!

Rockefeller: VP Cheney applied 'constant' pressure to stall investigation on flawed Iraq intelligence

* Cheney increasingly on the defensive
* Durbin calls Cheney 'delusional'

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said.

More here.

SOTU: Bubble Boy Channels Jimmy Carter

Yeah, hey wow, all of a sudden Preznit Toad-Exploder suddenly believes in global warming!

And in global climate change, balancing the budget, saving the environment he raped, defending our system of laws, yup, the ones he himself disembowelled, and he suddenly now believes in helping the poor and the elderly, and yes balancing the budget whilst cutting taxes, hyuk hyuk hyuk. So cute. So verry cute.

Oh, and while Jimmy Carter is still the big-time Bushist fascist poster boy for, um, "bad" prescient presidents, he was apparently right THIRTY FRICKIN' YEARS AGO for advising us to get off the Big Oil Teat, since Bubble Boy is now a-carryin' that particular (petroleum-fuel-based?) torch.

Rather against his will, one supposes.

Still, dear Bubble Boy and his merry band of Bushist fascists want to drown everything good and decent in the great Grover Norquist bathtub, however.

Oh well.

Their War on America/War on Democracy is, one must admit, still going rather well for them.

So far.



[EXTRY EXTRY READ ALL ABOUT IT! BubbleBoy's Bubble Bubble Toils & Trouble: red hot simmering steaming screaming facts on LibbyCheneyTraitorGate!

Plus: the actual INR Memo, here.]

Plus, way MORE fun: Ghosts of SOTU Past!!


State of the Union
Bush
worst president ever

China's Up, America's Down: Thanks a Lot, Bubble Boy

So China's winning the space-race, weapons-wise, here.

And thanks to Bubble Boy's Oedipal War in Iraq, his pissing away the big fat Clinton/Gore surplus, and the huge bleeding screaming deficit he created with his evil Oedipal War in Iraq, he pretty much sold this country down the river -- to China, who picks up our debt (Bush's debt, really).

And Bushist fascist Ben Bernanke's blaming Bush's bleeding screaming deficit not on Bush, but on -- the Baby Boomers, here.

Preznit Toad-Exploder's doing pretty darn well in his War on Democracy/War on America. It's the only thing he's good at -- the moral and fiscal destruction of the USA.



America -- dragged by its hair to Bush's bathtub, thrown in, and drowned.

By George Bush -- America's Batterer.


.

More Blood for Bush's Hubris: Who Will Be the Last to Die for Bush's Lies?

Bubble Boy's at it again, sending your kids to Iraq to die, but -- not his kids.

(His twins are total slackers who don't even have jobs, never have had any jobs, just like their daddy hasn't ever had a real job ever.)

I mean, golly, what a speech it was. What cheerleading. Big-time. High-end. Sending other people to be the last to die for his lies, but not his people, it's sort of like when coWard Bush wouldn't put his own ass on the line by going to Vietnam, but wanted others to spill their blood for him, kinda Jesus in reverse, as it were.

Can you say -- chickenshit juvenile toad-exploding moron warmonger?

Can you say -- arrogant SOB?

Can you say -- poster boy for not letting stupid people with character disorders run the country?


Thanks all the same.

More here.

Bush's Duct-Tape Mummystate -- Or, Saving Western "Civilization" Via Medievalist Savagery

Torture, torture, torture.

You'd think someone would tell these people the stuff they do is wrong.

You know, like their Mommies and Daddies.

Did Barbara Bush ever tell Bubble Boy that exploding toads was wrong?

Apparently not.

Anyway, Jesus wept, here's more fun stuff from Gitmo.

Your tax dollars at work.


FBI DETAILS DETAINEE ABUSE

WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

Documents released Tuesday by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogations practice used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants. . . Some military officials and contractors told FBI agents that the interrogation techniques had been approved by the Defense Department, including directly by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. . .

"I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive but personally very upsetting," one [FBI} agent wrote, describing seeing a man left in a 100-degree room with no ventilation overnight. "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently literally been pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

Another agent said he heard several "thunderclaps" then saw a detainee lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Interrogators told the agent the man was upset and had thrown himself to the floor.

Hmm. That's the kind of excuse wifebeaters and childbeaters use, is it not? "She ran into a door." "She just tripped and fell."

Charming.