Scooter Scooter Scooter -- What kind of a name is that for a grown man?

Waiting for the jury to come in after the Libby trial?

Don't bother with the MSM (mainstream media, for our stout handful of non-blogtopian gentle readers). Go directly to coverage at firedoglake.

Say, Jimmy, isn't firedoglake doing what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do, that is, before it morphed into the loudmouth useless braindead Bushist fascist media whore media? Wasn't all of the media supposed to be defending truth, not truthiness? Truth, justice and the American way -- as Sidney Blumenthal does, here.

But let's take time to tippy-toe down Memory Lane, just a bit. Reviewing the arguments presented in the Libby trial, one does love the little constellation of, um, like NINE , count them, NINE persons to whom Libby somehow managed to "blurt" a CIA covert agent's identity!

But hey, it didn't happen that way, people. It was all about Rove. It was all about Twinkie Sneezing. It was all about being SO BUSY Defenderering the Universe. But In the end, boo-hoo, just as Bubble Boy had become the Deciderer, somehow Libby is now revealed as the Forgetter-er.

Oopsie.

Three words:

Unique
Importance
Anger

Good mnemonic, UIA. Why, it's almost like CIA, is it not? Alliterative irony? Libby's behavior with regard to "Wilson's wife" was Unique -- testimony suggested he was acting in unusual ways, calling people he never called, going way out of his way. Libby's behavior showed the Importance to him of this information-- making time for special two hour lunches, even though he's so busy being the Defenderer of the Universe. Libby's behavior was driven by Anger -- to which many witnesses testified.

On a totally different note, hmm, can anyone say "Sealed vs. Sealed"?

Oh, and here's a little photo of Richard "Big Dick" Cheney. And a big one.

Cheney at Auschwitz. Golly. We're feeling really Jungian today, have you noticed?

The Libby trial summation somehow is just making me feel, so, so -- sentimental! Sentimental about Big Dick!

How about you?




Libby trial
CIA
CIA leak

HAPPY TIBETAN NEW YEAR! LOSAR TASHI DELEK!

I'm betting that most of you may not know that it's Tibetan New Year. Looky here, the big-deal Washington Post doesn't even know that it's Tibetan New Year -- but, it is.

So do wish Bill O'Reilly "Losar Tashi Delek!" and if he doesn't say that phrase right back atcha, tell that loudmouth he'd better stop waging his ugly war on Tibetan New Year!

Happy Year of the Fire Pig, people!


Let's hope that all those naughty Bushist fascist piggies who so richly deserve to be thrust on a spit, and roasted over a blazing fire until they're searing hot and cracklin' good -- achieve all that they so richly deserve! Yee haw!


Link here to Buddhist Jihad, Losar Edition.
(Pilgrims and Monks Throwing Tsampa (Flour) into Air, Celebrating Tibetan New Year, Kathmandu, Nepal by Alison Wright)
Tibetan New Year
Fire Pig

Scooter's Twinkie-Sneeze Defense

So, what's with Scooter "What kind of a name is that for a grown man?" Libby's twinkie-sneeze defense, anyhow?

His lawyer brings out 6 journalists who testify that Scooter didn't sneeze on them -- so therefore Scooter didn't sneeze on anyone else?

Holds up on the classic level of "it wasn't me it was the twinkie" thing.

Secondly, their testimony seems to be more about suggesting that Scooter was not leaking, not about Scooter not lying. Or that Scooter was leaking just a little bit. Hunh? So? And?

Plus, it seems that our own aspens-esque Scooter "What kind of name is that for a grown man?" Libby turns out to be, according to defense testimony, the actual oh-so-busy personal DEFENDERER OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE! Wow!


How stupid do his lawyers think the jurors are?

Purty stupid.




Fabulous live-blogging continues at firedoglake.
Nice piece by Sidney Blumenthal at Salon, here, all about Scootie's hubris problems, and more!
(One must bow down before the recent incisive Super-Libbyguy Personal Defenderer of the Universe Defense, which is that poor Scootie has SO much on his mind (absorbing info that appears each day in the New York Times) that he had NO MENTAL SPACE left to remember things like that he forgot Valerie Plame's identity before he remembered ti! Thus, therefore his failure to remember was just you know one of those things, even though he was SO BUSY SAVING THE UNIVERSE that really you'd think he wouldn't have had ANY TIME IN HIS SO BUSY UNIVERSAL-DEFENDERER SO BUSY SCHEDULE MUCH LESS ANY INTEREST in taking Judith Miller for a two-hour "working" lunch at the St. Regis? Hmm?)
Libby trial
Plame, CIA
CIA leak

BIG DICK CAUGHT WITH PANTS DOWN: TIME TO NUKE IRAN

Some say nuking Iran will be just a wag-the-dog war thing to take pressure off Bush's failures in Iraq and the lies that led up to that war.

Some say waging war on Iran will deflect blame away from Richard "Big Dick" Cheney.

Some say nuking Iran is why Cheney had deep-cover NOC and (hmm) Iran WMD non-proliferation expert Valerie Plame outed in the first place.

Three wars at once.

Losing each and every one of them?


Some say -- it's the Bush trifecta!

What do you say?


I think we're all really really f*cked.


Libby trial
Cheney, CIA
CIA leak
Iran War

Will Scooter "What kind of a name is that for a grown man?" Libby Finger Scooter Libby? So far he's fingering Big Dick.

So, wow, it turns out that serial draft-dodger, sadist-in-chief, "last throes" guy Richard "Big Dick" Cheney was the driving behind the propaganda conspiracy that outed undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.

One is shocked, shocked.

Is one not?



Links to the official DOJ website with transcripts of Scooter's testimony, here.

Scooter Libby's trial continues, masterful live blogging continues at firedoglake.


Unofficial excerpt from Scooter's Grand Jury testimony:

Fitzgerald: And do you have a nickname?

Libby: Yes, Scooter.

F: Can you give us a description of how you got the name Scooter?

L (joking): Are we classified in here?

Is this man insane? He was making snarky jokes about classified info while being questioned by Fitzgerald, under oath? Isn't this the same lame joke he tried when questioned by FBI agent Bond?

Talk about inappropriate and un-funny. Quick, let's look under the sofa, we might find those pesky WMDs.



But wait, wait.

It's time for another

No Blood for Hubris Official Mini-Mental Health Interlude:

"Some good news. Finally, President Bush is going to do something about global warming. He became alarmed when another chunk of ice fell off his mother."
--David Letterman

Libby trial
CIA
CIA leak
Libby GJ testimony

Shame on Us for Not Having Ended This Bestial War

Via Welcome to Pottersville: Welcome to Pottersville: Supergirl Strikes Again

FBI's Bond Fingers Scooter "What kind of a name is that for a grown man?" Libby

"Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said."

--Mark Twain



WaPo story here.

One of the FBI agents who interviewed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby during the CIA leak investigation testified yesterday that the vice president's then-chief of staff did not acknowledge disclosing the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters, asserting that he was surprised when another journalist later told him about her.

FBI agent Deborah S. Bond also testified that Libby said that, while he was preparing to be interviewed by investigators in the fall of 2003, he came across a handwritten note he had made during a phone conversation with Vice President Cheney.

The note made it clear that, shortly before June 12, 2003, Cheney had told Libby that Plame worked at the CIA's counterproliferation division . . .

Libby's conversation with Cheney took place nearly a month before Libby telephoned Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief.

According to Bond, Libby said that, during that call, Russert mentioned that "all the reporters" knew that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's wife worked at the CIA.

Libby told the investigators that "it was as if it was the first time he'd heard it," Bond said.

-------------------------

"Earlier today, President Bush pardoned the White House turkey. It was just a practice run for Scooter Libby." --David Letterman

"Scooter Libby, who got indicted, has set up a legal defense fund to help pay his legal bills. It's pretty good, for a $1,000 donation you get a hand-written thank you note and the name of a CIA agent." --Jay Leno

"Libby was indicted on two counts of obstruction of justice, three counts of perjury, and one count of not being as smart as Karl Rove." --Jon Stewart

"What did Scooter Libby say when he bumped into President Bush at the White House? 'Pardon me.'" --Jay Leno

"Outside the courthouse, Libby's lawyer said all he wants to do is clear his client's good name. I don't know. "Scooter"? Is that a good name?" --Jay Leno



Libby trial
CIA
FBI testimony
Cheney testimony

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.