Comments Posted By Tano
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Rick,
Rove's problem did not arise from "forgetting one fricking email". He was not asked whether or not he recieved a particular email. He was asked whether he spoke to a particular person. The email was simply evidence that he had, when he claimed not to. This can only be construed as a problem of "forgetting an email" if you take the position that he should be free to make up any story he wanted to for the grand jury, taking care only not to run afoul of any evidence that might be out there. In that sense, yeah, he screwed up by forgetting the existence of evidence that contradicted his story. But the real problem is with the story.
As to public data-points. I specifically said that the data point was that ANY indictment (I meant any possible indictment - no assertion that one actually existed) didnt come to frutition. Thats true.
Nothing that has come out so far contradicts TO's explanation. All we know is that Fitz is not anticipating bringing charges against Rove, based on an assertion by Rove's lawyer. Thats it. Everything else is speculation. TO's indictment - dropped indictment story is no less plausible (in fact probably more plausable) than your claim that their story was "made up". It would be pretty bizarre for career officials to completely make up a story like that - what would be the point? If they did make it up, then clearly that would come out eventually, and they would be exposed as gross liars. What would be the temporary benefit that would outweigh this inevitable consequence? And why would Leopold make it up? What would be the benefit of a few days of buzz over a scoop if it were obvious that the "scoop" would be exposed, because it, in fact, never existed?
As to your questions. Fitz has a (very sensible) policy of not commenting on anything going on in the media, until and unless he has his own reasons for doing so. And I am not claiming that Luskin is lying about the fax. I am prepared to believe the basic claim - that Fitz does not anticipate bringing charges. The issue is not about some claim that Luskin is lying about the fact that no indictment is forthcoming. The non-indictment of Rove is actually consistent with TO's story. Luskin's account of the fax, and TO's story could both be true.
TO people are not "my heros". One does not have to choose up teams and go to bat for them no matter what. I am just trying to make sense of all this like a normal person (differentiating myself from partisans on either side). I find your tone to be not all that different from the tone of advocates on the other side. You seem to have no interest in what actually went down, just scoring points against people you percieve to be on the other side.
Libby lied - there seems to be a pretty strong case for that, so I don't really understand the sympathetic noises I hear about him. Rove didnt tell the truth either, and the convenient forgetfulness defense kinda stinks, to my nose. No doubt the lefties would love to bring these people down, whether they are actually guilty of anything or not. But the RWers I read all seem to want to protect these people, once again, whether or not they did anything wrong. Here is an idea. If the TO story is wrong, why not try to find out what really went down, in all the gory details?
Comment Posted By Tano On 20.06.2006 @ 14:18
No, actually can't really stand much of Goldstein in any case. Smarmy snark is not particularly enlightening or interesting.
Seems to me that TO is putting out a coherent story. Rove was indicted, and the indictment was used to pressure him into further cooperation, at which point it was dropped. As you yourself admit - interesting speculation. The only real public data point we have to work with is that any indictment of Rove seems not to have been brought to fruition, and that its over for him (based only on the word of his lawyer, with no access to the document). We really have no idea what has actually been going on behind the scenes.
Some things seem undeniable. Rove did not tell the truth to the grand jury originally. No real doubt about that. Fitz spent a long time dealing with this - including four more grand jury appearances by Rove. No doubt about that. A possible indictment of Rove seems also to have been a very distinct possibility - the enormous sigh of relief from the WH this past week seems to prove that Rove was really really in very real danger. In this context, the TO line of this past week does not seem absurd. In fact, it seems more likely to be accurate than the party line of the Republicans, which is that somehow Rove is "exonerated". He may have spun and cooperated himself out of trouble, but he hardly emerges looking very good from all this - except of course to those who value him for his political skills, and have no interest in questioning his character or methods.
Comment Posted By Tano On 20.06.2006 @ 11:21
This is all quite simple, really. There are undisputed facts on the table, all we need do is look at them.
Karl Rove testified to the grand jury and did not tell the truth.
When evidence emerged that revealed that, he claimed he "forgot".
Given how unbelievable this is, Fitz investigated to find a way to nail him.
Rove decided to cooperate from that point on, and Fitz was unable to amass sufficient evidence to disprove a defense of forgetfulness.
We can all reach our own conclusions about the plasuability of the defense, and the character of Rove.
Oh, and as for the "left" and Leopold, it would certainly behoove Mr. Moran to actually read some of the lefty blogs and comments to see how they are reacting to Leopold, before making baseless charges.
Comment Posted By Tano On 14.06.2006 @ 11:55
GUANTANAMO SUICIDES A STAIN ON AMERICAN JUSTICE
Andy,
It is not Gitmo's status as a military base that I meant to focus on, but the fact that it sits on teritory that is ours, in perpetuity. Territory that is under the legal control of the US. To claim it is "cuban soil", even though Cubans have no legal or practical control over it, and we do, is nonsense. You repeat the arguments for setting up the base there, but fail to come to grips with the fact that this entire exercise is one that purposely is trying to find some technical way around the law. Even if it could be authoritativly determined that Gitmo really is in some legal netherland, what does it say about this administration that they are so determined to establish this prison where they need not be accoutable for what goes on there - where they can hold people indefinitly with no chance for them to establish their innocence.
You claim these people are dangerous. That may well be the case, maybe for all of them. But we dont know that. We did NOT capture most of them on the battlefield in the process of carrying out aggression against us. Many are there simply because they were ratted out by people who we really have no valid basis for trusting. We have all seen the quality of "intellegence" that we have about the goings on in remote areas of Afghanistan and Iraq, havent we?
I have heard this phrase "several we have released have been killed or recaptured" many times, but never with any evidence to back it up. Many times I have heard it from people I have no trust in. Do you have any basis for saying that, other than that you have heard it making the rounds?
I'm glad you are for transparency down there. But you should come to grips with the fact that everything about the process of setting up that place, and maintaining it, was done for the explicit purpose of avoiding transparancy.
Comment Posted By Tano On 12.06.2006 @ 13:12
Wow. Rick Moran has written a post which i agree with completely. Careful Rick, you are in danger of loosing your membership card in the Loony League.
You see, this is why I bother. You really do have the capacity to think intellegently. Oh if only you would do that every day.
As a side comment re. Gitmo:
I have always found it to be amazing how the Bush administration got away with the logic they used to set up Gitmo in the first place. They made the explicit case that they wanted to house these people in a place that was outside the jurisdiction of American law - i.e. not on US territory. The notion that a US military base, on land that is part of a permanent US lease, is somehow not US territory is ludicrous, and yet, they got away with it.And of course, the very notion that they wanted to set up this place outside of the jurisdiction of the courts should raise huge red flags in the first place.
It was good that you noted that many of the detainees were turned over to us by warlords in Afghanistan. Is it truly beyond the intellectual capacities of most Republicans to understand that there may well be many people there who are innocent of any aggressive intent against the US, and may simply have pissed off their local warlord? Having a scrupulous system of protections for the accused is vital, even here in the US where we can be pretty sure that almost all police are honestly trying to do their job, focusing on the truly bad guys. In Gitmo we have a system where detainees are given to us by people we have no reason to particularly trust, and the administration then turns around and tries to give those detainees no recourse whatsoever to a process whereby they can mount a defense of the charges against them. Shameful indeed.
Comment Posted By Tano On 12.06.2006 @ 11:11
SOMETHING MISSING THIS WAY COMES
Actually, I am glad there is not a spate of "instant polling". I think those things are ridiculous. All they manage to do is to capture the buzz of the moment when only the first, surface level impression of an event are current. Good news might spike up the administrations numbers, bad news might spike them down. What do we learn from that that we couldn't have predicted? The relevant question is how the information is assimilated into people's minds, and what, if any, are the longer term consequences for how they feel about the administration's performance.
We see this all the time with things like major speeches (SOTU the obvious example). The president's side (no matter which president) will trumpet an instant poll which inevitably shows some uptick, and use that as an anchor point for an ongoing spin campaign.
We all have seen this often enough to see through it all, haven't we?
BTW, as pointed out above, Rasmussen does a daily tracking poll with a very pro-Bush sampling strategy, and they have found no movement whatsoever over the two days since the capture.
So maybe the leftie spinners can complain that the big bad MSM is suppressing the "news" that Bush remains historically unpopular despite the capture!
Comment Posted By Tano On 11.06.2006 @ 13:28
LOOSE LIPS SINKING AL QAEDA IN IRAQ?
Sorry Rick, but if you seriously think that the MSM is trying to create a story line that "Zarqawi died some kind of heroe’s death", then "delusional" doesnt even begin to capture the depth of your pathology.
Please explain yourself a bit better. You make the charge of the MSM trying to portray Zarq as a hero, and as evidence you give us a passage that consists entirely of quotations from Gen. Caldwell!!! What exactly are you saying? Is Gen. Caldwell in on the great conspiracy?
Must be, because after that passage, you move on to a quote from Powerlyin in which he is ranting about reporters acting as if there was a cover-up. Asking whether the face was cleaned up etc. Nothing there about Zarq being a "hero". (Would he be a hero if he actually were stomped to death? Would he be a hero if he died in the bombing with minimal blood on his face? Where does this hero stuff come from?)
Sounds to me like basic sharp questioning of the type that any reporter should be doing when the government puts forth a picture and a verison of events and claims that this is the exact way it went down.
So please share. Where is the "hero-making"???
Comment Posted By Tano On 11.06.2006 @ 15:39
All you manage to do here, Rick, is to demonstrate how you are completely clueless about the appropriate role of the press in a free society.
Here is a hint for you. Take it as a cardinal rule - dont believe a word that anyone in the government says - at least not until you probe, question, examine every alternative, be the complete skeptic. It is only through the process of surviving such examination that any rational person can have confidnce that they are being told the truth. And it is only if government spokesmen know that their words are going to be subject to such examination, that they will be strongly disincentivized to BSing (or at least they will know they need to be damn good at it).
What is really shameful here is how you seem to think that reporters should simply accept as gospel truth whatever the government says (including the military). Have you learned nothing in your life?
Comment Posted By Tano On 11.06.2006 @ 13:39
BOLTON APPLIES THE SCREWS TO THE UN
What a load of complete hooey.
Malloch Brown was dead on correct. THe RW in this country, including this nuthouse, has carried on a relentless, and totally dishonest UN bashing campaign for a long time now, such that very few, if any, of those who access these "information" sources have anything close to a clear well rounded impression of the role the UN plays in the world.
It is a classic example of demagoic propagandizing. The UN, an American invention, has as its purpose the creation of a forum for communication amongst world governments, to serve as an alternative to the battlefield for conflict resolution. Not the kind of thing that immediatly impacts the daily lives of average citizens. The classic easy target for demagouges.
The very act of "defending" the UN, or the concept of the UN requires a degree of long-term serious thought about the consequences of foreign policy. How can an appeal to that compete with a blowhard making the case that gays are destroying your marriage, or that Old Glory is being burned on every street corner, or that Mexicans are engaged in a reconquista, or any of the other BS "issues" that the right uses to distract the people from serious engagement with the relevant issues of the day?
Bolton is a gross embarrasment. His phony little attempt to portray these comments as an "insult" to middle America is patently transparant. The comments are, quite properly, a smackdown to the demagouges of the American right, of which Bolton himself is a prime examplar.
Comment Posted By Tano On 9.06.2006 @ 11:28
SPINNING THEIR WAY TO DEFEAT IN NOVEMBER
Perhaps Rick should be commended, albeit slightly, for not repeating exactly the absurd Moonie Times mischaracterization of Stark's comments as a "stunt". No, Rick prefers "ploy". A touch milder, but still a completely dishonest misrepresentation of the comment.
It continues"
"Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, said Zarqawi was a small part of “a growing anti-American insurgency†and that it’s time to get out."That happens to be simply factually correct. The number I have heard, from many sources, is about 5% of the insurgency is Zarqawi related. And we know, also from many sources, that the Al-Q higherups have been trying to displace him with more "legitimate" Iraqi leaders.
So while we can all rejoice that the world has one less monster in it today, the notion that this will have any significant impact on the insurgency in Iraq seems to be quite a bit of wishful thinking. And, quite frankly, all of us are thoroughly exhausted from taking these wishful-thinking-rides from the right-wingers, all of which have turned out to be illusury.
Further;
“We’re there for all the wrong reasons,†Mr. Kucinich said.Well, there Dennis is simply expressing the feeling of the majority of Americans.
Comment Posted By Tano On 9.06.2006 @ 11:41
