The meaning of the word "is" revisited...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush
acknowledged on Monday he ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq to respond to critics who alleged he manipulated intelligence to justify the war.
Bush offered his first comment on a prosecutor's disclosure last week that he authorized Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to declassify Iraq intelligence.
The disclosure prompted a firestorm of criticism from Democrats who charged Bush was a hypocrite who denounces leaks of information while becoming the "leaker-in-chief." A Republican ally, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Bush on Sunday to "tell the American people exactly what happened."
The Reuters story is just one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, commenting on Prosecutor Fitzgerald's latest court filing in his investigation of skullduggery in Washington. It is astonishing to me, though. Fitzgerald is pursuing who said, did, and knew what in the matter of CIA operative Valerie Plame who was exposed, going on three years ago, by a journalist with inside info. The information which the President is now saying he "declassified" had to do with Plame's husband, yellowcake uranium from Niger, and Saddam Hussein's nuk-you-lure ambitions.
A columnist I don't often read, E.J. Dionne, noted today (4-10-06) that Bush was quoted in Time Magazine (10-13-03) as saying of this particular info "Listen, I know of nobody--I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked CLASSIFIED information". The magazine commented then that Bush "seemed to emphasize those last two words as if hanging on to a legal life preserver in choppy seas."
So, the philosophical hair is split. He had leaked the information, true, but it wasn't classified because he's the president and he had declassified it by leaking it. "Leak
" is indeed such a pejorative word. It means that the information was given out without official announcement, to a limited audience who would publish it without probing questions, and without provenance- ie someone's name at the bottom of the page.
And so I find myself trying to unite the ends of this Moebius strip to find the shortest distance between the two points of understanding. The information was declassified by the President. OK. Got it. The information about the uranium, though, was already taking serious fire within the administration as not being credible. OK. Got it. So the President released it anyway. OK. Why? Well, he claims that he wanted to "respond to critics". Got it. But he didn't release the information himself, he disassociated himself from it by "leaking" it. Yeah. Ok. So Why didn't he release it formally if it defended his position? Well.....ummm....it wasn't good info. OK. So maybe it was leaked without his knowledge? OK. Possible, in which case, he's already on record as opposing leakers. And he's on record saying he 'declassified' that info. Ummmmmm....so dubious. Well, now what impact did the info have? Well, it appears that it bolstered the Administration's assertion that Saddam was a new....oh heck, NUCLEAR, threat. And it also countered the statements that Valerie Plame's husband was making saying that the Niger goldcake was poppycock. If such a thing is possible.
Truly....the threads of this are confused and twisted. But I can say without hesitation that the President's statements on the subject are threadbare....almost as threadbare as the Emperor's New Clothes. Sadly.
We are coming to the end of the charade. I hope that we as a nation can salvage something from this foolishness. Because it is foolishness. And we've all been schooled in the meaning of the word "is". Right?
acknowledged on Monday he ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq to respond to critics who alleged he manipulated intelligence to justify the war.
Bush offered his first comment on a prosecutor's disclosure last week that he authorized Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to declassify Iraq intelligence.
The disclosure prompted a firestorm of criticism from Democrats who charged Bush was a hypocrite who denounces leaks of information while becoming the "leaker-in-chief." A Republican ally, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Bush on Sunday to "tell the American people exactly what happened."
The Reuters story is just one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, commenting on Prosecutor Fitzgerald's latest court filing in his investigation of skullduggery in Washington. It is astonishing to me, though. Fitzgerald is pursuing who said, did, and knew what in the matter of CIA operative Valerie Plame who was exposed, going on three years ago, by a journalist with inside info. The information which the President is now saying he "declassified" had to do with Plame's husband, yellowcake uranium from Niger, and Saddam Hussein's nuk-you-lure ambitions.
A columnist I don't often read, E.J. Dionne, noted today (4-10-06) that Bush was quoted in Time Magazine (10-13-03) as saying of this particular info "Listen, I know of nobody--I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked CLASSIFIED information". The magazine commented then that Bush "seemed to emphasize those last two words as if hanging on to a legal life preserver in choppy seas."
So, the philosophical hair is split. He had leaked the information, true, but it wasn't classified because he's the president and he had declassified it by leaking it. "Leak
" is indeed such a pejorative word. It means that the information was given out without official announcement, to a limited audience who would publish it without probing questions, and without provenance- ie someone's name at the bottom of the page.
And so I find myself trying to unite the ends of this Moebius strip to find the shortest distance between the two points of understanding. The information was declassified by the President. OK. Got it. The information about the uranium, though, was already taking serious fire within the administration as not being credible. OK. Got it. So the President released it anyway. OK. Why? Well, he claims that he wanted to "respond to critics". Got it. But he didn't release the information himself, he disassociated himself from it by "leaking" it. Yeah. Ok. So Why didn't he release it formally if it defended his position? Well.....ummm....it wasn't good info. OK. So maybe it was leaked without his knowledge? OK. Possible, in which case, he's already on record as opposing leakers. And he's on record saying he 'declassified' that info. Ummmmmm....so dubious. Well, now what impact did the info have? Well, it appears that it bolstered the Administration's assertion that Saddam was a new....oh heck, NUCLEAR, threat. And it also countered the statements that Valerie Plame's husband was making saying that the Niger goldcake was poppycock. If such a thing is possible.
Truly....the threads of this are confused and twisted. But I can say without hesitation that the President's statements on the subject are threadbare....almost as threadbare as the Emperor's New Clothes. Sadly.
We are coming to the end of the charade. I hope that we as a nation can salvage something from this foolishness. Because it is foolishness. And we've all been schooled in the meaning of the word "is". Right?
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