Traitorgate: When It Rains, It Pours

LOL... but there something much more embarassing to George Bush courtesy of ReddHedd at FDL. In an article in which she describes the reasons for "her disgust with Karl's lying machinations" she shares the insight that "Prosecutors are notorious for being utterly disgusted and severely angered by lying sacks of crap" so look out, Karl!

She also points us to a piece by Murray Waas who tells us that...

Patrick Fitzgerald, has indicated in correspondence unsealed in federal court in recent days, that President Bush might have been briefed regarding former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s February 2002 CIA-sponsored mission to Niger during regular morning intelligence briefing.

Kinda puts the lie to their claims that the lies they were pushing much later in 2003 were the result of lack of (or bad) info from the CIA, doesn't it?

A much more likely possibility is that Bush, like Vice President Cheney, was told in late June, 2003, that the CIA no longer considered “credible” allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to have ever procured uranium from Niger or any other African nation in an attempt to build a nuclear weapon.

As my National Journal story first disclosed yesterday, then-CIA director George Tenet received a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, on the Niger matter from his analysts warning that allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation were to no longer to be believed.

In the memo, the CIA analysts wrote: "Since learning that the Iraqi-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq purchased uranium from abroad."

The memo also related that there had been other, earlier claims that Saddam's regime had attempted to purchase uranium from private interests in Somalia and Benin; these claims predated the Niger allegations. It was that past intelligence that had led CIA analysts, in part, to consider the Niger claims as plausible. But the memo said that after a thorough review of those earlier reports, the CIA had concluded that they were no longer credible. Indeed, the previous intelligence reports citing those claims had long since been "recalled" -- meaning that the CIA had formally repudiated them.

And she's got more...

Apologists for this Administration have tried all along to say that this was pushback, that Amb. Wilson was lying, and have bought the Administration's line on this whole hog. But the bottom line is this: Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby have known since June of 2003 that there was no credible attempt by Saddam Hussein to purchase yellowcake from Africa, and they went forward with their political smear of Amb. Wilson and his wife Valerie to save their own careers and public personas.

Can you say conspiracy? I thought you could. For anyone who has wondered why Fitz went forward with limited charges on obstruction against Libby -- and why he has pressed them forward with such clear, factual lines, I have your answer: Libby is, indeed the firewall between Fitz and the Vice President and others in the WHIG.

Read eriposte and Waas back to back, and see if you don't reach the same conclusion. And then ask yourself what a coincidence it was that e-mails from that same period have mysteriously failed to have been archived properly in the VP and WH systems. And then ask yourself how it is that so many reporters were contacted by so many members of the WHIG with the same message over and over about looking into who sent Amb. Wilson on his trip and why.

And then ask yourself how all of this together can be one big coincidence.