"Ingolf" <Dont@spam_ingolf@excite.com> skrev i en meddelelse news:45ede032$0$48073$edfadb0f@dread16.news.tele.dk...
> Kilde:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Udland/2007/03/06/183912.htm?rss=true
>
>
> "Lewis Libby, med tilnavnet Scooter, blev tirsdag kendt skyldig i at have løjet og i at have lagt hindringer i vejen for FBI i
> forbindelse med opklaring af sagen om afsløring af en hemmelig CIA-agent.
> Libby, der er tidligere stabschef for USA's vicepræsident Dick Cheney, blev kendt skyldig i fire af fem anklager og risikerer op
> til 25 års fængsel."
>
> Sagen har sit udspring i en kilden sag fra 2003, hvor navnet på en CIA-agent - Valerie Plame - blev lækket til pressen."
En særdeles relevant artikel,,,
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/
Libbygate: Now to the Real Story
So Scooter Libby has taken the fall.
Three and a half years and a long bloody war after he and a gang of
war-mongers in the White House and Blair House, including President
Bush and Vice President Cheney, set out to undermine and trash the
reputation of an Iraq war critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson,
Libby has been found guilty of perjury, lying to the FBI and
obstruction of justice by a Washington jury.
Now maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and what passes for
journalists in the mainstream media can get down to the real business
of finding out just why the entire White House smear operation was
unleashed upon a minor state department official and why they went so
far as to violate federal law and expose his CIA-operative wife,
Valerie Plame, in the process destroying her entire network of
contacts for monitoring the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle
East.
Because that's what this whole Libby story is really about.
The whole focus of the media in this case has been on the narrow,
inside-the-Beltway question of who leaked information about Plame to
the media.
Entirely forgotten or ignored has been what this leak was all about to
begin with.
For that, you have to go back and look at what Wilson did in the first
place that so enraged or frightened the Vice President and the
President.
And that was to go to Niger, one of the poorest nations in Africa, to
prove conclusively that there was no truth to a set of forged notes on
the letterhead of the Niger embassy in Rome, purporting to be receipts
for 400 tons of Niger uranium ore allegedly being sought by Iraq's
Saddam Hussein.
Wilson knew those documents were cheap forgeries--the name of the
mines official on the papers was someone who hadn't been in office for
years--but he went to Niger anyhow, just to make doubly certain that
no such purchase attempt had been made.
None had.
So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents?
There is an interesting story here--and an important mystery to be
solved.
As it happens, way back in early 2001 there was a pair of burglaries
at the Niger Embassy in Rome and at the home of the Niger ambassador.
Police investigating the crimes found that the only things stolen were
official stationery and some official stamps, used to make documents
official. A cleaning lady and a former member of Italy's intelligence
service were arrested for the crimes. They were odd burglaries to be
sure, since there is precious little one could use, or sell, such
documents for, given the country involved. I mean, it might make sense
to steal official stationery from the French Embassy in Rome, which a
thief might use to finagle a pass to the Cannes Festival. But Niger?
Jump to October 2001. A few weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by his ministers of
defense and intelligence, made a visit to the White House. There he
reportedly handed over the forged Niger documents (they were on Niger
government stationary, and had Niger government stamps!), which
appeared to be receipts for uranium ore, made out to Saddam Hussein.
Now forget the matter of why either Hussein or Niger's government
would want paper receipts for such an illegal transaction, and forget
the matter of how Hussein would have transported 400 tons of yellow
dust across the Sahara to his country without somebody noticing. The
simple fact is that Bush's own intelligence experts at the CIA and
State Department promptly spotted the forgeries, and they were dumped.
We know this because we know, from the likes of onetime National
Security Council counterterrorism head Richard Clarke and former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that Bush was pushing for war with
Iraq almost as soon as he finished reading My Pet Goat following the
attack on the Twin Towers. Surely if the White House had even thought
those Niger documents might be legit, they would have leaked or
broadcast them all over creation.
They didn't. The documents were deep-sixed, and mentioned to no one.
But according to some dedicated investigative reporters at the
respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica, they resurfaced before long
at a very suspicious meeting. This meeting occurred in December 2001
in Rome, and included Michael Ledeen, an associate of Defense
Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and a key figure in
the White House's war-propaganda program, Larry Franklin, a top
Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst who later pleaded
guilty to passing classified information to two employees of the
America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), convicted Iraqi bank
swindler Ahmed Chalabi, then head of the CIA-created Iraqi National
Congress, and Harold Rhode of the sinister Defense Department Office
of Special Plans, that office set up by the White House and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under Feith's direction to manufacture
"evidence" to justify a war on Iraq. Also at this peculiar meeting
were the heads of the Italian Defense Department and of SISMI, the
Italian intelligence agency.
According to La Repubblica, it was at that meeting that a plan was
hatched to resurrect the forged Niger documents, and to give them
credibility by recycling them through British intelligence.
And that is what Bush was referring to when, in his 2003 State of the
Union address, he famously frightened a nation by declaring, "The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Bush lyingly implied that this was new information, when in fact he
knew--had to know--that the "evidence" in British hands was the same
set of documents he had been offered by Berlusconi almost a year and a
half earlier, which had been declared to be bogus.
No mainstream American media organization has pursued this story, or
even published the details as reported in Italy. Most Americans,
consequently, don't even know what a grand lie Bush and the White
House perpetrated upon them and the Congress in order to win approval
for an attack on Iraq.
Perhaps now that Libby has gone down for his part in this grotesque
crime, some editor will ask the obvious question: Why did the White
House and the Office of Vice President go to such extraordinary
lengths to attack Wilson and his wife? And more importantly, who was
behind those Niger embassy burglaries and the forged uranium ore sale
documents? And what was OSP doing meeting in Rome in December 2001
with the head of Italian intelligence?
Make no mistake: this whole story has the odor of a "black op"
designed to target the American people.
If so it was an act of high treason.
It is not just Libby who should go to jail for this crime. It is the
president and vice president.
At this point, what should happen is that Fitzgerald, with Libby in
the bag, would take the next step and hold the prospect of a lengthy
prison sentence recommendation over the convict's head in order to try
and win from him a promise of cooperation with the prosecution.
Because Libby knows who was behind all this.
That's the way prosecutors go after criminal syndicates and
conspiracies, but Fitzgerald has folded his tent, reportedly saying
that he plans no further prosecutions.
That means it's up to Congress, which should take the cue and initiate
impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney based on the evidence
of crimes and obstruction that came out during the Libby trial
testimony.
And of course, it's up to the media, which if they were still doing
their job, would be all over this story.
Jan Rasmussen