Now this is entertainment and people are brought on for their commentary so some leeway ought to be accorded. However Snow continually presented falsehoods as facts which for the most part went unchallenged. I suppose Tony thought this is lightweight and he could fudge or outright lie. Being that it is so close to Fitzmas I'll be charitable and call these Deceptions. But watching his performance was excrutiating for anyone who is informed or believes
TONY SNOW: I'll step in as the resident right-winger here. The deal is, Scooter Libby has now been indicted on charges of speaking to reporters.
That is a Deception. Yes he spoke to reporters but he's being indicted for lying to authorities about what he said to reporters. This is what Fitzgerald said.....
At the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.
Snow continued.......
SNOW: And the interesting thing is that the prosecutor never said, “You know what? It was illegal to mention Valerie Plame's name, because it wasn't.” So what you have now is a highly-complex case.
Really? Another deception. This is what Fitzgerald said........
And all I'll say is that if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.
SNOW: Yes. And do you know what each of those counts involved? Speaking to reporters. I actually read the indictment. So the indictment is, “Well, you talked to this person.” You know what it is? It's where he learned Valerie Plame's name. And apparently, on five different occasions, he gave differing and incorrect accounts of—
This is deception upon deception.
First up..."I actually read the indictment." Based on his conclusions you'd have to believe if Tony read the indictment then he is severely lacking in reading comprehension skills.
Either Tony.....
Did not read the indictment (in and of itself is then a lie)
Or read the indictment and is just plain stupid
Or he did read the indictment and is deceptive about it's conclusions.
Let's assume Tony isn't stupid. The "Libby was indicted for speaking to reporters" was debunked by Fitz in his press conference. ( see above) The latter part of Tony's assertion that Libby learned Plame's name from reporters is false according to the indictment.....
9. On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.
SNOW: Now, here's the interesting thing. Again, I'm not aware of anybody saying perjury doesn't matter. Who – name one person who said perjury doesn't matter.
MAHER: Oh, Kay Bailey Hutchison was saying this week-lots of conservatives
So Maher exposed this one. What's incredible is that Tony thought he could sneak this one by given all the media attention given to Hutchison's remarks on Meet the Press. In WaPo Terry Neal reminds that Tucker Carlson made similar remarks as Hutchison the previous week on Maher's show. He also notes that Bill Kristol has promoted the persecution theory both on Fox News and in his magazine and "in fact, this theme has been peddled ad nauseam on Fox News."
SNOW: Yeah, that's right. [laughter] [applause] The wife is the one who arranged for Joe Wilson to go over to Niger. What's interesting is that the people that really smeared Joe Wilson were the people who looked into his charges, the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said, “You know what, Joe? All that stuff you said in the New York Times , was lies. You're wrong!” [someone in audience reacts, makes unintelligible comment]
This old canard. How many times will this one have to be exposed? If you must be convinced, again, go here or here or here
And for a different take on the Senate Intelligence Committee report go here
Deception #6
SNOW: Well, except, here's a couple of things. Apparently, journalists thought it was relevant because it was journalists and not Scooter Libby who went public with the name.
While Tony is correct in using the plural here, six journalists knew and only two, Matt Cooper and Robert Novak, went public. Do we conclude the other 4 were not journalists (well Miller aside) or they did NOT think it was relevant? Perhaps they knew it was dangerous legal turf to expose a CIA operative.
TONY SECRET #1
MAHER: [overlapping] Her neighbors didn't know.
SNOW: I hate to tell you, but I think that's probably b.s. I've got CIA people working in my neighborhood. They don't run around saying, “Hey, I'm a spook.” But you tend to know.
Apparently Tony has something "relevant" there. By his standards perhaps he should go public with the names of his "spook" neighbors?
SNOW: That's – that's a head-scratcher for me, too. I mean, I think it has to do with the judgment of what people thought was important in the news. I thought it was huge news. You've got 77% of the [Iraqi] people voting for a constitution.
Tony's own FOX News reported "overall turnout was about 61 percent."
SNOW: That would be a crazy religious person. But on the other hand, like, you're going to have women who are serving in government. You've got women in senior government positions. You have women in schools. You didn't have girls in school when Saddam was there.
Prior to the the Gulf War girls did in fact go to school under Saddam and according to Human Rights Watch it was mandated by the Iraqi constitution...
The Iraqi Provisional Constitution (drafted in 1970) formally guaranteed equal rights to women and other laws specifically ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property.
After the first Gulf War things changed though.....
Yet, since the 1991 Gulf War, the position of women within Iraqi society has deteriorated rapidly. Women and girls were disproportionately affected by the economic consequences of the U.N. sanctions, and lacked access to food, health care, and education.
SNIP
For example, the gender gap in school enrollment (and subsequently female illiteracy) increased dramatically due to families' financial inability to send their children to school. When faced with limited resources, many families chose to keep their girl children at home
This is deceptive regardless of the timeline.
No comments:
Post a Comment