Short update

OK, a bit more info today, just a FYI summary:

As you likely now know, I. "Scooter" Lewis Libby -- indicted chief aide to Vice President Dick Cheney in the Valerie Plame 'outting' investigation -- admitted under oath before a Federal Grand Jury that President George W. Bush himself authorized the (illegal) “leak” of classified information concerning Plame's identity to The New York Times reporter Judith Miller in July, 2003.

The White House has not denied this, and it's important to understand, too, that this statement was made under oath, and reportedly has some documentation to back it.

It's now explicit that the "leak" was an effort to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his publicly revealing “there [was] nothing to the story” that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium for a nuclear weapons program. Already, the White House is claiming that Democrats are making political hay of this revelation, asserting moreover that Bush had, by his very directive to unveil Plame's identity, thus declassified that information -- an astounding spin by any standards.

(Wilson is the husband of Valerie Plame, now-former- undercover -- since Bush/Cheney/Libby clumsily outted her -- CIA operative whose identity was revealed in retaliation for Wilson’s contention that Bush’s assertions about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, and hence the premise for the Iraq War, were false.)

Thus, on every level, this treasonous high-echelon White House cabal discredited all concerned while continuing to deliberately mislead the American public to justify and "sell" the Iraq War.

[Note, too, last week's New York Times revelation of documents demonstrating Bush & Blair's knowledge that Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction" two months before the launch of the war, and discussion of means of deceiving the public to justify such war.]

In a related bit of blade-twisting news yesterday, President Bush’s Attorney General admitted yesterday that Bush believes that he has the authority to personally authorize secret wiretapping -- without any court order or oversight of any kind -- of any and all conversations and emails between Americans that occur exclusively within the borders of the United States.

Remember, it had earlier been asserted by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Attorney General Gonzales that Bush's covert wire-tapping program existed only to listen in on conversations of US citizens who were making international calls and emails.

Thus, both revelations of yesterday reassert that this President and this Administration has long held the view that anything this President does is, by the very nature of the Presidency, above the law and therefore of the law: by proxy, the new law.

The insanity continues...

[As one poster has noted, the Nixon presidency and Administration was undone not by a single event, but by cumulative events reaching critical mass. Agreed -- this latest outrage is just another factor in a steadily mounting mountain of evidence. The critical mass has not yet been reached...]