Warning - Liberal Meltdown Dead Ahead

Important Update here following up on below.

The Washington Post enters the leak controversy courtesy of an editorial today and Liberal blogs are already starting to reach unsafe core temperatures. And when Liberals meltdown it isn't pretty. The title of the WaPo editorial is A Good Leak:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

With typical liberal charm, the Agonist initiates the core dump:

This editorial in the Washington Post is an embarrassment and an insult to anyone with half a brain. I don't even know where to begin there are so many lies, obfuscations and so much spin in just five short paragraphs.

I'm thinking the Agonist must not read The New York Times. And Think Progress has already reached critical mass:

This morning, the Washington Post published an editorial — entitled “A Good Leak” — vigorously defending President Bush’s decision to authorize a leak of classified information as part of a political effort to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Apparently, it isn’t a very strong case because, in order to make their point, the editors had to mangle the facts –

This isn't unexpected, most conservatives could figure out it would be time to duck and cover from the frothing foam of a liberal mushroom cloud:

Let's see, Jane Hamsher will not doubt write one of the "Dear Jim" posts, for which she is so well known. Glenn Greenwald will say this proves why censure is necessary. And Oliver Willis will mutter something about the corporate media.

Thank God we don't have to worry about the fallout. Most of the Libs are lightweights and are bound to be carried away on the wind by some other nonsense before tonight. Either that, or they'll go back to screaming about Bush's plans to nuke Iran.

Relax and grab a bowl of cereal, reactions to the WaPo from the Left is the next best thing to Sunday morning cartoons.

Comments

[Rick Moran]

Actually...Saturday morning cartoons exhibit more intellectual acumen than the liberals ever do.

[raindrops]

As the Washington Post continues: Nevertheless, Mr. Cheney's tactics make Mr. Bush look foolish for having subsequently denounced a different leak in the same controversy and vowing to "get to the bottom" of it.

You can't metaphorically stamp your feet and vow to do what's right when your side is behind the deal in the first place unless you want to come off looking like an idiot. Talk about not exhibiting intellectual acumen! The red state boys walked into their own cow pie on this one. Don't blame the Dems for gearing up to roast them on it. A president who cheated on his wife or one who played fast and lose with the truth about national security issues - which one bothers you the most??

[KEVIN SCHMIDT, STERLING VA]

WARNING: CONSERVATIVE MELTDOWN AHEAD

This is from http://www.dailykos.com/

on Page 1, we find the news report:

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Here we have a two-fer in terms of self-debunking:

(1) There was indeed total validation of Mr. Wilson's charges of persecution, despite what the editorial says; and

(2) The news story confirms that there was "no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there" - in direct contradiction to the editorial's claim that Wilson's report supported the purchase effort.

Seriously, it should be apparent to anyone following the Washington Post that ever since Bob Woodward made clear that protecting his Bushie sources and his books profit margins were more important than informing readers, the Post has been a dying newspaper. Let's have some "regime change" at the top of the Post - get a good start with Len Downie and Fred Hiatt - or readers will have to assume the newspaper is simply a thinly disguised propaganda arm of an administration that took us to war under false pretenses and is undermining our entire democracy.

[KEVIN SCHMIDT, STERLING VA]

WHY THE WAPO IS WRONG ABOUT PLAMEGATE

Aside from the FACT that the Washington Post chose to repeat misinformation about Plamegate that is repudiated on page 1 of the same paper, they left out a few glaring details in their ridiculous approval of Valerie Plame's outing for political gain.

Leaking Valerie Plame's name took a valuable resource out of the REAL war on terror. This action approved by the President and Vice President has endangered the lives of every American citizen, both at home and abroad.

Leaking Plame's name also blew her front cover employer, Brewster Jennings & Associates. It was Robert Novak, American traitor, and political commentator hack, who in collusion with Bush and Cheney, first published the highly classified information.

It has been suggested that there were other resources within the CIA who were also working undercover as non-official cover operative" (NOC) as employees of Brewster Jennings. It has also been suggested that once their undercover status was compromised, they were quickly captured and eliminated, thus multiplying the damage done to the CIA's ability to gather valuable information in the Mid East.

The outing of Plame destroyed all trust the CIA had for the Bush/Cheney administration. Why would they now put their lives on the line as NOCs knowing that at any time, their cover could also be blown for political gain, thus ending their careers and possibly ending their lives as well?

But there's more!

Plame... 'was a long-term proprietary and deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take" from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives) by someone inside the White House.

From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame operation was irreplaceable.

Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.

The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.

So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.

As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law.

ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major US oil companies.

Another one of Aramco’s partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security Advisor to George Bush.

All of ARAMCO’s key decisions are made by the Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields – 25% of all the oil on the planet.'

http://www.oilempire.us/plame.html

Also, let's not forget the long term friendship and business partnerships between the Bush family and the bin Laden family.

Knowing all of this, how can anyone in their right mind approve of Bush and Cheney's treasonous behavior of outing Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings for political gain?

[richard mcenroe]

Nice job of comment spamming KEVIN!

[COLUMBO]

The truth about the Plame story:

Zell Miller's piece:

http://gopsecretary.house.gov/morning.murmer/11.4.05.shtml#one

[COLUMBO]

"since Bob Woodward made clear that protecting his Bushie sources"

funny how this guy fell from the media pedestal he was on a few months earlier when Deepthroat outed himself