Treat the CIA Leaker Like Scooter Libby

front page magazine ^ | 25 april 2006 | Christopher Hitchens

[unionblue83]

If Mary O. McCarthy should ever be so desperate as to need a character witness, or to require one so badly that she must stoop to my level, I declare in advance that I shall step forward pro bono. I am quite willing to accept that whatever she did or did not do or say about the surreptitious incarceration of al-Qaida suspects overseas (and let's not prejudge this), she did it from the most exalted motives.

I accept this because, however much of her hard-earned money she threw away on making a donation to the John Kerry presidential campaign, she is obviously more than a mere partisan. Back in 1998, she wrote a formal memo to President Clinton about his decision to bomb the Al-Shifa factory outside Sudan's capital of Khartoum. I wrote a slew of articles at the time to prove that this wild Clintonian action was wag-the-doggery, pure and simple. (You can look it up if you like in my book No One Left To Lie To.) At that time, I interviewed a number of CIA people, both on and off the record, and came to the conclusion that it was the wrong factory in the wrong place and had been blitzed mainly because of Clinton's difficulties with Monica Lewinsky. The clincher was the direct plagiarism of his own hysterical speech of justification from the glib speech delivered by Michael Douglas, trying to de-knicker Annette Bening in the mediocre film The American President. If George Bush had even tried to pull anything like this, he would have been impeached by now, or so I hope.

[Publius6961]

The clincher was the direct plagiarism of his own hysterical speech of justification from the glib speech delivered by Michael Douglas, trying to de-knicker Annette Bening in the mediocre film The American President.

This is so funny I'm going to have to get his book, No One Left to Lie To.

[IamConservative]

Treat her like Scotter Libby? I would rather see them charge her with an actual crime as opposed to a perjury trap.

[Jacquerie]

It was obvious from the first that the press, in taking Wilson and Plame at their own estimation, was fashioning a rod for its own back. I await the squeals that will follow when this rod is applied, which it will be again and again.

Yesterday, the late morning show on NPR was contorting itself to define McCarthy as a selfless, moral whistle blower. As with other stories that embarrass the rats, the old media will reluctantly and superficially cover this one.

[Shery]

His book DOES sound interesting. Good article!

[Stentor]

This is so funny I'm going to have to get his book, No One Left to Lie To.

I went to a reading on the University of Pennsylvania campus. The dropped jaws were countless. No one had the guts to really take him on after he filleted a "questioner". It was a fun night.

Having said that, it reads a little like chocolate pudding.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Joseph Wilson update:

In my article last week on Wilson's utter failure to notice the visit of Saddam Hussein's chief nuclear diplomat to Niger, I mentioned his substitution of another Iraqi . . . as having just possibly approached some Niger businessmen and officials at an OAU summit in Algeria in 1999 - "Baghdad Bob." . . . But at the time he attended the Algiers meeting, "Baghdad Bob" was . . . Saddam Hussein's foreign minister.

Go to the link; great read.

[SailormanCGA72]

Treat her like Scooter Libby? I would rather she was treated like Alger Hess or even Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

[devolve]

 FOR  YOUR  EYES  ONLY 

[dixiechick2000]

LOLOL!

[JustPiper]

Scooter...sounds like he scooted on his butt before he could walk Scooter