Victoria wields a neat scalpel, doesn't she? Clarice Feldman goes over this in her Weekly Standard article, also citing Corn's assertion in his first article that the WH engaged in a deliberate, thuggish payback for Wilson's op-ed piece, and endagered Wilson's wife and every spy she ever met, or merely passed in the street, and made the ghost of Kim Philby weep.
Corn did not decorate that paragraph with "allegedly," "it's possible," "it appears" and other fake attempts to stay within the libel laws. He outright trashed honourable men, knowing that partisan hacks like Matthew Cooper, husband of long-time Hilary friend and current campaign adviser Mandy Grunwald, and Kathleen Matthews' wife, would bring up the braying chorus of fake outrage at the "crimes" against Joe and Val.
Of course, these aren't serious people and the real crime, the one that put us all in peril if they had gotten away with it, was a conspiracy to bring down not just a sitting president, but his entire administration in a time of war.
I hope the courts do not throw out the Libby case. I want
the Libby defense team to go into discovery with subpoenas for the Democrat senators who attended the meeting on May 3, 2003 on the Eastern Shore. I want depositions taken of all media in attendance, Kristoff. and Matthews, and all waiters, photographers, chambermaids, manicurists and Botox technicians, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, secretaries. I want the notebooks and tape-recorders of all the writers from NYT and NYT magazine, Wshington Post Magazine, and Vanity Fair, or their assistants who were present at that meeting.
I would like to subpoena all of the people Joe Wilson referred to in the Joe and Val puff piece in Vanity Fair, names he dropped as willing to verify his remarks. All of these people, if I recall correctly, refused to comment. So what were their reasons for not backing up Old Joe? And more importantly, why did he use their names to back up his crock of makeshifts and evasions?
I would like the authorette of the Vanity Fair puff piece, to explain, under oath, why she claimed that only Right Wing extremists questioned Joe's connection to Rock Creek Corporation. I want her to lead us through the intensive examination of Mrs. Wilson's scarves which led her to conclude that "little is known of Rock Creek Corporation, and besides Joe Wilson only rents office space from them."
Can the authorette swear under oath that she is unfamiliar with search engines and so should be excused for not knowing who owns Rock Creek Corporation?
The defense of Armitage revolves around his reputation as a harmless gossip, someone addicted to "dish" whose telephone call to Novak, out of the blue, just to chat, had the unintended consequence of revealing Mrs. Wilson's identity.
It reminds me of former President Clinton's response to a reporter tossing him the news of Sandy Berger's arrest for stealing documents from the National Archives. Clinton laughed, "Well, that's Sandy. You guys know him; he's a big bear, not too tidy, always papers sticking out of pockets. Heh, heh, heh."
I want to know who started this. I already know why.