Richard Perle Libel Watch, Week 9

Slate ^ | 5/7/03 | Jack Shafer

[MEG33]

How did you like this article?

[Egregious Philbin]

I dunno. I haven't been following this that closely, but it seems to have come to a head, and Perle does look bad. I was curious what people thought of the situation on FR. How did you like it? I think this guy Shafer does a decent job over at Slate.

[MEG33]

The article sounds bad for Perle.

[Egregious Philbin]

If Perle weren't such an a** about it before I think we'd see less of the snowball effect. I wonder if this will mean bad things for those in the Bush Administration who have similar ties to industry but have remained low key about them.

[MEG33]

AThe President is looking so good right now the Dems are going crazy looking for dirt.The outrage they express over the carrier landing is laughable.

[steve50]

I believe Feith( now on DPB) was involved in the Lorel lobbying effort as well. I remember when we were screaming treason at klintoon over this here.

[walden]

I knew when I heard Perle threaten the libel suit that his attorney would talk him out of it when he cooled down-- libel suits are VERY difficult to win, and the slimer Hersch didn't actually SAY anything anyway, it was all woulda coulda shoulda innuendo (wink, wink). Political B.S.

Anyway, Perle is fine-- these idiots will leave him alone after the election. Right now he's a Rumsfield/Bush proxy, but they'll lose interest once Bush begins his second term.

;)

[the Real fifi]

It's coming--I have that on excellent authority---

[mr.pink]

Great picture. The old saying "by the time you're fifty, you'll have the face that you deserve" comes to mind.

[walden]

Oh? COOL!

[gcruse]

I like Richard Perle and Newt Gingrich and turn a cocked eye at them that dasn't!

[Stultis]

How did you like this article?

Blah, blah, blah. They really got nothing here, and have to fall back on "this looks bad" b.s. Oh, and I like that little bit of innuendo, trying to imply merely by textual proximity that Perle had anything to do with Loral's transfers of missle guidance technology. (He didn't. They hired Perle well after this, in part to ensure they wouldn't f-up like that again.)

Perle, a grandstander extraordinaire...

Yeah, as if. It wasn't by "grandstanding" that Perle cleared Soviet missles from Eastern Europe, and it wasn't because of "grandstanding" that he was probably the single most respected (and feared) American official by the Soviet politburo and military. It was by standing firm.

Perle has always stood for American strength and security, and has never given an inch unless he believed that it was in America's interest to do so. THAT is why he is being attacked. (Just look at who's doing the attacking.) I for one will never forget what Perle did for this country. I will never forget his repeatedly putting his own career on the line to defend Reagan's SDI program from the leftists, or to defend pro-American officials from attacks by the blame-America-firsters.

It will take real evidence, not innuendo, to convince me that Perle has changed.

[Stultis]

The old saying "by the time you're fifty, you'll have the face that you deserve" comes to mind.

Great. Hey, mr. pink, maybe Slate can offer you a job helping to trash pro-defense Americans?

[MEG33]

You're doing great.

[MinuteGal]

Wonder how long it took Slate to dig up the most flattering photo of Perle it could find.

Leni

[Marianne]

. . . Perle received a classified North Korea/Iraq briefing in February at the DPB from the Defense Intelligence Agency - and then three weeks later gave a briefing of his own at an investment seminar run by Goldman Sachs on how to profit from possible conflicts with those two countries.
It pays to have friends in high places!

[mr.pink]

Sorry, but I don't like, nor trust, Mr. Perle.

I was very happy when he had to resign his chairmanship over his tawdry dealings/profiteering attempt. IMHO, he should have been fired as Global Crossing seems to have been a fruadulent Clintonista organization that fleeced a lot of honest Americans. That kinda' sleaze bothers me, whereas for Mr. Perle, it was merely an opportunity to fatten up on what was left on the bones of the shareholders oink-oink.

[Stultis]

They probably have a whole file marked "unflattering photos of dangerous warmongers, cowboys and joos." Doubtless Dubya is in there, and Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and even old guys like Weinberger and Shultz. It would be a badge of honor to have your likeness there.

[Stultis]

That kinda' sleaze bothers me, whereas for Mr. Perle, it was merely an opportunity to fatten up on what was left on the bones of the shareholders oink-oink

So, like the leftists, you associate Perle with the fraud at Global Crossing. It's immaterial that he was hired long afterwards. It's still perfectly acceptable, to you, to smear him, and blame him for the loss to shareholders, even as he was advising on a deal that might have recovered some of those losses.