What a blowhard this jackass is, yup…I’m talking about Pat Buchanan:
After listening to 22 months of secret testimony, Fitzgerald had to know Cheney’s office and the White House Iraq Group had run a media campaign to destroy the credibility of Iraq war critic Wilson. He had to know that when Scott McClellan told the press no one in the White House had a hand in outing Plame, McClellan had either been lied to by White House colleagues, or had lied himself.
[…]But Fitzgerald hewed to the letter of the law. If White House aides were savaging Wilson by backgrounding the press and lying to the country, that was not his problem. But if they lied to him or the grand jury, that was his problem ? and his jurisdiction.
There exists the possibility that had Libby told the truth ? i.e, yes, we were out to discredit Wilson, but in leaking Plame’s name we did not know she was covert ? this investigation might have shut down without a single indictment. Indeed, how does one explain how Libby, a smart man, could go before a grand jury and testify under oath in direct contradiction of his own notes that he had just given the prosecutor? The only rational explanation is that Scooter is building an insanity defense.
Also to his credit, Fitzgerald told the nation at his press conference not to draw any conclusions about the war from the indictment of Libby:
This indictment is not about the war … People who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it, should not look at this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.
What the special prosecutor is saying here is that it is not his business to do the job that Congress failed to do in 2002, when it gave Bush a blank check to take us to war without looking hard into White House claims of an imminent and mortal peril from an Iraq nuclear arsenal.
And some of you conservatives see this idiot as a savior? Un-Freakin-Believable.
“gave Bush a blank check to take us to war without looking hard into White House claims of an imminent and mortal peril from an Iraq nuclear arsenal. ” That my friends is an outright lie. “Imminent and mortal” may be cute but I believe Bush’s words were “grave and gathering”….a bit different huh?
This is the same guy who believes we should never have entered WWII against Nazi Germany.
A perfect endnote to AHole Buchanan’s glowing article about Pat Fitzgerald is this:
A federal judge in Chicago accused Leakgate Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of prosecutorial misconduct earlier this year and launched an investigation into what he said a misuse of grand jury materials – before Fitzgerald had the probe shut down by a higher court.
In January 2005, U.S. District Judge James F. Holderman accused Fitzgerald’s U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago of turning grand jury materials over to a plaintiff’s lawyer in a hospital-fraud case, the Associated Press reported at the time.
In addition to threatening to hold one of Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in criminal contempt of court, Judge Holderman ordered a misconduct investigation of Fitzgerald and three of his assistants by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The federal judge asked that Fitzgerald be investigated for “misstating the law and other offenses” by the OPR, the arm of the Justice Department that investigates allegations of wrongdoing by prosecutors.
Fitzgerald took the case to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and argued that his office had done nothing illegal.
A three judge panel agreed, ruling that Judge Holderman didn’t have jurisdiction to launch a probe of a U.S. attorney.
According to the AP, however, Fitzgerald did acknowledged that his prosecutor should have notified defense attorneys before turning over confidential grand jury materials to the plaintiff’s side in the hospital fraud case.
It’s not clear whether the Justice Department took any action against Fitzgerald based on Judge Holderman’s complaint.
Sigh.
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