Why was BushCorp concerned to keep Libby out of jail, to the extent that the president intervened and commuted his jail term? Had been started his sentence, he would have become the first NeoCon/Bush Administration insider (and a senior one at that) who would suddenly have been rendered accessible to questioning by ordinary people (inmates!), rather than the default of being insulated from any public scrutiny behind concentric walls of security. He would have had to answer some damned awkward questions, questions which no member of this administration has publicly faced (yet), and have not had to publicly answer.
This story about Sen. Dianne Feinstein raises an eyebrow or 4.
To quote:
Quote:
Scooter Libby's pardon begs the question of what he would have talked about had he been truly faced with prison. Whatever it was, it was important enough for Bush to grant Libby a last-second reprieve so he wouldn't have to go to jail.
I thought back to something I had tripped upon a while ago, something that involved Libby, which happened on September 10, 2001, the day before the twin towers were struck.
On the CNN site,
in a timeline available from this page, I found this stunning entry:
SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 A CIA plan to strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan, including support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, is given to the White House. Sen. Dianne Feinstein asks for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney. The California Democrat is told that Cheney's staff would need six months to prepare for a meeting.
When I read this, I was stunned on two levels.
First, read that again. The CIA was going to do BEFORE 9/11 exactly what it did AFTER 9/11 - strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Since we hadn't been attacked yet, 9/11 provided a nifty justification for this plan.
But second, Feinstein is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a group that works closely with intelligence agencies and--ostensibly--provides oversight of intelligence activities. (I say ostensibly because the committee does not know of, and therefore has no option to approve or disapprove all intelligence activities). How could it be that, as the 9/11 Commission report states, when the "system was blinking red" on a possible terrorist attack on the country, and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee comes to say hey, something serious is afoot and we need to talk, the VP's office could blow off Feinstein by saying they couldn't review her plans for six months?
Curious, I called Senator Feinstein's office and asked, is it normal for the VP to blow off a meeting with Senator Feinstein for six months? The four people I spoke to in her office all said and did the same thing. They said no, that's not usual, what is this about? I said this is about the Senator's 9/10 visit to Cheney, the day before 9/11. At this, each staffer got nervous and transferred me to the next person. None of them would even confirm that this conversation had transpired, but in the end, I found it on a
press release on Feinstein's senate site:
Read the whole article here.Quote:
Another Bush thread degenerating into a 9/11 discussion?
Its a subject that's impossible to avoid when talking about the Bush Administration. 9/11 is
their raison d'etre, their Pearl Harbor/Reichstag Fire/Gulf of Tonkin Incident etc. etc. Before 9/11, the Bush Administration was a rudderless ship, going nowhere fast. Then, as if by magic, after both Bush and Cheney took unprecendented month-long vacations at their respective ranches, they ramp up all 5 gears in 24 hours, from somnamulence on 9/10, to blazing down the straight on 9/12. 9/11 "justifies" (in
their minds) everything they have done in the last 5.75 years. 9/11 punctuates Bush and Cheney speeches like commas. Without it, there would have been no Afghanistan war, no Iraq war, no big new 200,000 employee government department (Homeland "Security" (sic), no "Patriot" Act (sic), no threatened Iran war, the trashing of the Constitution, and all the rest of the last few years' garbage.
It is not even necessary to get into impossible skyscraper collapses, conflicting NTSB flight data recorder material, living "suicide" hijackers, foreknowledge of the attacks by law enforcement/intelligence agencies of numerous nations, security/military drills and exercises at the time of both attacks that simulated the exact nature, times, and places of the attacks, Cheney lying to the country about his whereabouts that morning, the 9/11 Commission lying about the Twin Towers' architecture, Bush watching the first plane go in on a TV monitor (!), and a pork-chop eating, gold-wearing, hard-liquor-drinking, coke-snorting, partying "Muslim fundamentalist" who was so into his religion that he violated all of its most important earthly rules as he planned to die for Allah.... and hundreds of other damning aspects of the attacks.
The shifty, shady and suspicious behavior of the Bush Administration in avoiding any form of investigation, for so long (441 days).. should be enough for even the most ardent supporter of the official conspiracy yarn to get uncomfortable.... and Scooter Libby was in the thick of it.
\
