Murray Waas continues to echo the talking points of those aligned against the Bush administration, specifically Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, as he attempts to make Fitzgerald’s pathetic case for him. Using a lot of words to go nowhere, Waas’ article has one or two telling sentences, which Murray rushes by so as to not let them destroy his fantasy world.

First off, the reason Fitzgerald is hesitating is he has a ‘he said, he said’ situation. Karl Rove did not testify about a discussion with Time’s Matt Cooper, early one, but when his memory was jogged he immediately went and testified again. That rules out perjury right there (you can make the charge, but it will not stick). So Waas and Fitzgerald are looking for something inside the discussion to hang their case on.

Waas has to mistake facts to get there too.  First off he claims Scooter Libby confirmed Valerie’s job and role to Matt Cooper Libby breathed the words to Cooper ‘I heard that too’.  Look at how Waas expands that non-commital response:

Cooper has also testified that Rove, as well as a second source — I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney — portrayed the information about Plame as accurate and authoritative.

And this clown considers himself a professional journalist?  No wonder the profession is considered the second oldest profession in the world.  Well, Waas’ first amendment rights allow him the opportunity to look the fool.  By the way Waas, I heard the Beatles are planning a reunion!

Since Cooper brought up the name Valerie Plame to Rove and Libby, they cannot his sources for the information.  Which means Fitzgerald is still violating the order under which he was mandated, and not pursuing who leaked her name and job at the CIA.   Which is why Fitzgerald is stymied.  He has boxed himself into these marginal differences in recollection which cannot be proven one way or other ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’.  Waas knows this too, as he notes in one of his drive by tributes to reality:

But it has not been previously known that much of the questioning of Rove on Wednesday also focused on the contradictions between Cooper’s and Rove’s accounts of their crucial July 11 conversation.

Once you hit this sentence in the article, any objective person has decided to move onto something tangible and important.  Waas is just getting warmed up as he bends reality to his liking.  That includes me who is playing Mr. Mom this weekend.  So I will use one paragraph to illustrate the strange, delusional world of one Murray Waas, supposed reporter:

The outing of Plame was part of [1] a broad effort by the Bush administration in the first half of 2003 to discredit Wilson, [2] a vocal administration critic who charged that the president and others in his administration had [3] misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.

The numbering mine, to illustrate the three falsehoods Waas sprinkled in this one sentence.  First off, there is no evidence of a wide spread effort to discredit Wilson, which implies attacking personally, but simply an effort to correct Wilson’s claims.  That is a big distinction, one you can even find evidence of in Fitzgerald’s filings as I point out in this earlier post. In Fitz’ own words:

Some documents produced to defendant could be characterized as reflecting a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson. The government declined to produce documents relating solely to other subjects of the investigation, even if such documents could be so characterized as reflecting a possible attempt or plan to discredit or punish Mr. Wilson or Ms. Wilson.

What Fitz has is documentation from the administration which lays out what were the goals and activities being taken in response to  Wilson’s wild claims.  Since they do not reflect and effort to ‘get Wilson’ Fitzgerald is not releasing them to Libby’s defense! Cute, eh?  Not how I want our nation’s justice system to work.  It is meant to determine the truth, not a desired political outcome.

Number [2] in Waas fantasy world sentence deals with the idiotic claim that a Kerry Campaign member is the same as a ‘vocal critique’.  The Kerry campaign is on the record admitting Wilson was working for them at this time AND that they too knew about Valerie’s job and role:

Kerry’s advisers acknowledged yesterday that Wilson, who has also donated $2,000 to Kerry this year, told them about his allegations against the White House involving his wife before going public with them this summer. But Rand Beers, Kerry’s top adviser on foreign affairs, said the campaign has not played a role in coordinating Wilson’s charges.

So how is it a ‘real’ reporter would confuse Wilson with some sainted voice of opposition?  Well, a real reporter can’t.  It is against their ethics.  You folks can take that to draw your own conclusions.

And finally [3]. Wilson did not claim through Kristof, Pincus and his own Op-Ed the administration misrepresented information leading to the Iraq war.  Wilson charged them with knowingly using forged documents, pretending they were real.  And in fact, the only person caught misrepresenting pre-war information was Mr. Joe Wilson, in a bi-partisan Senate study among others.

Waas is Waay out there.  He should switch to fiction, where his skills lie.   One final fantasy to point out:

Plame’s identity was blown on July 14, 2003 in a column by nationally syndicated writer Robert Novak.

We all know it was blown well before that, by someone under protection of Fitzgerald.  It was first REPORTED in a newspaper on this date.  But Fitzgerald has clearly proven the press had broad knowledge of Valerie Plame and her role even before Wilson outed himself in the NY Times.  Murray, what in the world are you thinking?  Did you expect to have accolades of genius thrown your way for this tripe?  I bet you did!  Too funny.

Tom Maguire applies his keen intellect to this garbage today as well.  Make sure to check it out.