To which my response today remains basically the same as it was then: I have every intention of sleeping with Jodie Foster the very first chance I get, but that doesn't mean I'm the unknown father of her children.
Yesterday, Hoffmania grasped at similar straws in saying that his money's still on Gore. After all, he only said he has no plans and expectations of ever being a candidate again...
But here's the big one. Today, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post published a column in which he argues that:
The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals. As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup -- but, again, of nothing much. Go home, Pat.
The alleged crime involves the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose husband, Joseph Wilson IV, had gone to Africa at the behest of the agency and therefore said he knew that the Bush administration -- no, actually, the president himself -- had later misstated (in the State of the Union address, yet) the case that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.
Wilson made his case in a New York Times op-ed piece. This rocked the administration, which was already fighting to retain its credibility in the face of mounting and irrefutable evidence that the case it had made for war in Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, above all -- was a fiction. So it set out to impeach Wilson's credibility, purportedly answering the important question of who had sent him to Africa in the first place: his wife. This was a clear case of nepotism, the leakers just as clearly implied.
Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out. (For some historical perspective see George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck'' about Edward R. Murrow and that most odious of leakers-cum-character assassins, Joseph McCarthy.) This is rarely considered a crime. In the Plame case, it might technically be one, but it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.
(Emphasis mine)
Well! As Matthew Gross writes:
It goes without saying that Cohen has no way of knowing what the "intent" of anyone was in the matter; but it is also worth saying that intent has nothing to do with it, and lack of intent does not absolve a person of a crime. The drunk who plows his car into a gaggle of pedestrians had no intent to jump the curb and kill people, but still we find him guilty of manslaughter. Anyone who's ever made a mistake on their taxes knows that lack of intent doesn't stop the IRS from demanding payment of the requisite penalty. And, when you get pulled over for speeding, claiming to have not seen the sign doesn't mean the cop will let you go, or that you won't have to pay the fine. Lack of intent may serve as an absolution when you accidentally bump into someone on the sidewalk; but in a criminal case, lacking intent-- while often factoring into the penalty phase-- is not the same thing as innocence.
So why would someone argue because, supposedly, high-ups in the White House had no intention of commiting a crime, they should not be tried for doing so? Well, believe it or not, I think Crooks and Liars is onto something when they ask,
Is Cohen just frustrated because he can't get any information out of Fitzgerald?It's easy to see why they would think that when you read Cohen's paragraphs like this one:
I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly unprecedented court order would permit it. Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some lefty critics hiss, she's a double-dealing grandstander, in the manner of some of her accusers.
I mean, maybe it's just me, but I think that reads very much like a petulant child. Fine, you don't wanna tell me what you're doing, you big bully? I hope nothing comes of your stupid investigation! See if I care! Nyeah!
No wonder he sympathizes with the Bush White House.
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