Political Commentary

More Revisionist History

Apparently I have to continue to correct the record, over and over and over.

This time it’s Vic Rubenfeld:

Frankly, I have to put a lot of blame for this on the Republicans, for using this tactic to impeach Bill Clinton. Having sex isn’t a crime, but he was impeached for lying about it.

Well, maybe if you were familiar with what actually happened, you wouldn’t have to do that.

Bill Clinton was not impeached for “lying about sex.” He was impeached for perjury, subornation of perjury from others, witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice, in the service of preventing a young woman from getting a fair trial in a civil law suit under a law that he signed with his own pen, but thought shouldn’t apply to King William. And he did this after having taken an oath to see that the laws of the land were faithfully executed.

Those aren’t my opinions. They’re black-letter facts. If you people are going to continue to whine about Clinton’s impeachment, at least get the history correct. Of course, this kind of spinning nonsense and mischaracterization of the president’s behavior was occurring in the media at the time, 24/7, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that people are still at it.

Political Commentary

No Vindication For Joe

The nutroots may be celebrating their long-awaited “Fitzmas” tonight, but it’s pretty weak tea compared to their fantasies of “Rove being frog marched out of the White House.” And they can’t take much comfort from Fitzgerald’s comment that the investigation is essentially over. Also, people should be reminded that Joe Wilson is still a liar, regardless of Scooter Libby’s fate:

Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address…

…The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson’s bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

In the end, the only crime was Libby’s alleged perjury. Well, and the fact that the media for so long promulgated and continued to provide oxygen to the loony left conspiracy theory that this was “retribution” against Wilson by the White House.

I agree with (former federal prosecutor) Andy McCarthy:

I don’t think there ever should have been an investigation in the first place. The Justice Department should quickly have realized that the facts here did not warrant a prosecution under its standards for the espionage act or the agent identity protection act. DOJ, under intense political pressure from Democrats and the anti-Bush media, did not close the investigation and kicked it to an independent prosecutor, but the most culpable person in this mess is Wilson, and I wish no one had been charged if there was no legal way of charging him. The administration had every good reason to refute Wilson

War Commentary

“A Few Signs Of Progress”

From Iraqpundit:

Are my aunt and her neighbors kidding themselves out of desperation? That’s possible; it’s hard to live without hope, and people can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be optimistic. (Though the truth is that Iraqis are not, as a rule, an optimistic group, and are inclined by cultural habit to see things darkly. But that’s another story.) It’s true that the murderers in Iraq are still at work. On the other hand, I’m far more inclined to take seriously a picture of Baghdad that comes from a life-long Baghdadi than one coming from a Westerner who has parachuted into town for a while, and who doesn’t speak the language.

Yet Iraqis who desperately want to lead normal lives are not the only ones with an incentive to interpret events in their own interests. If one listens to the usual suspects among certain journalists, academics, and politicians, the ongoing crackdown is futile and doomed to fail. But that’s a conclusion that many of these figures reached even before the security sweep began. In other words, some of the crackdown’s critics have created incentives, professional and personal, to perceive Iraqi and American failure. People can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be pessimistic, too.

War Commentary

“A Few Signs Of Progress”

From Iraqpundit:

Are my aunt and her neighbors kidding themselves out of desperation? That’s possible; it’s hard to live without hope, and people can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be optimistic. (Though the truth is that Iraqis are not, as a rule, an optimistic group, and are inclined by cultural habit to see things darkly. But that’s another story.) It’s true that the murderers in Iraq are still at work. On the other hand, I’m far more inclined to take seriously a picture of Baghdad that comes from a life-long Baghdadi than one coming from a Westerner who has parachuted into town for a while, and who doesn’t speak the language.

Yet Iraqis who desperately want to lead normal lives are not the only ones with an incentive to interpret events in their own interests. If one listens to the usual suspects among certain journalists, academics, and politicians, the ongoing crackdown is futile and doomed to fail. But that’s a conclusion that many of these figures reached even before the security sweep began. In other words, some of the crackdown’s critics have created incentives, professional and personal, to perceive Iraqi and American failure. People can be creative at manufacturing reasons to be pessimistic, too.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!