THE WORMS THEY ARE A TURNIN'

From USA Today:
February 10, 2006:
Brown says he's been made Katrina scapegoat
Ex-FEMA chief blames Homeland Security for slow response

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown told a Senate panel Friday that he feels he's been made a scapegoat for the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.
"I certainly feel somewhat abandoned" by the Bush administration now, Brown said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
In the hours after Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast on Monday, August 29, Brown said he bypassed his boss at the Department of Homeland Security and communicated directly with the White House about the disaster.
He described how he "got around DHS" by dealing with President Bush's top aides instead of going to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
He also contradicted comments by Homeland Security officials that they were unaware of flood dangers in New Orleans, Louisiana, the day that Katrina made landfall.
"For them to now claim that we didn't have awareness of it, I think is just baloney," he said. "They should have had awareness of it because they were receiving the same information that we were."

And in related news:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury recently that he had been "authorized" by Dick Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

This new information indicates that Libby is likely to pursue a defense during his trial that he was broadly "authorized" by Cheney and other "superiors" to defend the Bush administration in making the case to go to war. Libby does not, however, appear to be claiming that he was acting specifically on Cheney's behalf in disclosing information about Valerie Plame to the press. (How could he? What does Valerie Plame, and her status as a CIA operative, have to do with the National Intelligence Estimate? Even if you're leaking information for a "credible" purpose, the leakage still cannot be done in violation of the laws against perjury, obstruction, and in violation of the Intelligence Identies Protection Act (to which there is no defense, other than the disclosure was not made knowingly, or that the intelligence officer was not covert. The only defenses come from the language of the statute itself - no common-law defenses such as necessity apply).

*********************************************************************************
Both Brownie and Flibbie have "resigned" from the Scrumbumdumya government in disgrace, and have been mocked ceaselessly since. Both are well-off financially. Besides, presumably, his car, his real estate, and his genitals, what does a man care about as much (or almost as much) as money? His "reputation." A Congressional investigation has just revealed that the White House did indeed know that the levees had breached while Bush was out strumming his guitar in San Diego, thus putting the lie to Bush's lie, "nobody anticipated that the levees would breach." This revelation, of course, immediately brought "Brownie" into the spotlight again. This time, though, he has decided to take a different tack of defense. Instead of lashing out at Louisiana, he has... stated the obvious (to say that he "has told the truth" would be to suggest that he has acted valorously) - but only after lying. Better late than never? Yeah. Even though his stating the obvious (the "right" thing) was done for the wrong reasons (to escape personal embarrassment)? Yeah. It's all relative. Bush should know by now that picking an incompetent person will lead to that person's "resigning" (i.e. Bush's firing him). Neither the hiring nor firing are merit based. He should further know that once the "resignation" occurs, the worm will turn and speak out against Bush. At some point, the Republican slime machine will simply run out of the fresh sewage that is needed to drown these worms.

As for Flibby, same deal. First he said, "I got Plame's name from reporters." Now, he says (as Fitzgerald alleged)" that he was authorized to leak classified information (obviously, in this White House, a leak is not a leak by any other name), which may have included Plame's identity (he may very well have been authorized to leak the identity, but could not have been LEGALLY authorized to do so).

How his revelation that Cheney ordered him to leak the NIE information will help his defense (given that this revelation seems to change his story for about the fifth time) is unclear, but what is clear is this: Libby, too, has been ridiculed since his "resignation," and now that a recent event has just stoked his case back into public opinion (said event being the discovery that White House email records from March 2003 have been destroyed), he does not want to be embarrassed again. So what does he do? State the obvious (if not all of the obvious) such that the scum is implicated. Regardless of whether he is pardoned, and even if he says Cheney never authorized the leak of the name, a whole new shitload of suspicion has been coast upon Cheney that can never be wiped away - because Libby was made the fall guy, and because fall guys, sometimes, can only stay down for so long