Cheney, leaks and books I'm reading....

Cheney the Focus of CIA Leak Court Filing -- Of course, this is old stuff and we all know what happened and why. However, proof in a court of law is much different than our "common (sense) knowledge" so evidence has to be trudging and belabored. Of course by the time the proof is actually established, either Cheney will have died of a heart attack and our flags will be at half-mast for about a week, or the Bush Presidency will be over and either Hillery or Jeb will be our new royalty, or the nation will be in receivership - so who cares - and all of this will be a mere footnote in some obscure history book.

But then, every cloud has a silver lining - I like to read history books! I don't read a lot (without going to sleep) so it does take time for me to get through books. It is even worse now because I'm reading three books at once.

I'm still reading Friedman's "The world is Flat" which is a very depressing book about the future of America and its inability to compete economically with the rest of the world.

But then to cheer me up I'm reading the very small "Jefferson Bible" by of course, Thomas Jefferson which he entitled, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth".

What a brilliant man Jefferson was, as you all know, he wrote the ‘Declaration of Independence' and was vice President to the second President, John Adams, and then became the 3rd President of our nation and sponsored the Lewis and Clark expedition so the nation would have some idea of how large and varied it is. [And I still shiver at the fact that Jefferson died on July 4th exactly fifty years after he wrote the Declaration of Independence and that his good friend, President John Adams died that same day only four hours later. Makes one almost want to believe in providence!]

In this very small book it explains the editing (literally cutting out with scissors the magical, evangelical crap [my word] from the New Testament) and that he used not only the King James Bible, but also Greek, Latin and French versions (six Bibles in all) - since he was proficient in those languages.

His reason was that he appreciated, admired Jesus and wished the world to understand the actual teachings and life of Jesus which he thought were greatly obscured by ignorant and false attributions by those who actually wrote the New Testament.

The extensive and interesting historical introduction to the book was written by Forrest Church, son of Senator, Frank Church (1924-1984). Forrest is presently the senior minister of All Souls Church in NYC.

Perhaps the most involving book I'm reading is Jon Meacham's just published, "American Gospel" which involves "God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation."

I would certainly suggest that any Christian Fundamentalists read this book about the religious history of our nation before they put forth their faux wishes to return to the nation of our forefathers. It has been a long struggle out of depravity and evil - all in the name of God (or Jesus).

Although American citizens are predominantly Christians, we are not and never were a "Christian Nation". As I mentioned above concerning the "Jefferson Bible", Thomas Jefferson was an admirer of Jesus' intellect, morals and ability to present a proverb to explain a social truth, but he, along with Washington, Adams, Franklin and others were deists, not Christians and though they actually believed in an often ‘providential' God (as did Lincoln), they were not orthodox Christians and they were well aware of the tyrannies of organized religion - especially if that religion became part of government and law.

What they really wanted in their nation was individual freedom, especially of thought and self-determination. However, they lived in a tumultuous civilization and could only attempt to form ‘a more perfect union'. All in all, I think they did a good job.

But, back to the future....

Cheney the Focus of CIA Leak Court Filing
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame — albeit not by name — before her identity was publicly exposed.

The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, who is married to Plame.

With the two court filings, Fitzgerald has pointed to an important role for the vice president in the weeks leading up to the leaking of Plame's identity.

In the latest court filing late Friday, Fitzgerald said he intends to introduce at Libby's trial in January a copy of Wilson's op-ed article in The New York Times "bearing handwritten notations by the vice president." The article was published on July 6, 2003, eight days before Plame's identity was exposed by conservative columnist Bob Novak.

The notations "support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op Ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant — his chief of staff — on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in the article and on responding to those assertions."

The article containing Cheney's notes "reflects the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president to Mr. Wilson's Op Ed article," the prosecutor said. "This is relevant to establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant's immediate superior, including whether Mr. Wilson's wife had 'sent him on a junket,' the filing states.

The reference is to the fact that the CIA sent Wilson on a trip to Africa in 2002 to check out a report that Iraq had made attempts to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. Wilson concluded that it was highly doubtful an agreement to purchase uranium had been made.

The Bush administration used the intelligence on supposed efforts by Iraq to acquire uranium from Africa to bolster its case for going to war.

After the invasion, with the Bush White House under pressure because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, Wilson wrote the op ed piece for The Times. In it, he accused the Bush administration of exaggerating prewar intelligence to exaggerate an Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

Defending the administration against Wilson's accusations, Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove promoted the idea that Wilson's wife, Plame, had sent him on the trip to Africa. Administration critics have said such a move was an attempt to undercut Wilson's credibility.

The prosecution's court papers also stated that Cheney told Libby around June 12, 2003, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, a month before her identity was outed.