WHY DID BUSH LEAK AND THEN TRY TO COVER-UP THE LEAK?

In yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES, David Stout had an interesting piece about how BushCo is trying to quell the furor over the leak case and Bush's pattern of blatant lies and deception. Of course, the Bush Regime is lamely claiming that "the president had the authority to declassify and release information 'in the public interest' and had never done so for political reasons." Bush's chief flack, now widely thought of by the Washington press corps as just a useless liar himself, Scotty McClellan "was in the somewhat odd position of not disputing that President Bush was involved in the disclosure of hitherto classified information, while describing any such disclosure as being in the public good. Mr. McClellan, who noted that a president has the authority to declassify intelligence, said today that he was 'not getting into confirming or denying things, because I'm not commenting at all on matters relating to an ongoing legal proceeding.'"

But while the Bush Regime and the fourth estate were doing their pointless minuet, the country was boiling over with anger towards what is becoming commonly known as "the Leaker-in-Chief." And the Outside-the-Beltway Knight Ridder newspapers ran a story about exactly what McClellan and Bush and Rove and the whole Regime is frantic for no one to put together: how the White House very much does use intelligence leaks for partisan political gain and that there is a clear and quite despicable pattern to this.

The revelation that President Bush authorized former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to divulge classified information about Iraq fits a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration's political agenda.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials have reacted angrily at unauthorized leaks, such as the exposure of a domestic wiretapping program and a network of secret CIA prisons, both of which are now the subject of far-reaching investigations.
But secret information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated.
Court papers filed late Wednesday by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald quote Libby as telling a grand jury that Bush, via Cheney, authorized him to reveal the key judgments of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. The president and vice president have virtually unlimited legal authority to declassify government secrets.
The authorized leak, in July 2003, came two days after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote an article in The New York Times charging that the White House had manipulated intelligence on Iraq's alleged quest for uranium ore from Africa to make its case for war.

Is there even one senator who deserves to be re-elected who does not sign on to Russ Feingold's censure resolution? Democrats, independents and honest Republicans need to let their senators know that we're sick and tired of Bush's unchecked lies and unconstitutional activities. And in this, Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are no cleaner than John Cornyn or Sam Brownback. Please consider showing Senator Feingold some support here.


SUNDAY UPDATE: GOP TOADY WANTS BUSH TO TELL THE DAMN TRUTH ALREADY

Even a complete toady and rubber-stamp Republican like Arlen Specter is demanding calling on Bush to come clean on the leaks. "I think that it is necessary for the president and the vice president to tell the American people exactly what happened," Specter said on Fox "News" today. "I'm not about to condemn or criticize anybody, but I do say that there's been enough of a showing here with what's been filed of record in. The president may be entirely in the clear, and it may turn out that he had the authority to make the disclosures which were made, but that it was not the right way to go about it, because we ought not to have leaks in government. We ought not to have them."

Ambassador Wilson, the intended victim of the Bush/Cheney illegal leaks, was a little more to the point than the old windbag from Pensylvania. On ABC's "This Week," he stated flatly that the Regime's leaking was part of a "disinformation campaign... Indeed, it seems to me it is long past time for the White House to come clean on all of this."