[a href="http://www.tracypress.com/voice/2006-04-11-our-voice.php"]http://www.tracypress.com/voice/2006-04-11-our-voice.php[/a]
[font style="font-weight: bold;" size="5"]Bush has a credibility issue[/font][h1] [!-- InstanceEndEditable --][/h1] [p class="article-author"][!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="article-author" --][!-- InstanceEndEditable --][/p] [p class="article-source"][!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="article-source" --][!-- InstanceEndEditable --][/p]What Vice President Dick Cheney's aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., said he did in leaking previously classified information to reporters is not unusual. It's a game members of the Bush administration play regularly with reporters — to the advantage of both. [/p] Leaking is a skill that the White House for centuries has honed to get its side of a story out to the public without attribution. It also has been a way to launch trial balloons of programs and policies.[/p] So it didn't seem out of the ordinary when President Bush ordered the declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq so, according to Libby, he could leak information regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged search for uranium from Niger first to Bob Woodard of The Washington Post and then to Judith Miller of The New York Times.[/p] What is unusual is that no one other than Bush, Cheney and Libby is said to have known of the declassification of the sensitive information or the go-ahead for the leak in the summer of 2003. Such approval usually comes after group discussions in the White House.[/p] The leak was to rebut a critic of the reasoning behind Bush's war with Iraq. Former ambassador Joseph Wilson had been sent to Africa by the State Department and paid by the CIA to check out the rumor of Hussein's search for uranium. He returned with the conclusion that the claim was exaggerated. After Bush used the rumor as fact in his 2003 State of the Union, Wilson went public with his findings in an op-ed piece in the Times and in a TV interview. Within days, Wilson's wife, CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame, was outed by another leak reportedly by Libby.[/p] These leaks were vindictive — attempts to destroy the credibility of Wilson and his wife, more so than to dispute Wilson's public statements. Previously, members of the Bush administration had acknowledged to the media that the uranium rumor was seriously flawed.[/p] After the leaks, Bush appeared extremely offended and wanted to know whom the leaker was and said he would fire the leaker. Of course, he already knew who the leaker was.[/p] What Bush, Cheney and Libby are accused of doing isn't unlawful, but it is hypocritical since the president has long assailed such leaks as threats to national security. By putting politics ahead of national security, our president has lost credibility in the eyes of even more Americans. We join the growing bipartisan voice of America that is urging the president to come clean with his involvement in the Wilson and Plame cases and discuss his rationale for the Libby leak.
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