Scooter Scuppered, or Aspiration or Ambition?
Today is Wednesday, 7 March 2007.
Hint: if you suspect you may in the future have to claim a faulty memory in a multiple felony trial regarding national security, don’t boast to friends that you can recall the titles and plots of all 79 episodes of Star Trek, as did Scooter.
(I pride myself on my memory. Alas, born in 1952, I don’t think I could have accomplished that feat after 1975. Libby was born in 1950.)
This advice arrives a tad late for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr., convicted felon.
Libby’s lawyers tried to portray their client as mentally frazzled and lost in a crush of Matters of State, so how could he recall accurately the fate of one little covert CIA officer and her husband, who didn’t amount to “a hill of beans in this crazy world” (Rick/H. Bogart, Casablanca, 1942)?
Libby, at the direction of President of Vice Dick Cheney, for whom he was Chief of Staff, smeared CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Why?
In defense of the intelligence (now ain’t that usage a hoot if ever I heard one!) fabrications which gulled a majority of the Congress and the American public into supporting the Conquest of Iraq.
Under American and international law, the terms for conquest are “conspiracy to wage a war of aggression” and “waging a war of aggression”. (Since 1946, and the Nuremberg Tribunal.)
The penalty for such aggression is hanging.
As Doctor Samuel Johnson wrote: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (Boswell: Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson)
Libby would have us believe that he, “accidentally”, thanks to “faulty memory”, forgot he had engaged in a conspiracy to smear Wilson so as to support the fabrication of intelligence to wage a war of aggression, the latter being a capital offense.
Ethically speaking, Scooter should have concentrated his mind wonderfully long ago.
____________________________________________
On this date in 161 A.D./C.E., Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) became co-Emperor of Rome (last of "the Five Good Emperors" --- well, whatever). While fulfilling his bloody duties of Imperator, he also wrote the classic of Stoic philosophy, a favourite of your author, the Meditations. Go figure.
From the Meditations, and Scooter, et al. might wish to ponder:
"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."
Hint: if you suspect you may in the future have to claim a faulty memory in a multiple felony trial regarding national security, don’t boast to friends that you can recall the titles and plots of all 79 episodes of Star Trek, as did Scooter.
(I pride myself on my memory. Alas, born in 1952, I don’t think I could have accomplished that feat after 1975. Libby was born in 1950.)
This advice arrives a tad late for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr., convicted felon.
Libby’s lawyers tried to portray their client as mentally frazzled and lost in a crush of Matters of State, so how could he recall accurately the fate of one little covert CIA officer and her husband, who didn’t amount to “a hill of beans in this crazy world” (Rick/H. Bogart, Casablanca, 1942)?
Libby, at the direction of President of Vice Dick Cheney, for whom he was Chief of Staff, smeared CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Why?
In defense of the intelligence (now ain’t that usage a hoot if ever I heard one!) fabrications which gulled a majority of the Congress and the American public into supporting the Conquest of Iraq.
Under American and international law, the terms for conquest are “conspiracy to wage a war of aggression” and “waging a war of aggression”. (Since 1946, and the Nuremberg Tribunal.)
The penalty for such aggression is hanging.
As Doctor Samuel Johnson wrote: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (Boswell: Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson)
Libby would have us believe that he, “accidentally”, thanks to “faulty memory”, forgot he had engaged in a conspiracy to smear Wilson so as to support the fabrication of intelligence to wage a war of aggression, the latter being a capital offense.
Ethically speaking, Scooter should have concentrated his mind wonderfully long ago.
____________________________________________
On this date in 161 A.D./C.E., Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) became co-Emperor of Rome (last of "the Five Good Emperors" --- well, whatever). While fulfilling his bloody duties of Imperator, he also wrote the classic of Stoic philosophy, a favourite of your author, the Meditations. Go figure.
From the Meditations, and Scooter, et al. might wish to ponder:
"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."
posted by HH at 2:43 PM
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