Author: Glenn Hauman

1. I, Glenn Hauman, do hereby attest that on or about the dates of June
1, 2003, through July 14, 2003, I did not contact, whether by
telephone, facsimile, e-mail, in person, or by any other means, any
reporter, correspondent, journalist, or any other member of the media,
with the intent to or purpose of naming former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an operative for the Central
Intelligence Agency.
2. I, Glenn Hauman, further attest that on or about the dates of June
1, 2003, through July 30, 2003, I did not have any conversation,
whether by telephone, e-mail, in person, or by any other means, with
any reporter, correspondent, journalist, or any other member of the
media, during which the employment of Valerie Plame was discussed in
any way.
I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and
correct. Did you do it? If not, please sign here and sign your own copy.

She wished this could get more exposure. So I’m going to reprint it all here.

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From James D. Macdonald,
posted on July 31, 2003 09:00 PM:
By the “president from CA” do you mean Ronald Reagan? Let’s not be
overly cute about all this.
Okay, on economic warfare. That isn’t the same as men with rifles lying
in the dirt and blowing one another’s heads off. A confusion in terms
doesn’t help anyone.
I’ve long maintained that under some circumstances war is necessary or
inevitable — attack by a foreign power, for example. (How about
Japan’s preemptive war against the USA in 1941? Or North Korea’s
preemptive war against South Korea? Or Germany’s preemptive war against
Poland? Preemptive war has a lousy history.)
War is so terrible that it must only be used when there is no other
choice. I am not convinced that that situation existed in Iraq.
How about those economic means, though? According to the CIA world fact
book, Iraq’s GDP in 2002 was $58 billion.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
The FY 2002 US DOD budget was $329 billion.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2001/b06272001_bt287-01.html That is
to say, the US could have bought Iraq with less that 20% of the DoD
budget. I see no compelling reason to believe warfare, the
bullets-and-bayonets kind, was the only or best choice.
Now the economic boycott and “sanctions” were a bad choice too. As
Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle, “That trick never works.” Forty years
of sanctions have hardly removed Castro from power. But Castro was a
young man when he took control of Cuba. Saddam was 65 this year — and
the Iraqi life expectancy is 67 years. How long could he hold out,
especially if his sons got ambitious? And when he died, two men can’t
sit on the throne at once. The vile Uday and the unspeakable Qusay
might have fought one another, leading to a chance to overthrow the
entire government.
But rather than use our true strength in Iraq, we’ve taken another
path. We just lost two more soldiers killed today. That makes
twenty-eight just since this discussion thread started. And we’re
standing virtually alone in the world, our alliances strained, our
foreign support tarnished, our government’s reputation under question
everywhere. For what? What was so important that we couldn’t wait to
forge the diplomatic ties to solve the Iraq problem?
For that matter, how did Saddam, who didn’t attack or pose a threat to
the US, take priority over Osama, who both attacked us and poses a
continuing threat? I see from the news that we’re being warned of more
suicide airline hijackings. I see that a “Parliamentary Committee Says
War May Have Helped Bin Laden’s Terror Group”
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7299-2003Jul31.html)
“LONDON — The war in Iraq failed to reduce security threats against
Britain and may have harmed efforts to tackle the al Qaida terror
network, a parliamentary committee said Thursday. “In a report, the
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the war may have helped
the terror group led by Osama bin Laden to recruit new members.”
I seem to remember several people warning of just this happening before
the war. What have we gained? I don’t see a net victory here. I don’t
see a victory in the future.
What I do see is this: Osama bin Laden came up with a plan to start a
war between the West and Islam, much as Charlie Manson tried to start a
war between the Blacks and Whites with his “Helter Skelter” plan. While
the war is raging, Osama will hide out in the hills somewhere (it
doesn’t matter to him if Mullah Omar lives or dies — what’s Omar to
him?) like Charlie planned to live in the desert with his “family.”.
When the fighting is over between the West and Islam, both sides will
be reduced to ruin. Osama will return from the hills in triumph to rule
over the smoking remnants of civilization, like Charlie planned to
return to rule over the wreckage of America.
A mad scheme, perhaps. It didn’t work when Manson tried.
But George W. Bush was dumb enough to go for it.
Now we’re on the rollercoaster, and I don’t see any way to get off.
Or maybe one. We have to vote Bush out of office, attempt to mend our
alliances with our traditional friends, then root out terrorists using
our strengths — international cooperation, the rule of law, fair
trials (universally seen to be fair), and our very seductive lifestyle.
This is a police matter, not a military one. Using the wrong tool
doesn’t help us.

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From James D. Macdonald,
posted on October 8, 2003 05:04 PM:
In the two months since that last comment, several things have
happened:
The Valerie Plame affair has exploded.
Bush’s job approval has plummeted.
The latest round of WMD inspections has ended — with no WMD found.
Bush has gone to the UN to beg for help, and not gotten it.
The Israeli/Palestinian “road map” has collapsed.
And we’ve had 73 more US troops killed in Iraq.

It says a lot when we’ve gotten to the point that the CIA is trying to
take out government officials, not in some faraway land, but in our own
country– and I’m rooting for the CIA.

Take a look here
for a Google cache of an article which casts an even more extreme take
on the problem. If this is true, Bush is in even bigger trouble than he
lets on.

One of the most suspected reason GWB ran for the office of the
President was to, shall we say, protect his father’s legacy.
If you read “protect his father’s legacy” as “making him look damn good
by comparison” then he’s done a hell of a job, hasn’t he?

Dear Bravo TV:
I’d like to correct one of your “True Tales Of The West Wing”
interstitials.
The story of the “W” keys being pried off by the outgoing Clinton
administration, as reported on your 9/9 episode of “The West Wing” is
false. A formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress’
investigative agency, “had found no damage to the offices of the White
House’s East or West Wings or EOB” and that Bush’s own representatives
had reported “there is no record of damage that may have been
deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration.”
For more information, please see http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/23/vandals/
While a retraction would be in order, I would be content if you removed
that particular untrue tale of the West Wing from rotation.

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Feel free to add your voice by sending a note to Bravo.

Mark Giselson on the current crop of “Bush Lies” books:

Since Steve Perry ran his “Bush Lies” posts and stories earlier this
summer a veritable cottage industry in “Bush lies” books has sprung up.
I’m reading Joe Conason’s “Big Lies” right now, and looking forward to
reading Al Franken’s book next. So far I’ve been surprised by how
little repetition I’ve encountered. There are so many lies, and only so
many expos�s.

The bumper-stickers and t-shirts used to read “It will be a great day
when schools have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold
a bake sale to buy a bomber”.
Well, there are military families on food stamps. Other families have
had to send air conditioners and bottled water to the front lines in
Iraq. Wounded soldiers have to pay for their own food in the hospitals.
And people are organizing bake sales for the soldiers.
Unfortunately, education spending is still lousy, unless you consider
the tax cuts a roundabout way of paying for private schools. Baby
steps, I suppose…

\\Serafin: I can tell you your past, your present and your future.
Manuela: You don’t have to tell me my future, I know my future.
Serafin: Am I in it?
Manuela: No!
Serafin: Then you don’t know your future.\\
What? Wasn’t yesterday “Talk like The Pirate Day”?

CARLSON: You’re going to be on the National Mall [in Washington, D.C.]
soon performing for Pepsi and the NFL and also to support our troops. A
lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?
SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every
decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be
faithful in what happens. –CNN, 9/4/03

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Prosecutor: Tell the court why you think he’s a traitor to this
country.
Miss America: I think Mr. Mellish is a traitor to this country, because
his views are different from the views of the President and others of
his kind. Differences of views should be tolerated, but not when they
are too different. Then he becomes a subversive mother. –Bananas (1971)

This has been a tribute to Billmon and the Whiskey Bar.