Patrick J. 'Bulldog' Fitzgerald

[shraby]

American Insurgent Occupied Washington under siege
by Justin Raimondo

The investigation into who "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent formerly engaged in deep-cover operations involving weapons of mass destruction, is now threatening to bring down some of the president's top advisers, including Karl Rove, the Machiavellian mastermind behind the White House's political machine. This has helped to create a partisan debate that obscures the potential significance of the investigation now being conducted by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald, and blocks any real understanding of what in blazes is going on. There's one way to get beyond this political smokescreen, however, and that's by clearing the air about the origins of this probe: what prompted it, and why is it so important?

In October 2001, the CIA received a report from a foreign intelligence agency claiming that an agreement between Iraq and the African nation of Niger had been inked sometime in early 1999, and that by late 2000 Niger's president had personally communicated to Iraq his nation's willingness to begin uranium shipments pronto.

This news was met with almost universal skepticism by the American intelligence community, and our ambassador to Niger dismissed the claim as being beyond the realm of possibility. In November, the same foreign intelligence service reiterated its claim, this time with more detail. The outcome of a proposal to have the source submit to a polygraph test remains unclear. What is clear is that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) reflected the views of the Niamey embassy: the uranium mines of Niger, tightly controlled by a French consortium, were an unlikely source to fuel Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons program, particularly since the purported Iraqi order – 500 tons of yellowcake – amounted to one-sixth of that country's annual production. Surely such a large chunk torn out of Niger's yellowcake stock would attract a certain amount of notice. The whole notion just didn't make any sense.

In the Bizarro World fantasyland inhabited by the purveyors of this tall tale, however, nonsense is truth. After all, the whole idea behind the various shibboleths manufactured to lie us into war is that the War Party makes up its own reality as it goes along. Saddam's nuclear program, his alleged "links" to al-Qaeda, his stocks of chemical and biological weapons, his plan to bomb American cities using unmanned drones armed with WMD – each and every detail of this administration's war propaganda has been debunked.

(much more)

<http://antiwar.com/justin/>

He lays it all out. Great read.

[Oreo]

1. Wasn't Jim Jeff Guckert Gannon's nickname bulldog?

[fob]

3. Dang. Got me by mere seconds! Curse you with all your creme-in-the-

middle goodness!

[fob]

2. Wasn't that gannon's nickname? I hope for our sake that it has a

completely different connotation in regards to Fitzgerald.

[DemonFighterLives]

4. Article on Fitzgerald

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8599914/site/newsweek/

Clip...
Now, Washington is wondering if it's gotten Patrick Fitzgerald wrong, too. For nearly two years, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak investigation has been the city's mystery man, pursuing a murky investigation whose only targets seemed to be members of the press. But as new details emerge about White House efforts to discredit Iraq-war critic Joe Wilson and his CIA agent wife, Washington insiders are seeing Fitzgerald in a new light. Maybe his hard-nosed investigation will do more than just punish reporters. Maybe Fitzgerald's leak investigation will actually uncover who leaked.