The American Spectator

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(Page 5 of 10)

p>And yet, Mr. Tabin, hopes that Ms. Plame will share Libby's fate. If anyone is to share Mr. Libby's fate, it just might be Mr. Bush. There's a lesson to be learned here by Mr. Bush; failure to shut to door on these amoral Democrats will only lead to more of this perversion, with both Messrs. Bush and Gonzales being dispatched back to Texas, Orwellian style. br> -- A. DiPentima /p>

I just wanted to respond a little to John Tabin's article about Valerie Plame. Please understand that I am not a Republican and so my views may, and often would, differ greatly from many things The American Spectator may publish and believe. There are a lot of political opinion pieces that are written on both sides.

Certainly as relating to Valerie Plame, Mr. Tabin's quotations of her sworn testimony seem to be quite correct. And I did read his piece carefully. He puts a good deal of "spin" on things, but don't we all. His analysis of the Libby verdict is quite flawed I believe, but again political views may again impact on much of what we see and read.

The only place we should be able to come together, even in the extremes of political debate, should be when facts are clearly available which both sides should be able to agree upon.

For instance, there should be no question that George W. Bush is President of the United States and has been for quite a while now. There is no question that Libby has been convicted on four counts after a long trial and a lengthy jury deliberation.

There is no question that Valerie Plame's name was revealed and that it did destroy her usefulness in doing undercover work for the CIA overseas. Her career and training with the CIA covered approximately two decades. I'm not even sure you could you could argue over the fact that the exposure of her position at the CIA was based solely on political issues relating to responding to her husband's Niger piece in the Times accusing the White House of twisting information supporting the grave danger of Iraq gaining nuclear weapons.

Perhaps you might find some argument to the above, but I don't think so. All I'm trying to say is that public discourse is best served when whatever opinions are stated (Republican or Democrat) at least have their facts straight. Of course, sometimes facts can be hard to come by and sometimes they can be distorted.

Still let me take one of Mr. Tabin's observations -- "given that Fitzgerald found no evidence that the leak of Plame's name was a crime" -- his opinion was even supported by sworn testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from lawyer Victoria Toensing as well as testifying that Plame did not qualify as a covert agent under the law.

Let me respond with a few facts relating to above paragraph. If I may, I'm going to include a message I sent to Arianna Huffington (of the Huffington Post) as how such statements should be answered with the facts of the case.

If I'm somehow mistaken in what I provided as "facts" please do let me know. I'm always ready to be corrected. If, on the other hand, your own fact checking confirms the truth of what I've included, I think in fairness to your readers and to a proper debate, you should pass this information on to all who write for you and may sometimes be confused by a variety of conflicting statements.

p>Here is what I wrote: br>

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