Democrats in the United States and their lib-left allies in the mainstream media have been in an uproar since special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delivered a grand jury indictment against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Democrats and their media allies feel vindicated in their allegations against President George Bush that he lied in taking the U.S. into war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. These allegations were liberally thrown around during the 2004 election with no effect on the democratic outcome of Bush and Cheney winning a second term in the White House.
The uproar is an indication of how far to the fringes of American politics the once-great Democratic party has drifted. Neither facts nor history seem to matter to its current leadership, which has focused on ideology wrapped in layers of resentment and hate directed at Bush.
The indictment of Libby was a result of a 22-month investigation into charges of a deliberate leak from within the White House “to out a covert CIA agent”—Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador.
But the investigation only led to an indictment of Libby for obstruction of the grand jury, two counts of perjury and two counts of false statements. Libby has pleaded not guilty and will fight the charges in court.
Here it is worthwhile to recall there was no indictment of any sort against Sandy Berger, former president Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, who stuffed some secret papers into his socks and walked out of a building holding national security documents. Berger was fined $50,000, probably paid by friends of Clinton.
There was not, as Fitzgerald answered the media, “any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent.” Moreover, there was no indictment against Karl Rove, Bush’s right-hand man.
When asked if the grand jury indictment of Libby could be viewed by critics of the Iraq war as a vindication of their charges against the Bush administration, Fitzgerald replied: “This indictment is not about the war … people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution … or any vindication of how they feel.”
So the matter should rest. But it won’t, because Democrats and their lib-left allies, having failed to win any of their arguments in the political arena, have resorted to the courts to fight their political battles.
LIB-LEFT TACTICS
The fact that neither Libby nor Rove was indicted for the reason the investigation was demanded—the violation of the 1982 Identities Act to protect covert agents—indicates the political tactic of the American lib-left is to continue throwing piles of rubbish at their opponents in the hope some will stick through the legal system.
Indeed, the Joseph/Valerie Wilson saga has been exposed for what it is, a highly egotistical man tilting against an administration over a policy endorsed by a majority of the American people.
The story of the CIA, on the other hand, is a history of an organization with a long list of failures, from Vietnam through Iran to Iraq. This is well-known inside Washington, and confirmed by the recent Senate Intelligence Committee findings in the Silbermann-Robb report which cleared the president of charges that the administration pressured the CIA to doctor intelligence reports before going to war.
But none of this matter to the angry left, who seem ever-ready to betray America’s interests to the hordes who remain sworn enemies of freedom.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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