With all the discussion about whether or not Rove was the one who outed Plame, there seems to be something that gets missed. First, the Democrats and Moonbats at the New York Times chide the White House for being silent on the Rove issue, but they leave out the fact that the special prosecutor they demanded asked them to keep quiet so he can do his job. More front page lies from the newspaper of record.
Rove isn't the target, it appears he didn't do anything illegal, and there is indication that Plame isn't even a covert agent considering her frequent trips to Langley.
What does remain unasked is why did the CIA send a retired ambassador with no known investigative experience, no particular expertise in WMD, with a known bone to pick with the Administration before such a trip, who had been forced into early retirement at 48 (when the earliest retirement age is 50), who is clearly a partisan, and the trip was the idea of the man's wife? He certainly made no attempts to hide her name or their marriage.
As an aside, once again, most the world knows that a good deal of our espionage takes place out of the embassies. No foreign government would seriously consider the wife of an ambassador as being a safe individual to have discussions with. She'd be suspect in any country she stepped foot in.
After the Senate investigated the matter it found out that Wilson was a liar, and that after "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" (as he himself put it), he didn't even bother to file a report. Even the claims made by Wilson have been exposed as lies.
All of that aside, why did the CIA endorse a trip of a left-wing partisan hack at the request of his wife to do a hatchet job against the President of the United States, which ended up peddling lies? And why hasn't intelligence reform addressed that issue? Several serious studies of the issue in the US and overseas have indicated that Bush was correct about Saddam's desire for yellowcake. What broke down to send a less-than-stellar ex-foreign service officer who has unexplained money to go on a CIA-funded trip to hatchet the President?
Article comments
1 - truth dood
this is stupid-but i guess no one's readings so it's not so bad.
2 - Lono
Rove and Novak are guilty of treason, and should be dealt with as severely as the imagination allows.
3 - Eric Berlin
ABC's The Note quoted a Republican official as saying that if there was a Democratic White House, there would be Congressional hearings a plenty right now.
So I guess they're all Moonbats (like the cap M, btw) too?
4 - Michael Camann
This is a really lame attempt at damage control. It's an old tactic-- when all else fails, distract attention, preferably by making the victims look like criminals. It's about as convincing as Luskin's denial that Rove never actually spoke "Wilson's wife's" name.
"Why Wilson?" is an "unasked question" because in the present context it's rather irrelevant. The Bush administration trumped up the Niger yellowcake story, it's been thoroughly debunked-- just like Colin Powell's vial of white powder-- and when Wilson pointed out that the emperor was buck nekkid on this one, someone in the White House exposed the identity of an undercover CIA operative for utterly crass political motives. Karl Rove turns out to be one of the leakers, but there are others-- recall that TWO "senior administration officials" gave up Plame to Novak. "Why Wilson?" just doesn't seem to have much potential to undo that kind of damage.
Here's another unanswered-- and so far barely asked-- question. With Karl Rove well and truely out in the daylight finally, why is Judy Miller still sleeping on the jail house floor? Iron-willed journalistic integrity? Right.... Miller was the White House's most ardent shill for the WMD scam, a veritable press agent for Chalabi and Rumsfeld. Her heels are a bit too round to credibly imitate a responsible journalist at this late date. No, I suspect that SHE has a source who is still trying to stay concealed, and she's afraid of him. That suggests that he's more powerful than Rove, who has been rendered rather toothless by all the attention-- who may, in fact, be called upon to rather gracelessly fall on his sword. The river of power runs wide and deep in Washington. It's most implacable bottom-feeders are rarely seen, but events are slowly dragging at least one more of them into the sunlight. Judy Miller seems to prefer the safety of jail.
Think my tinfoil hat's screwed on too tightly? That's what they said two years ago, when it was first suggested that Rove and friends might be involved up to their necks in White House tricks dirty enough to give Nixon pause. Now the White House is following up with the time honored Nixonian tactic of stonewalling. Deju vu.
So spin away, but save something plausible for the second act-- Rove might look like a big fish now, but I have a feeling he's only the beginning. There's blood in the water, and it's not going away.
5 - Nancy
I can't wait for the hangings. I'm bloody sick & tired of the 'new' GOP smearing everyone who ever considered themselves Republican with their filth & total lack of ethics or honesty. The GOP has become the party of dirt, lies, arrogance, & abuse of power, even more than the Dems, something that, even 6 years ago, I would never have thought I'd have had to say. I've had to switch my party affiliation because I'm so sick of being associated with the likes of Smirk, Rove, & DeLay, at the expense of far better persons, & I resent it.
I want the GOP to clean itself up & throw out the trash instead of wallowing in it & defending it 'just because', dammit.
Congress - ALL of it - AND the administration have a serious & deadly disconnect with the mores of the general citizenry, that they think NOTHING of the corruption & lies they tolerate, they think it's "a tempest in a teapot" to quote Orrin Hatch. Well it isn't. It's a major hurricane, & I wish I had some way to make congress & the WH sit up & take notice that their crap will no longer be tolerated - and then be able to enforce it!
I agree w/Mike: like Watergte, this involves more than Plame, and goes all the way up to the top & then some. But whether it WILL come out or not is in doubt, because congress these days doesn't have the moral compass to deplore any corruption, no matter how bald; they just stonewall & shriek 'PARTISAN!' instead of doing what they should do, which is rigorously cleaning house!
6 - Matt
Illegal or not, Bush said he'd can whoever leaked the name.
7 - Nancy
Bush is a fucking liar, & has been since birth, you ought to know that by now. He's so busy backpedalling his feet are a blur.
8 - Phillip Winn
Stop the presses! President George Bush has been able to speak since birth! This is miraculous! :-)
Bush did say he'd fire whoever leaked the name. That seems to be an issue completely separate from whether or not the leaking was unethical, illegal, dangerous, etc. Yeah, Joseph Wilson lied and Karl Rove told the truth. It doesn't matter; Bush said he would fire whomever leaked the name, so Rove should be fired. His personal integrity demands it.
9 - Nancy
My bad: I should have been accurate & said 'since he spoke his first word'.
10 - Phillip Winn
Given that most kids' first word is "dada," you seem to be suggesting unusual parentage. Perhaps you should stick with "since he learned how to speak." That's more general, and likely pretty true. Most kids lie when they're very young, at least a little. :-)
11 - powers
"Rove isn't the target, it appears he didn't do anything illegal"
Nice try. Rove is not a "target" but he is a "subject" of the GJ investigation. Subjects can go on to target status after testifying or they can become merely "witnesses". Time will tell which way Rove's status changes and if he perjured himself while testifying.
12 - Dave Nalle
>>The Bush administration trumped up the Niger yellowcake story, it's been thoroughly debunked<<
Actually, this is one of the WMD claims which has NOT been thoroughly debunked. While Wilson's investigation was not fruitful in finding the source of the Iraqi Yellowcake, in fact evidence was discovered that the Iraqis did have it. Traces of it were found in a load a scrap metal shipped from Iraq to Germany, as noted in USA Today and other sources.
Of course this is not surprising, because even if they couldn't find the Yellowcake connection in Niger, Iraq has been documented to have purchased enormous amounts of it from other sources, includng Portugal, and to have made some of their own from lower grade radioactive materials. And this isn't some sort of Bush propaganda, this is fact, straight from UN inspectors and the sources in Russia, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Niger and other countries which sold Iraq nuclear materials. In fact, Iraq had enough yellowcake to make multiple dirty bombs, and only a fraction of what they are documented to have had has ever been recovered. Think about that. Where is it? Who has it?
And, in fact Iraq has been documented to have bought about 270,000kg of Yellowcake from Niger in two lots in the 1980s, even if the specific purchase Wilson investigated could not be documented.
In fact, the best argument against the purchase of Yellowcake from Niger in the 1990s is that they had so much Yellowcake they probably didn't actually need any more.
For documentation on the over 600,000kg of Yellowcake in Iraq see this report from the INVO
Dave
13 - JR
John Bambenek: If Kerry were President and the same thing happened the other way around, heads would be rolling and the NYT would have front page coverage of the bloodbath.
You mean we would have had actual accountability in government? Damn, we should have elected that guy.
14 - John Bambenek
There are those who believe we should surrender to Al Qaeda too...