The fundamental problem
The subtitle of an editorial at Washingtonpost.com summarizes one part of the issue, but neglects the fundamental problem:
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
What is the fundamental problem?
That the integrity of those in the White House was at issue sufficiently to make plausible in the first place the accusation of someone deliberately exposing a CIA agent who was married to someone who presented a political problem as a method of retaliation.
So much for “bringing integrity back to the office of the President” which was promised back in 1999 by the campaign of George W. Bush.
More lies, but instead of ones involving peccadillos in the Oval Office, they concern the origins of an optional war which turned out to be based upon a non-existent foundation, a circumstance that allowed certain parts of the world to use the most negative interpretation of the act giving some small measure of truth to the eternal accusation of “imperialism” against the powerful such as we.
Which do you think will have longer-lasting negative consequences to the United States in the world?
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Cross-posted to Random Fate.
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12 Responses to “The fundamental problem”
I think the Dem’s really dropped the ball on this one.
Reid saying that Rove should be fired even though the investigation did not implicate Rove.
They missed the chance to take the high road, instead they jumped on the low road and went all out on it.
Now they’re strangly quiet.
Oh, dear [diety].
The Moderate Voice has now jumped on the Fake but Accurate bandwagon.
It’s not that the actual accusations was implausible from the beginning. It’s not that the original ‘victim’ would have committed a federal felony or two if they were the case. It’s not that the individuals bringing charges forward were politically motivated, it’s not that the damned thing was shown to be idiotic with simple public record.
It’s that ‘integrety was at issue sufficiently’ – in short, since everyone was willing to think that it was valid complaint, it was, regardless of actual fact.
What a strange post. Is this all you have to say? The editorial was about the Plame affair….not anything else…you just ranted about a plethora of utterly unrelated issues.
The POINT is that the entire Plame affair was much ado about nothing. Whatever else the Bush White House can be criticized for, this wasn’t one of them.
And apparently all you have to say is….”um, er, well….dammit, when Clinton lied, people didn’t die”…. pitiful.
The Wapo struck a trigger when it said Iraq’s attempts to buy uranium in Niger had not been discredited. There are other opinions, this one takes on specific points:
From Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Response to Wash Post Editorial of 9/1/06
Allegation: It is untrue that the WH orchestrated leak of Plame’s identity to ruin her career and punish Joe Wilson
* According to Washington Post article of 10/12/03: “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists.� An administration source told the Post: “officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson . . . It was unsolicited . . . They were pushing back. They used everything they had.�
* After Novak’s column appeared Rove called Chris Matthews and told him Mr. Wilson’s wife was “fair game� (Newsweek 7/11/05)
* Mr. Fitzgerald, who has long been aware of Mr. Armitage’s role, stated in court filing: “there is ample evidence that multiple officials in the White House discussed [Valerie Wilson’s] employment with reporters prior to (and after) July 14, “ and further that “it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish’ [Mr.] Wilson.� (Washington Post 4/7/06)
Allegation: Mr. Wilson’s charge that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger is false
* The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment of Iraq describes Mr. Wilson’s role:
o The CIA’s decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger was part of an effort to obtain responses to questions from the Vice President’s Office and State and Defense on “the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal� (p. 39)
o Two CIA staffers debriefed Mr. Wilson upon his return from Niger and wrote a draft intelligence report that was sent to the CIA Director of Operations (“DO�) reports officer. (p. 43)
o The intelligence report based on Mr. Wilson’s trip was disseminated on March 8, 2002, and was “widely distributed.� It did not identify Mr. Wilson by name to protect him as a source, which the CIA had promised Mr. Wilson. (p. 43)
+ According to the report, the CIA’s DO gave Mr. Wilson’s information a grade of “good� “which means it added to the IC’s body of understanding on the issue.� (p. 46)
* After Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, the Administration acted as if he had made a major revelation:
o The day after a spokesman for the President told The Washington Post: “the sixteen words [“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa�] did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union.� (NY Times 7/8/03)
o On July 11, 2003, CIA Director George Tenet said “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.� (LA Times 7/12/03).
* According to a Washington Post article, the National Intelligence Council stated in a January 2003 memo that “the Niger story [that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger] was baseless and should be laid to rest.� (Washington Post 4/9/06)
* According to a Vanity Fair article of July 2006, there was a last-minute decision before the President’s State of the Union Address to attribute the Niger uranium deal to British intelligence even though “the CIA had told the White House again and again that it didn’t trust the British reports.�
* On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, publicly disclosed that the Niger documents which formed the basis for reports of a Iraq-Niger uranium transaction were false. He stated that “the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.�
Allegation: Mr. Wilson “ought to have expected . . . that the answer [to why he was sent to Niger] would point to his wife.�
* A July 22, 2003 Newsday article cites a senior intelligence officer who confirmed that “she [Valerie Plame] did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.�
* Joe Wilson’s July 15, 2005 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence explains that Valerie Wilson was not at the meeting at which the subject of him traveling to Niger was raised for the first time and then only after a discussion of what the participants at the meeting did not did not know about Niger. This is confirmed by SSCI report at p. 40.
It is interesting that the charge is dismissed as trivial. Mr. Wm. Buckley does not think so:
We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal. But even if she was safe in Washington when the identity of her employer was given out, it does not mean that her outing was without consequence. We do not know what dealings she might have been engaging in which are now interrupted or even made impossible. We do not know whether the countries in which she worked before 1997 could accost her, if she were to visit any of them, confronting her with signed papers that gave untruthful reasons for her previous stay — that she was there only as tourist, or working for a fictitious U.S. company. In my case, it was 15 years after reentry into the secular world before my secret career in Mexico was blown, harming no one except perhaps some who might have been put off by my deception.
The great question here is Robert Novak. It was he who published, in his column, that Mrs. Joseph Wilson was a secret agent of the CIA. I am too close a friend to pursue the matter with Novak, and his loyalty is a postulate. What was going on? If there are mysteries in town, that surely is one of them, the role of Novak.
The importance of the law against revealing the true professional identity of an agent is advertised by the draconian punishment, under the federal code, for violating it. In the swirl of the Libby affair, one loses sight of the real offense, and it becomes almost inapprehensible what it is that Cheney/Libby/Rove got themselves into. But the sacredness of the law against betraying a clandestine soldier of the republic cannot be slighted.
The more I learn about the CIA leak case, the more confused I get. If Fitzgerald knew that Armitage was the original source of Bob Novak’s article, why did he pursue the investigation for 3 years? Why did he bother to indict Libby and pursue Rove’s investigation?
Also- I don’t really care about Joe Wilson’s role in all of this, but Valerie Plame’s role at the CIA was tracking nuclear materials being sent to Iran from other parts of the world. With the shake-up at the CIA after George Tenet was replaced, and the resulting loss of senior investigators, is it any wonder that the intelligence coming out of Iran is as shaky as what we had coming out of Iraq?? Seeing as the Bush administration still seems to be contemplating a military response to their nuclear build-up, isn’t that the real cause for concern?
Oh, BS. There’s no crime partisan whackjobs in this country won’t accuse their opponents of; that’s nothing new. That you considered it plausible says far more about you than about this administration.
Kim
Because the fact that Armitage was the original source was incidental. Novak didn’t write the story until he had confirmation from Rove and whoever else it was. No confirmation, no story.
The investigation was concerned with the intentions of Rove and those connected with him were with regards to the outing of Plame.
For the record – Is this post intended as a joke? Perhaps as a satire on the unwillingness of those on the left to even examine evidence, when it conflicts with their prejudices?
If that’s the intent, it isn’t a bad post. If the post is intended seriously, it is so embarrassing that I can only suggest that the author plead temporary insanity.
Let me summarize briefly: Joseph Wilson sold a fake story to the New York Times and other “mainstream” news organizations. He made extremely serious charges against President Bush and his administration. These charges were propagated, mindlessly, by the New York Times and other “mainstream” news organizations. We now know that (1) President Bush was right about the British finding evidence that Saddam was trying to get uranium from Africa and (2) that there was no effort by the Bush administration to “out” Valerie Plame. Bush told the truth. Wilson lied, and the “mainstream” media (mostly) echoed his lies.
And this should lead us to worry about the integrity of the Bush administration? Not the integrity of Joseph Wilson? Not the integrity of the New York Times? Not the integrity of all those leftists who echoed those charges, without looking at the evidence?
(Oh, and one more thought: If the author of the author of this amazing post repeated those false Wilson charges in the past, he has an obligation to make corrections. Now. If, that is, he has any integrity. I’ll check by in a day or two to see if he does.)
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