The blame game on PLAME

[POIESIS]

Rove's Nuclear Threats

Jonathan Schell

July 28, 2005

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050728/...ear_threats.php

 

Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books. This article first appeared on TomDispatch.com, will appear in the August 15th issue of The Nation magazine, and appears here by permission.

 

Like every important government crisis, the outing of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame by the president's chief political adviser, deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, perhaps among others, must be seen in many contexts at once. (As all the world knows, Rove's aim was to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, who had publicly disproved the administration's claim that Iraq was buying uranium yellowcake from Niger—a key element in the administration's justifications for the Iraq War.) Howard Fineman of Newsweek and Sidney Blumenthal of Salon point to the broader story of Rove's habitual practice of defending his political clients by smearing their competitors and detractors. Blumenthal titles his piece "Rove's War" and Fineman speaks of "The World According to Rove." Frank Rich of The New York Times , on the other hand, suggests that the most important war to look at is the one in Iraq. He says that the injustice to the Wilsons and even to the CIA is secondary: "The real crime here remains the sending of American men and women to Iraq on fictitious grounds." In other words, what's important is not the "war" but the war.

 

Surely, they are all right. It's true that the harm to the Wilsons cannot be compared to the deaths of thousands in the misbegotten conflict, but it's also true that the resolution of the scandal is likely to have a lasting impact on American politics, and even on the American system of government. Perhaps the most important political question is whether the Bush administration is to be held accountable for any of its actions, or whether it now enjoys complete impunity and a free field of action to do whatever it likes—from waging war to designing and presiding over systems of torture to breaking domestic law. There are other contexts to consider, too.

 

If Rich is right that the scandal is really about the Iraq War, then we have to ask what the war was about. The administration's chief answer is weapons of mass destruction and, more particularly, nuclear weapons. The atomic signature is scrawled all over the scandal. It is present, of course, in the uranium the President falsely said Iraq was seeking from Niger. And Plame, as it turns out, worked for the CIA on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To defend its nuclear lies, the administration destroyed a (possible) source of nuclear truth. The smear campaign thus did double damage in the nuclear-weapon field: It propped up, however briefly, the erroneous justification for the war while shutting down authentic information on the broader problem. The nuclear issue popped up again in a State Department memo Colin Powell brought with him on Air Force One shortly after Wilson's op-ed piece appeared. It is now famous because it disclosed Plame's identity as Wilson's wife. Less noticed is that the bulk of the memo was devoted to rebutting the Niger uranium allegation. This must be one of the most rebutted claims in history. Before Wilson ever spoke up, it had been disproved by several government agencies; the director of the Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei; and, of course, the State Department. (As for Powell, in February 2003 he had told the UN Security Council, "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.")

 

Whatever else the scandal is, it is also an episode in the six-decade history of the nuclear age. In the wake of the cold war, many people imagined that nuclear danger had disappeared. A decade of utter neglect followed. Then, in 1998, the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests launched the two countries on a nuclear arms race. Soon other countries, including North Korea and Iran, were knocking at the door of the nuclear club. But it wasn't until 9/11 that the neglected peril reared up again in the public mind -- and returned to the center of policy. The fictional danger of an Iraqi bomb bursting in an American city was, of course, the chief justification for the war, but it was more than that. It was the linchpin of the broader policy of preventive military strikes -- necessary, the President said, to forestall the hostile states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. In his words, "as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed."

 

At the root of the policy was a radical reconception of the way to stop proliferation. Hitherto, the policy had been to address it by negotiation and disarmament treaties. Now it was to be addressed by military force. The decade of neglect had led to the most severe collision of nuclear policy with nuclear reality since the Cuban missile crisis. The Iraq War was the result, though not the only one. While the U.S. military was looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, where there were none, it was in effect ignoring them in North Korea, which reportedly was either acquiring or expanding a nuclear arsenal, and in Iran, which was pressing forward down the nuclear path. It's worth recalling that the Vietnam War, too, was in part the product of misguided nuclear strategy. Policy-makers, well aware that they could not win a nuclear "general war" with the Soviet Union in the Central European theater, hoped instead to win a "limited war" with conventional arms on the "periphery." When it went wrong, the consequence was the Watergate crisis, born directly of Nixon's fury at antiwar protesters.

 

That chain of reasoning died with the cold war, but nuclear danger lived on to produce new and possibly more dangerous illusions. The worst is that the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their associated technology and know-how can be stopped, or prevented in advance, by arms. Once that conclusion was accepted, mere hints of danger, wisps of fact and speculations became actionable, bomb-able. But if there is one thing in this world that cannot be bombed out of existence, it is an illusion. And illusions, when rigidly defended, breed encounters with the law. Thus did a mistaken revolution in nuclear policy, proceeding under the guise of the "war on terror," produce the lies that produced the war that produced the whistleblowing that produced the smears that produced the blown cover that produced the cover-up that produced the legal investigation that produced the political and legal crisis that now swirls around Karl Rove.

 

Copyright 2005 Jonathan Schell

[POIESIS]

Iraq-Niger: Cheney and the Forgery

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1026

July 25, 2005

By Ray McGovern

 

By now it should be clear that the White House assault on former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife had much less to do with personalities than with the “particular lie” that Wilson exposed. I believe this helps to explain the highly unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the forged “intelligence” about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger—the source of that particular lie.

 

Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writings provide contemporaneous insight into the major flap that hit the White House two years ago, when it was discovered that the “intelligence” was based on a forgery. It was clear at that time that the first item on the White House list of talking points was: “It wasn’t Dick.”

 

Plus ça change. Investigative journalist Robert Parry, writing yesterday in consortiumnews.com, has noted that atop the Republican National Committee’s current list of “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements” sits this priority item: “Wilson insisted that the Vice President’s office sent him to Niger.”

 

This is a deliberate distortion of what Wilson has said, but if we were to address all such distortions we would be here all day. Besides, the RNC would very much like us to focus on the distortions, and our media have allowed themselves to be led by the nose. So let’s leave this one aside for the moment. What strikes me more and more is the rather transparent two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L’Affaire Iraq-Niger.

 

On July 14, 2003, the day of Robert Novak’s opening salvo against the Wilsons, VIPS issued a Memorandum for the President (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0714-01.htm) with two main sections: “The Forgery Flap,” and “The Vice President’s Role.” In that memo, we also made an important recommendation, which may have seemed a bit extreme at the time. But it was already possible to discern what was going on:

 

We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.

 

Protesting (or Protecting) Too Much

 

We were all children once. Remember how, when you and your peers got caught in some mischief, the ringleader had to be protected? “Who decided to do this terrible thing?” was often the question. “Not Dick (or Tom or Harry)” was often the instinctive, immediate answer. Remember how, as a parent, that made you really wonder about Dick (or Tom or Harry)?

 

In our memo of July 14, 2003, we warned President George W. Bush that the Iraq-seeking-uranium-in-Niger forgery was “a microcosm of a mischievous nexus of overarching problems” in his White House. We cited the remarks of then-presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer earlier that week, which set the tone for what has followed—right up to today. When asked about the forgery Fleischer noted—as if drawing on well memorized talking points—that the vice president was not guilty of anything. (The denial was gratuitous; the question asked did not even mention the vice president’s possible role.) And the liturgy of absolution continued on July 11, 2003, when then-director of the CIA, George Tenet, did his awkward best to absolve the vice president of responsibility.

 

The “Particular Lie” and Forgery

 

As noted earlier, the main motivation of the White House campaign to discredit the Wilsons had to do with the particular lie that Joseph Wilson exposed and the essential role it played in the administration’s plans. The lie was that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and that, despite Iraq’s inability to deliver such weapons on the U.S., this somehow posed a “grave and gathering” threat. The plans were to use that ominous specter—replete with the “mushroom cloud”—to deceive Congress into approving war on Iraq. The problem was that not even the obsequious George Tenet could come up with evidence that could withstand close scrutiny.

 

U.N. inspectors and U.S. intelligence knew that Iraq’s nuclear program had been destroyed after the Gulf War and there was no persuasive evidence that Baghdad was moving to reconstitute it. Even the imagery analysts, whom former CIA director John Deutch gave away to the Pentagon in 1996, could not come up with the evidence needed, despite very strong incentive to please their boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

 

What a welcome windfall, then, when a deus ex machina suddenly appeared in the form of a report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on February 12, 2002. According to the exhaustive report of the Senate intelligence committee on U.S. intelligence performance on Iraq, the DIA report was based on information the CIA had included in a field report a week before from a “[foreign] government service.” Although State Department and other intelligence analysts had earlier labeled such reporting “highly suspect,” the DIA report of February 12, 2002 included no judgments regarding credibility.

 

Cheney Highly Interested

 

Oddly, the DIA report was flagged for Vice President Cheney. Why “oddly?” Because in more than two years of briefing then-Vice President George H. W. Bush every other morning, not once did he ask a question about a DIA report or even indicate that he had read one. That this particular report was given to Cheny almost certainly reflects the widespread practice of “cherry picking” intelligence—a practice honed to a fine art by the current administration—and suggests perhaps even more. It seems to me a safe bet that the DIA report was prepared in a response to a request from the vice president’s office to come up with something on the subject that could be shown to the president—something not burdened by caveats regarding source and content from troublesome substantive experts.

 

Vice President Cheney immediately expressed interest in the report. According to the Senate intelligence committee, he asked his CIA morning briefer for CIA’s analysis of the issue. And this, of course, is what set in motion CIA’s hurried request of Joe Wilson that he go back to Niger to pursue the matter. When you receive a direct request from the vice president you leave no stone unturned.

 

The Senate intelligence committee report includes this portion of the CIA immediate response to Cheney’s expression of interest:

 

“Information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated...Some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the U.S. embassy in Niamey [Niger]. U.S. diplomats say the French government-led consortium that operates Niger’s two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production.”

 

When the vice president of the United States expresses interest so keen that that an immediate interim response is deemed necessary, it is certain that the CIA will place considerable priority on reporting back to the vice president the results of its follow-up efforts—the more so, since in its initial response, the it said it was “working to clarify the information and determine whether it can be corroborated.” Thus, the pretense by administration officials that the vice president was never briefed on the results of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s inquiries in Niamey stretches credulity well beyond the breaking point.

 

Moreover, according to the Senate report, in bending over backwards to oblige the vice president, the agency sent a separate message to him naming the “foreign government service.” This raises the question as to why Cheney would be interested in such detail, since such is not normally provided absent a specific request. In any case, it is clear that Dick Cheney knows more about the forgery’s provenance than the rest of us do.

 

Made to Order

 

The information—dubious or no—that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger was made to order (perhaps literally, as I suggest below). Since Iraq had no other use for uranium, a closely coordinated White House-10 Downing Street spin machine went into high gear, playing up the report as proof that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear weapons development program. The intelligence analysts had to hold their noses—not only because of the dubious sourcing but because the substance of the report made little sense in view of the super-strict monitoring of uranium exports from Niger by the French-led consortium. To substantive analysts the report was spurious on its face; only later were they to learn that it was based on a crude forgery.

 

Provenance and likelihood be damned. The White House now had a “report” that could be used effectively with Congress and our incredibly credulous press. Tenet could be counted on to keep his nose-holding professionals out of sight. And the nature of the source, which, according to the “[foreign] government service,” included the “verbatim text” of the Iraq-Niger agreement on uranium, could be kept from experts like those at the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until after the vote in Congress and after the juggernaut for war could not be stopped. The Iraq-seeking-uranium-from-Africa canard assumed such prominent importance in the administration’s case for war that, even when it was forced to admit that a forgery was involved, the story simply could not be dropped altogether—either in Washington or in London. Both governments proceeded to blow still more smoke on the affair, claiming that London had the story from other sources as well.

 

Thus, none of us in VIPS were in the least surprised to learn recently of the line taken by Karl Rove with Time reporter Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003. In an email that Cooper sent his bosses at Time, Cooper said Rove insisted that Wilson’s findings on Iraq-Niger were flawed. According to Cooper, Rove “implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger.” That was false. Neither British nor U.S. intelligence has come up with anything throwing the slightest doubt on Wilson’s conclusion that the whole thing was bogus.

 

Who Did It?

 

Who authored the forgery remains a mystery—but one that the Republican-controlled Congress has avoided trying to solve, even though many legislators expressed outrage at having been snookered into voting for war. Senate intelligence committee chair Pat Roberts, a devout White House loyalist, has demonstrated a curious lack of curiosity. And nothing that ranking minority member Jay Rockefeller did could persuade Roberts to ask the FBI to investigate.

 

So those searching for answers are reduced to asking the obvious: Cui bono? Who stood to benefit from such a forgery? A no-brainer—those lusting for war on Iraq. And who might they be? Look up the “neo-conservative” writings on the website of the Project for the New American Century. There you will find information on people like Michael Ledeen, “Freedom Analyst” at the American Enterprise Institute and a key strategist among “neoconservative” hawks in and out of the Bush administration. Applauding the invasion of Iraq, Ledeen asserted—with equal enthusiasm—that the war could not be contained, and that “it may turn out to be a war to remake the world.”

 

Beyond his geopolitical punditry, Ledeen’s curriculum vitae shows he is no stranger to rogue operations. A longtime Washington operative, he was fired as a “consultant” for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan for running fool’s errands for Oliver North during the Iran-Contra subterfuge. One of Ledeen’s Iran-Contra partners in crime, so to speak, was Elliot Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra. Abrams was pardoned before jail time, however, by George H. W. Bush, and he is now George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser. Ledeen is said to enjoy easy entrée to the office of the vice president and the Pentagon, as well as to his friend Abrams.

 

Made in the U.S.A?

 

During a radio interview with Ian Masters on April 3, 2005, former CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro charged that the Iraq-Niger documents were forged in the United States. Drawing on earlier speculation regarding who forged the documents, Masters asked, “If I were to say the name Michael Ledeen to you, what would you say?” Cannistraro replied, “You’re very close.”

 

Ledeen has denied having anything to do with the forgery. Yet the company he keeps with other prominent Iran-Contra convictees/pardonees/intelligence contractors suggests otherwise. Besides, Ledeen has had a longstanding association with the Italian intelligence service, which, according to most accounts, played an important role in disseminating the forged documents. Could Italian intelligence be the “[foreign] government service” mentioned repeatedly in the Senate intelligence committee report?

 

If Ledeen and associates were involved, this might also help explain the amateurishness of the forged “verbatim texts.” These covert action veterans would have sorely missed the institutional expertise formerly at their beck and call.

 

The Cover-up: the Best Defense Is.....

 

It is a safe bet that Joseph Wilson suspected this kind of skullduggery. He nevertheless played it straight. After hearing the bogus Iraq-Niger story repeated in the president’s January 28, 2003 state-of-the-union address and ascertaining that it was based primarily on the original report, Wilson began to approach administration officials suggesting that they retract the story or he would in conscience be compelled to make public what had happened. He was told, in effect, Go ahead; who will believe you? So he did.

 

Astonishingly, the administration and our domesticated “mainstream” press have succeeded to a large extent in making Wilson’s credibility the issue—witness, for example, last week’s frontal assault by fast-talking, no-holds-barred Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman.

 

Joseph Wilson had been around long enough to know what to expect. Moreover, the White House apparently made it very clear that they would make him pay if he went public. Three weeks before The New York Times published Wilson’s op-ed “What I Did Not Find in Africa,” he and I shared keynoting duties at a conference on Iraq. It was the first time I met Wilson. He told me then that he was about to publish. I remember him adding, with considerable emphasis, “They are going to come after me big-time. I don’t know exactly how, but they are going to do it.” Well, now we know how; and why.

 

Last week it became clear that Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was as active as Karl Rove in doing the job on the Wilsons. Surprise, surprise.

 

We ended our July 14 Memorandum for the President from VIPS with this reminder:

 

This was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew to resign. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died. There is no end in sight.

 

And that was two years ago.

[POIESIS]

August 1, 2005

 

Novak Defends Reporting on C.I.A. Operative

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Filed at 12:06 p.m. ET

 

WASHINGTON (AP)-- Columnist Robert Novak broke his silence Monday about his disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity, defending himself against a former agency official's account that he twice warned Novak not to publish the name.

 

In his syndicated column, Novak did not dispute that former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told him he should not print the covert officer's name, Valerie Plame, during conversations they had prior to Novak's July 14, 2003 column.

 

But Novak reasserted that no CIA official ever told him in advance ''that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger her or anybody else.''

 

Plame is the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent to Africa by the CIA in 2002 to evaluate intelligence that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear materials.

 

More than a year later, with the U.S. government unable to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times, ''What I Didn't Find In Africa,'' and asked the question: ''Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion?''

 

Eight days later, Novak wrote an article in which he disclosed Plame's name and cited as sources two unidentified senior Bush administration officials. Novak wrote that the officials had told him Plame had suggested sending her husband to Niger.

 

Wilson claims the leak was retribution for his article and criticism of the administration. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating whether government officials broke the law by disclosing Plame's name to Novak and other journalists.

 

Harlow was interviewed recently by The Washington Post and acknowledged telling the grand jury investigating the case that he spoke to Novak at least three days before the column appeared.

 

Harlow said he could not tell Novak that Plame was a covert officer because that information itself was classified. But in at least two telephone calls, Harlow told Novak that Plame had not authorized her husband's mission and that her name should not be used even if Novak went ahead with a story, according to the Post.

 

Harlow declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

 

Novak, whose role in the investigation is unknown, has been silent on the series of events he set in motion. But he wrote about it Monday, saying he was ignoring his lawyers' advice because Harlow's account is ''so patently incorrect and so abuses my integrity as a journalist.''

 

Novak said Harlow's admonition not to disclose Plame's name ''is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as 'Valerie Plame' by reading her husband's entry in 'Who's Who in America.'''

 

The columnist said Harlow was ''just plain wrong'' in saying he had deliberately disregarded Harlow's comment that Plame had not authorized her husband's trip.

 

''There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson 'authorizing.' I was told she 'suggested' the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow,'' he wrote.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/A...agewanted=print

[villain]

If Novak was not told Valeries name or to disclose it, he sure did do alot of research to find the name and print it anyways against Harlows advice.

It's ridiculous to assume a covert officer will not be "hurt" by having their cover blown as Novak claims.

 

If you ask me, they are ALL guilty. This is obviously a malicious reprisal to Ambassador Joe Wilson doing his duty and reporting the truth.

[POIESIS]

clearly they are all guilty scumbags..

i hope this rots the admin from the inside out.

[Guest KING BLING]

fizzle fizzle *POP*

[ERIZENO]

Originally posted by KING BLING@Aug 16 2005, 05:06 PM

fizzle fizzle *POP*

Quoted post

 

no doubt !!!!

 

gotta hand it to them though, they are good at steering the ship where they wanted it. SPACE SHUTTLE, SPACE SHUTTLE .....TILE TILE..... SPACE SHUTTLE , SPACE SHUTTLE.

ASSHOLES !!!!!!!!

[casekonly]

i have a feeling this story is making its comeback slowly.

[POIESIS]

yep, hold tight, it's not gone yet..i hope.

[villain]

I'd imagine much of this stories strength is riding on the official court decision... Whatever, and whenever that may be.

[casekonly]

late august or september is what i've heard.

[POIESIS]

Rove Rage

The poverty of our current scandal.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, July 18, 2005, at 1:10 PM PT

 

 

Writing to a friend in 1954, P.G. Wodehouse commented:

 

Are you following the McCarthy business? If so, can you tell me what it's all about? "You dined with Mr. X on Friday the tenth?" "Yes, sir." (Keenly) "What did you eat?" "A chocolate nut sundae, sir." (Sensation) It's like Bardell vs Pickwick.

 

Wodehouse of course was only affecting ignorance and making light of a ludicrously pompous and slightly sinister proceeding. But he was essentially correct in his lampooning of the McCarthy hearings, since even the most convinced anti-communist would not learn anything from the spectacle that he did not already know, and since the show trials managed to go on without producing either any evidence of any crime, or any evidence of any perpetrator, or any evidence of any victim.

 

Continue Article

------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

It is the entire absence of the above three elements that makes the hunt for Karl Rove (who was once so confidently confused with I. Lewis Libby) so utterly Snark-like. In fact, in his column of July 17, Frank Rich was compelled to concede that the whole thing is absolutely nothing in itself, but is rather a sideshow to a much larger event: the deception of the Bush-Cheney administration in preparing an intervention in Iraq. I want to return to this, but one must first winnow out some other chaff and nonsense.

 

First, the most exploded figure in the entire argument is Joseph Wilson. This is for three reasons. He claimed, in his own book, that his wife had nothing to do with his brief and inconclusive visit to Niger. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." There isn't enough wiggle room in those two definitive statements to make either of them congruent with a memo written by Valerie Wilson (or Valerie Plame, if you prefer) to a deputy chief in the CIA's directorate of operations. In this memo, in her wifely way, she announced that her husband would be ideal for the mission since he had "good relations with both the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Mines (of Niger), not to mention lots of French contacts." If you want to read the original, turn to the Senate committee's published report on the many "intelligence failures" that we have suffered recently. I want to return to those, too.

 

Speaking to the Washington Post about the CIA's documents on the Niger connection, Wilson made the further claim that "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Again according to the Senate report, these papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip. He has since admitted to the same newspaper that he may have "misspoken" about this.

 

The third bogus element in Wilson's boastful story is the claim that Niger's "yellowcake" uranium was never a subject of any interest to Saddam Hussein's agents. The British intelligence report on this, which does not lack criticism of the Blair government, finds the Niger connection to be among the most credible of the assertions made about Saddam's double-dealing. If you care to consult the Financial Times of June 28, 2004, and see the front-page report by its national security correspondent Mark Huband, you will be able to review the evidence that Niger—with whose ministers Mr. Wilson had such "good relations"—was trying to deal in yellowcake with North Korea and Libya as well as Iraq and Iran. This evidence is by no means refuted or contradicted by a forged or faked Italian document saying the same thing. It was a useful axiom of the late I.F. Stone that few people are so foolish as to counterfeit a bankrupt currency.

 

Thus, and to begin with, Joseph Wilson comes before us as a man whose word is effectively worthless. What do you do, if you work for the Bush administration, when a man of such quality is being lionized by an anti-war press? Well, you can fold your tent and let them print the legend. Or you can say that the word of a mediocre political malcontent who is at a loose end, and who is picking up side work from a wife who works at the anti-regime-change CIA, may not be as "objective" as it looks. I dare say that more than one supporter of regime change took this option. I would certainly have done so as a reporter if I had known.

 

OK, then, how do the opponents of regime change in Iraq make my last sentence into a statement of criminal intent and national-security endangerment? By citing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. This law, which is one of the most repressive and absurd pieces of legislation on our statute book, was a panicky attempt by the right to silence whistle-blowers at the CIA. In a rough effort to make it congruent with freedom of information and the First Amendment (after all, the United States managed to get through the Second World War and most of the Cold War without such a law), it sets a fairly high bar. You must knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result. It seems quite clear that nobody has broken even that arbitrary element of this silly law.

 

But the coverage of this non-storm in an un-teacup has gone far beyond the fantasy of a Rovean hidden hand. Supposedly responsible journalists are now writing as if there was never any problem with Saddam's attempt to acquire yellowcake (or his regime's now-proven concealment of a nuclear centrifuge, or his regime's now-proven attempt to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from North Korea as late as March 2003). In the same way, the carefully phrased yet indistinct statement of the 9/11 Commission that Saddam had no proven "operational" relationship with al-Qaida has mutated lazily into the belief that there were no contacts or exchanges at all, which the commission by no means asserts and which in any case by no means possesses the merit of being true. The CIA got everything wrong before 9/11, and thereafter. It was conditioned by its own culture to see no evil. It regularly leaked—see any of Bob Woodward's narratives—against the administration. Now it, and its partisans and publicity-famished husband-and-wife teams, want to imprison or depose people who leak back at it. No, thanks. Many journalists are rightly appalled at Time magazine's collusion with a prosecutor who has proved no crime and identified no victim. Far worse is the willingness of the New York Times to accept the demented premise of a prosecutor who has put one of its own writers behind bars.

http://www.slate.com/id/2122963/?nav=navoa

[villain]

What is this? A media workers teamsters union?

So now the strategy is to dance around the ousting of Valerie Plame and attack the credibility of Joe Wilson. How predictable. Same crap over and over again, different scandal.

And the 9/11 commission report DOES state that Osama Bin Laden tried to establish relations with the Saddam regime but failed because they are secular.

We know about the centrifuge that was decades old and in a warehouse that was looted after the invasion and melted down and sold as scrap, part of which emerged in Great Britain. But still as the 9/11 commission report, the Duelfer report, and countless other official statements say, Iraq had no viable WMD program, it was in disrepair, and they had not even attempted to revive it.

As for the Yellowcake Uranium report, I don't know. Who will ever know? Can any substantial evidence be brought forth about this? It's just one persons word against anothers.

That article is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've seen in a long time.

[POIESIS]

haha, i knew it would get a rise out of somebody..

hitchens recently called cindy sheehan's protest "sinister piffle".

[villain]

Originally posted by POIESIS@Aug 18 2005, 10:23 AM

haha, i knew it would get a rise out of somebody..

hitchens recently called cindy sheehan's protest "sinister piffle".

Quoted post

 

 

hahaa..... sounds snooty... damn spoiled rich kids with no sense of responsibility.

[theGOON]

on a less serious note, did anyone see the ONION article, "White House Denies Existance of Karl Rove?" the headline says enough, but the article was quality. i don't know anywhere online you can get onion articles to post... sorry if you missed it.

[Guest KING BLING]

This article is not at all, in anyway, true...

Villan, it was documented widely that the Niger connection was not true. Here are some voices, than a google link to boot...this article attempts to say the bad docs that came out were simply secondary...but it isn't true. They were the basis for the argument, found to be false, than we attempted unsuccesfully to back up the idea...it failed

 

Originally posted by POIESIS@Aug 17 2005, 10:31 PM

The third bogus element in Wilson's boastful story is the claim that Niger's "yellowcake" uranium was never a subject of any interest to Saddam Hussein's agents. The British intelligence report on this, which does not lack criticism of the Blair government, finds the Niger connection to be among the most credible of the assertions made about Saddam's double-dealing. If you care to consult the Financial Times of June 28, 2004, and see the front-page report by its national security correspondent Mark Huband, you will be able to review the evidence that Niger—with whose ministers Mr. Wilson had such "good relations"—was trying to deal in yellowcake with North Korea and Libya as well as Iraq and Iran. This evidence is by no means refuted or contradicted by a forged or faked Italian document saying the same thing. It was a useful axiom of the late I.F. Stone that few people are so foolish as to counterfeit a bankrupt currency.

Quoted post

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/ar...on_onlineonly01

 

The initial report about Iraq buying uranium ore from Niger surfaced only after September 11, 2001, and even that was an old report. We had apparently asked other allied intelligence services to look for any information they might have related to terrorism, and out of Italy came a report of a visit to Niger by an Iraqi diplomat in February of 1999. It was seemingly a pretty benign visit, but the Italian service picked up some gossip that maybe they wanted to talk about uranium. And so this information got into the White House, and it was stovepiped, as I write, to Vice-President Dick Cheney, who asked the C.I.A. about it. They came back and said, “We don’t think it’s much,” and what seems to have happened is that Cheney kept on pushing. It was, as I say in the story, the freshest piece of meat they had to bolster what was going to be their mantra in 2002. After all, the prospect of Saddam with a nuclear weapon is scary to anyone. But, ironically, even more than was the case with chemical or biological weapons, the U.N. had been able to say, as strongly as the U.N. ever says anything, “They don’t have it.” They were bombed; they’ve had nothing since ’91 and haven’t been able to reconstitute. That’s the big word. If Iraq was attempting to get uranium in Niger in 1999, it would indicate that it was reconstituting its system.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/19/...ntel/index.html

 

Documents that backed up the uranium claim have since been deemed forged, but the senior administration official said that at the time of the president's address, no one in the speechwriting process knew that.

 

 

see for yourself:

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=f...nts&btnG=Search

[Dick Quickwood]

the plame thing has disappeared from the news

[!@#$%]

Jailed reporter reaches deal in CIA leak probe

The New York Times' Miller: 'It's good to be free'

 

Friday, September 30, 2005; Posted: 3:42 p.m. EDT (19:42 GMT)

 

(CNN) -- After spending 12 weeks in jail for refusing to name a source, The New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified Friday before a federal grand jury looking into a CIA leak case after her source gave her permission.

 

Miller said she agreed to testify before the grand jury only after she received a personal letter and telephone call from her source, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and a promise from the special investigator that her testimony would be limited to her communication between her and her source.

 

Libby made a telephone call to Miller in prison September 19 to personally free her from the pledge of confidentiality, a move that contributed to her release, Libby's attorney, Joseph Tate of Philadelphia, told CNN.

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/30/cia.leak/index.html

[lord_casek]

plame was an undercover cia agent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/

 

 

told ya.

[Juan Fuentes]

u told them and...

 

did they called u nutty and all that stuff?

[lord_casek]

u told them and...

 

did they called u nutty and all that stuff?

 

can't recall what was said but i don't think many believed me.

[LIVERWURST*]

Her status as an undercover agent is the crux of the issue, that is nothing new. That article further shuts down all the right wing talk show and radio hosts who tried to make Plame look like her status was being blown out of proportion. She was undercover and The vice presidents office systematically outed her as retribution for her husbands article denying the claims that lead us to war (and eventually his article was found to be true).

[lord_casek]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19728346/

 

ha! it gets better and better....just liek a stephen king book.