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we are lucky it didnt blow up into something big, like the agent getting picked up or killed
Actually, I did hear rumblings about one of our undercover agents being killed aborad following Plame's outing, but I haven't been able to find anything more about it, so who knows. Regardless of whether anyone has actually suffered any bodily harm is irrelevant to me, though -- that the obvious potential for such harm was disregarded is what I find so offensive.
the only way Rove leaves the WH is if he's indicted.
Doubtful, at least based upon what is in the public eye. As a tangent, I've been listening to some conservative talk radio over the last couple days on this topic, and the focus seems to be on two points:
1. That all signs suggest that Rove didn't actually break the law because he didn't use Plame's name.
2. That Plame's identity was well-known and that she wasn't really all that undercover anyway.
To the first point, I say big fucking deal. Whether or not what Rove did was technically illegal within the terms of a pretty tightly worded statute is a red herring. The disclosure of information that would make it easy to discover her identity is what is really at issue.
To the second point, I'm calling bullshit. I've yet to hear anyone provide anything to back up this suggestion at all -- just bald statements by people that, I suspect, had never heard the name Valerie Plame before all of this broke way back when...
Bush would be smart to suck it up and fire Rove. Keeping him on will only fuel the fire.
For example, McClellan got whipped during his daily briefing again today:
I've heard the same two lines coming from conservative message boards today. I've pressed on the "Plame's identity was blown before Novak" argument and no one could offer any credible evidence to support this. On the first argument, that's just a bunch of crap...I don't know how the statute is worded, but if they're really going to hang their hat on the argument that Rove is in the clear because he didn't use Plame's name, they're desperate. Shit, he said that she was Wilson's wife...unless he's a Utah-style polygamist, I'm guessing that's a club of one.
Speaking of leaks, it looks like the RNC's talking points on this issue have made their way in to the public eye as well...
Again, the strategy looks to be misdirection (does it really matter who sent Wilson to Niger? isn't the bigger issue the content of his conclusions?) and misleading statements.
What exactly is with the suggestion that the CIA, as opposed to someone in the Bush administration, sent Wilson to Niger? Are the CIA's interests not aligned with those of the country? Does the CIA regularly send folks on intercontinental boondoggles with no real purpose? Was Wilson's trip to Niger just a vacation sponsored by his wife? It's all just absurd.
Of important note, there is no direct response to the charge of Rove leaking information. Given the neocon technique (perfected by Rove) of shifting the message/focus when there is a problem, the absence of a denial is really all I need to hear...
Karl Rove, Whistleblower
He told the truth about Joe Wilson.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.
For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.
On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.
"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.
The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.
Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.
But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.
The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.
About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.
If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue.
As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.
^^Pretty much tracks those RNC talking points nicely, eh? Even threw in the part about Wilson supporting Kerry for president. Of course, as far as Wilson is concerned, someone in Bush's adminstration ended his wife's career and put her in danger -- if I were him, that might light a fire under me to actively do my part to get his ass out of office as well...
Since the RNC seems to be focusing so much on Wilson's assertion that Cheney sent him to Niger, it's probably worth seeing his statement in the proper context:
BLITZER: I know you were sent to go on this mission long before the State of the Union Address. When Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, was on this program a few weeks ago, on July 13th, I asked her about your mission. Listen to this exchange I had with her.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger. And if you look in Director Tenet's statement, it says that counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, sent Joe Wilson. So, I don't know...
BLITZER: Who sent him?
RICE: Well, it was certainly not at a level that had anything to do with the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Is that true?
WILSON: Well, look, it's absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.
What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby's statement, it was probably the vice president himself...
BLITZER: Scooter Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.
WILSON: Scooter Libby.
They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.
Of course, the sentence in bold is never included in any RNC discussion of the topic.
Again, though, does it really matter if what Rove did qualifies as a crime? Does it really matter who sent Wilson to Niger? This, to me, seems like hypertechnical sqabbling and, again, misdirection and subject changing...
Of course, as far as Wilson is concerned, someone in Bush's adminstration ended his wife's career and put her in danger -- if I were him, that might light a fire under me to actively do my part to get his ass out of office as well...
Damn straight. Nobody messes with your woman and gets away with it.
"Son," he said without preamble, "never trust a man who doesn't drink because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl."
There's also a different aspect to this. The Bush admin attacked Wilson by going after his WIFE. What a bunch of wusses...using a guy's family to get to him because he's pissed you off.
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