<p>We didn’t discuss this or Wilson until yesterday, so it hasn’t come up point out how people who’ve seen the facts call Wilson a liar. I get my news from NPR and online sources like the Associated Press and the NY Times, so I doubt I’ve seen any Republican talking points. These are things I’ve known about Wilson since this all broke last year. It’s easy to see if you go to the original documents and don’t let bloggers or Democratic talking points tell you what to think.</p>
<p>I’m curious, lizschup. Have you read the articles I posted links to at SpinSanity and FactCheck.com? I didn’t know they existed until some Democratic friends mentioned them in discussions during the election last year. Funny how their attitude changed when I found articles about what their guy was doing.</p>
<p>Even if you do read them, consider looking at the original sources they link to. Believe the facts, not the opinions. Don’t let other people do your thinking for you.</p>
<p>You know, I think it’s too bad the Adminstration doesn’t lie more often. Lying is what I expect from government, though I wish they were better at it. There’s no excuse for incompetence.</p>
<p>That fact that Senate Republicans, or the National Review, wish to portray Wilson as a liar doesn’t make him one. But whether he lies, or cheats on his taxes, or jaywalks, or whatever, bears no conceivable relevance to the question of whether Rove committed a felony in trying to discredit Wilson. </p>
<p>Was Rove lying when he told Scotty McClellan that he had “nothing to do with” outing Plame? (Remember, one of the articles of impeachment against Clinton was that he told people who were scheduled to testify under oath that he hadn’t had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.) Of was McClellan lying when he said Rove assured him he had nothing to do with any such leaks? Was Novak lying when he said in his column two administration officials told him Plame was a CIA operative? These questions strike me as a little more to the point.</p>
<p>This whole affair began with a desperate attempt by Republicans to discredit Wilson. I’m not particularly surprised to see that effort continue, on this board and in the right-wing press.</p>
<p>Karl Rove said: “it was wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip.”
Okay - we know that’s not true. She listed his qualifications in a memo to whoever it was who did have the authority to authorize the trip. But she didn’t have the juice to “authorize” it. But Strick - you’re not going to hyperventilate over Karl Rove being a “liar” are you? Because that’s not the RNC spin du jour. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about the exact degree of input, or influence, or nudge, Wilson’s wife had with regard to the decision to send him to Africa, or whether it’s more or less of a “lie” to say she had “nothing to do with it” or that she personally “authorized” it. It doesn’t really matter.</p>
<p>This is RNC SOP - divert the issue into irrelevant side notes and harp on them so the substance is ignored. Here’s the substance:
Wilson was sent to Africa to investigate the yellowcake claim. His investigation turned up no support, and the fact that all the yellowcake was spoken for pretty much debunked it right there. We also know, from independent sources, that the documents which started the whole affair were phony - whether Wilson saw them or not.</p>
<p>So the Niger uranium report <strong>was</strong> bogus - based on phony documents, with no substance. Wilson reported that the uranium rumor was bogus, and Rove started sliming him post haste. Classic Karl Rove. And you’ve enlisted as part of the slime machine. Can you actually fail to see that all of your excuses for slinging mud are just that - <strong>excuses</strong> to avoid the substance?
More from Karl Rove:
Finally all of this is according to the Newsweek report Cooper’s e-mail said that “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly that there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger…”</p>
<p>Bull. There was plenty of nothing. But that’s classic Rove - slime the messenger of truth, and insist that the lie is really true. The architects of the WMD excuse for war can’t ever, ever admit they were wrong.</p>
<p>Sad, sad, sad. The only thing that rivals the incompetence of the current administration is its arrogance.</p>
<p>Greybeard beats me to the punch about the attempts at obfuscation and diversion taking place. I need to divide into two parts.</p>
<p>Part I</p>
<p>Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed piece about the lack of WMD in Iraq. The White House, in their vindictive manner they have towards anyone who crosses them, goes into a full-court effort to discredit Wilson. Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, is declared “fair game.” For two years the White House has denied that Karl Rove was in any way connected with the outing of Plame as a CIA agent. Now either Rove lied to Bush or Bush knew and was adding just one more lie to the American people. There’s no way to square the circle. </p>
<p>The outing of Plame not only revealed her identity but compromised her contacts and the company that was her “cover.” </p>
<p>Here are some various quotes about the compromising of intelligence agents:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Quotes from Ed Gillespie, former head of the Republican National Committee, George Bush Sr. (1999), Donald Rumsfeld (Feb. 2003), Ari Fleischer (2002)</p>
<p>Moving on, it is deeply ironic to read a Bush apologist’s excoriation of Judith Miller for compromising an investigation. On one hand, it was Judith Miller in the lead up the invasion of Iraq who constantly pimped Iraqi WMD stories in the pages of the New York Times using as sources those same bogus sources provided by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress to support the administration’s invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the administration itself has been free about compromising investigations for political purposes. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>which in turn compromised an ongoing British investigation of Al Qaeda cells in Britain:</p>
<p>The True Believers cling to the Butler Report like a life preserver off the Titanic. Widely regarded in Britain as a whitewash to save the Blair government embarrassment, its conclusions are supported nowhere else and have been as soundly repudiated as the earlier “aluminum tubes for centrifuges” argument.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The fact is that the Butler report is a political document sticking up for an intelligence assessment that would be embarrassing to back off from and it is a document designed to give cover to Tony Blair, not a definitive independent assessment and I don’t believe the careful reader will find no documentation internal to the report supporting the conclusion. </p>
<p>And then the argument on this board comes to this delicious bit of nonsense:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What a thin and contemptible bit of logic for invading Iraq. The invasion was justified with statements of a looming danger, of what <em>is</em>, not a concatenation of intent/if/might constructed so broadly that we could well justify invading 2/3 of the globe by using such a rubric. Relying upon the Duelfer Report deserves jeers, ridicule, and contempt for intellectual and moral bankruptcy.</p>
<p>At the heart, we have the same desperate, labored attempt to link Iraq with the war on terror.</p>
<p>Let’s review the bidding:</p>
<p>The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by Wahabi-influenced (Sunni) jihadists whose theological and logistical support came mainly from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The motivation for these attacks was prompted by a) a perception of the US as being the mainspring of a war by the West against Islam (per the propaganda) of OBL and blanket support of Israeli policies, regardless of whether they are just or unjust…I hope we can stipulate that there are both and that the latter have been needlessly provocative and incendiary to Arab opinion.</p>
<p>The US invades Afghanistan, where OBL had been given safe haven by the Taliban. The invasion is a partial success. The Taliban is overthrown. OBL escapes and is not found. Afghanistan remains both occupied by US forces such that the central government can’t sneeze
without US permission, reinforcing Jihaidst motivation a) above, and simultaneously the ethnic, cultural, religious, economic, and political dimensions to the “Afghan problem” are cavalierly ignored to the extent that the reach of the central government is less today than it was a year ago, that opium production and power of the warlords is more than it was a year ago, and that the Taliban-fueled insurgency in Afghanistan has more strength than it had a year ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in this context, the US invades Iraq.</p>
<p>Iraq had no connection to WMD and the evidence presented to secure the vote in the US Senate deliberately suppressed any indications to the contrary and highlighted unsubtantiated and suspect “evidence” from sources like Ahmed Chalabi and Source Curveball.</p>
<p>The US overthrows Saddam Hussein–whom the US had supported against the Iranians in the Iran/Iraq war–and, in the prescient words of Colin Powell, we find “we break it, we own it.” The US government’s most recent survey, in March, showed that 45 percent of the Iraqis support the insurgency and 56 percent want US forces removed. If you crunch those numbers with respect to the Iraqi population, you find that roughly 40 percent of the now-dominant Shiites support the insurgency…per the US’s own data.</p>
<p>US tactical successes, such as leaving Fallouja 70 percent destroyed, contribute to strategic failure by fueling the insurgency.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, with the fatuous equivalence the US makes between “democracy” and “elections,” much of Southern Iraq is under the control of pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists. Pay special attention to the recent Iraqi diplomatic missions to Teheran, the role of the Sadr Brigades in the evolving Iraqi security structure, and the looming role of Iran in training/forming Iraqi security forces per the recently signed agreement. Fast forward and tell me that any of the resulting Iraqi institutions will be such that the US will be happy to have in place or to have precipitated the formation of. Also note that the Shiite imams “on our side” are just as vitriolically anti-Israeli as the Iranians, the Palestinians, or Saddam Hussein and hold our support of Israel on account against us. The road to Baghdad is through Jerusalem, not vice-versa.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the occupation of Iraq continues to feed the OBL propaganda of the US being involved in a campaign against Islam. The insurgency in Iraq is by all accounts roughly 95 percent indigenous in nature, prompted by the US occupation. The Jihadists don’t have to go to Iraq to fight us but they sure are making good use of Iraq as a recruiting tool. </p>
<p>However, by invading Iraq, not only do we get to deal with insurgents, we also fuel jihadist recruiting and motivation around the world while wearing out men and equipment, squandering a ton of diplomatic capital, and not hitting at the essential core of the jihadist operations, which are nowhere near Iraq. Such a deal.</p>
<p>Wilson’s op ed piece in the NY Times was about his trip to Niger more than WMDs, TheDad. In it he wrote:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The presumption this question was that the Administration knew of his report and intentionally crafted the evidence to meet their conclusion.</p>
<p>Turns out that wasn’t true, was it. Wilson’s report was not used the way he assumed it would be. The work he did was deemed by the CIA to provide little useful information and that information contradicted his conclusion. </p>
<p>Of course, the issue couldn’t be Wilson’s shoddy work or the way he reached his conclusion consistent with his wife’s assessment, “there’s this crazy report”, despite the evidence. It had to be that Bush lied. No proof that like there is that Wilson’s report was useless, but it had to be that.</p>
<p>But this isn’t about Iraq or WMDs or any of the things you try to drag into this, it’s about Wilson’s repeated dishonesty. Rove tried to get reporters to investigate that. Did he mention that a woman who used to be a covert agent worked for the CIA was involved? Yes. Is there any evidence to show that was part of a concerted plan to leak classified material? No, nothing known so far shows that he knew about Plame from classified material. The comment was made after a reporter called Rove and then only after other more detailed discussion and in the last couple of minutes before Rove went on vacation.</p>
<p>Find some evidence Rove leaked classified information or that he was aggresively calling reporters to spread the news and we’ll talk. It’s pretty disgusting calling for Rove’s head to convict him, as you just tried, for the war in Iraq. Until you have something we can sink our teeth into, the calls for Rove’s resignation sound like partisanship of the worst order.</p>
<p>Partisanship- gee the Republicans havent been being partisan for years…nope not all, so don’t use that to blame the people questioning what is going on. jeesh…again blame the people asking the questions, blame the accusers, blame everyone else…</p>
<p>So, now you admit Rove said something, well gee, SUPRISE!!! But now the excuse was that he was going on vacation!!! </p>
<p>And why the interest, because before he denied having anything to do with it…hmmmm
As for Roves credibility, he has had a very checkered past with regards to politics…</p>
<p>So why is Miller in jail? Can’t be because she is protecting Rove’s fat behind. He already signed a waiver of confidentiality. Who or what is she protecting then? Duh draw me a picture.</p>
<p>Strick repeats the talking point that Plame was no longer a covert agent at the time Rove identified her to at least one reporter (and when two administration officials identified her to Novak, and when somebody said something to Judith Miller that she’s chosen to go to jail rather than reveal).</p>
<p>None of us knows for sure whether this was true. But if Plame no longer fit the statutory definition of a covert agent, why did the CIA refer the matter to the Justice Department for prosecution? Why didn’t Ashcroft announce that his investigation had revealed no actus reus, and that therefore the matter was closed? Why did Ashcroft end up recusing himself, leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor? Why did Bush hire a lawyer? Why did Rove feel it necessary to ID Plame on “double-secret deep background”? Why didn’t Tenet mention Plame in his statement on July 11, 2003? Why didn’t Condi Rice mention it on CNN on July 13, 2003 when she had this exchange with Wolf Blitzer:</p>
<p>BLITZER: Who sent him? </p>
<p>RICE: Well, it was certainly not a level that had anything to do with the White House, and I do not believe at a level that had anything to do with the leadership of the CIA. </p>
<p>BLITZER: Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president. </p>
<p>RICE: No, this is simply not true, and this is something that’s been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out. </p>
<p>According to Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation for known facts is generally the best explanation. </p>
<p>The simplest explanation for all of the facts I’ve cited above (and others cited on this thread, and indeed, demonstrated by parts of this thread) is as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Valerie Plame was a covert agent as the term is defined in the statute.</p></li>
<li><p>Joe Wilson’s article in the New York Times was starting to pose a political problem for Bush. There was a great deal of discussion in the White House about how to handle damage control. Rove, Cheney, Rice, and Tenet, and perhaps others, engaged in such discussion.</p></li>
<li><p>Rove wished to discredit Wilson.</p></li>
<li><p>Karl Rove believed that fact that Valerie Plame suggested to others at the CIA that her husband was well qualified, able, and willing to investigate the yellowgate story in Africa could be used to as part of a campaign to discredit the genesis of the trip, and its conclusions.</p></li>
<li><p>George Tenet, as Director of the CIA, knew Valerie Plame was a covert agent, and so did not publicly draw a connection between Plame and Wilson; Rice, as National Security Advisor, likewise did not publicly make the connection.</p></li>
<li><p>Rove drew the connection between Plame and in a phone call with Mike Cooper, which required Rove to identify Plame as a CIA agent. He didn’t caution Cooper against running that story, he cautioned him against sourcing Rove or the White House. Rove hoped Cooper would run the story.</p></li>
<li><p>Rove or someone else (or perhaps Rove and someone else) drew the connection for Judith Miller, although she did not use it in a story, which again necessitated that Plame be identified as a CIA agent. Whoever did this expected Miller to run the story.</p></li>
<li><p>Two administration officials drew the connection for Robert Novak, with the expectation that he would run the story in his column. (Rove is a prime suspect here; he’d been fired by another President Bush for leaking to Novak once before.)</p></li>
<li><p>Rove tried to convince others that he had nothing to do with identifying Valerie Plame, either by lying about it, or by employing circumlocutions such as “I didn’t even know her name.”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It’s amusing to me to hear allegations of “partisanship of the worst order” in defense of Karl Rove, of all people. The same Karl Rove who engineered a “push” poll in South Carolina implying that (a) John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child, (b) McCain committed treason in Viet Nam, and (c) McCain’s experiences in Viet Nam had made him mentally ill? The same Karl Rove who said, “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers”?</p>
<p>That Karl Rove?</p>
<p>I’d say “as ye sow, so also shall ye reep,” if I saw any parallel between calling Rove to account for his misdeeds, and the kind of raw sewage Rove puts out in the name of “politics.”</p>
<p>“So why is Miller in jail? Can’t be because she is protecting Rove’s fat behind. He already signed a waiver of confidentiality. Who or what is she protecting then? Duh draw me a picture.”</p>
<p>Miller believes blanket waivers of confidentiality are inherently coercive, and won’t reveal what the administration told her until she has a specific waiver. Miller has made a career out of serving as a conduit of stategic leaks for this administration, and knows that if she reveals her source(s), her career is effectively over.</p>
<p>The problem does not lie with this administration but in the people that either believe or disbelieve the stuff from this administration. I’m disheartened that the fine $$ that “you” pay taxes for education, has been for naught. </p>
<p>Rove is the master. His story has become the headline where as the real story is that G is not bright enough to figure out that a nuclear weapon is more than just lemon pudding. Rove has effectively changed the discourse from the war to a problem in wordage. </p>
<p>Does anyone believe that if Rove is fired, that he would no longer advise G?
Correction, Tell, G what to do.</p>
<p>I had forgotten about this fascinating article in from the Washington Post in September of 2003, in which a senior administrative official [Colin Powell? that’s my guess] says two “top White House officials” [one of whom certainly appears to be Rove from this juncture, but who’s the other? Did someone say conspiracy?] placed calls to no fewer than six journalists and told them that Valery Plame’ worked for the CIA, and that George Tenet, Director of the CIA, personally requested a criminal investigation. That was the context in which Scotty McClellen demonstrated no hesitency at all to comment on an on-going criminal investigation. Check it out:</p>
<p>"At CIA Director George J. Tenet’s request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday. </p>
<p>"The operative’s identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush’s claim that Iraq had tried to buy ‘yellowcake’ uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim. </p>
<p>"CIA Director George J. Tenet wants to know whether officials in the White House broke federal law. </p>
<p>"The intentional disclosure of a covert operative’s identity is a violation of federal law. </p>
<p>"The officer’s name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials. </p>
<p>"Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson’s account touched off a political fracas over Bush’s use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq. </p>
<p>"‘Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,’ the senior official said of the alleged leak. </p>
<p>"Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson’s credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, ‘The real issue is Wilson and his wife.’</p>
<p>"A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson’s wife as ‘fair game.’</p>
<p>"The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls. </p>
<p>"It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were ‘wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson’s credibility.’</p>
<p>"Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife’s occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush’s senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him ‘to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.’</p>
<p>"White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he knows of no leaks about Wilson’s wife. ‘That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing,’ McClellan said. ‘I don’t have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice.’ </p>
<p>"McClellan, who Rove had speak for him, said of Wilson’s comments: ‘It is a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true.’ McClellan was asked about Wilson’s charge at a White House briefing Sept. 16 and said the accusation is ‘totally ridiculous.’</p>
<p>“Administration officials said Tenet sent a memo to the Justice Department raising a series of questions about whether a leaker had broken federal law by disclosing the identity of an undercover officer. The CIA request was reported Friday night by MSNBC.com. Administration sources familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted…”</p>
<p>I am not a Democrat or a Republican, but for the life of me, I can’t see why Republicans would want to defend him? Bush’s popularity would go up 20 points tomorrow if he removed Rove (daddy Bush can get him a job); he’d be seen as a man of principle, consistent with Republican principles and consistent with his own previous utterances. Is Rove really that valuable to him? Does Bush really want him around for the next three months until the prosecutor’s report comes out? It’s not like he has another re-election to worry about (I hope), and I’d think he has more important fish to fry.</p>
<p>Lauras50, that article you cited had so much pith to it (which will pith off the True Believers), but of all the lines:
</p>
<p>is the LOL!!! </p>
<p>Yes, the Republicans are spared Congressional investigations because they control both houses of Congress. (And they’re working on the courts, too.) But to have cries of “Partisanship!” from those who kept alive a years-long jihad about Clinton lying about oral sex when Bush has lied us into Iraq and the outing of a CIA agent (and covers and contacts) is regarded as virtue in pursuit of political vendetta is darkly laughable.</p>