<p>
</p>
<p>As I’ve said before, FF, if Bush himself verified that the Iraq War was on his agenda well before 9/11, you’d believe that he had been taken over by partisan Democrat aliens. ; )</p>
<p>Dear Hanna, I’ll wish it, but…</p>
<p>We have a gorgeous day in SoCal! Wish I could send you some sunshine, and some to my kid on the east coast, too. It’s brutal there, I hear.</p>
<p>You guys seem to be getting confused about different issues here. The declassification of classified information IS NOT THE SAME THING as directing Libby to go after Wilson. Cheney was not asking that Plame’s status be declassified - he was talking about something completely different. But, I guess the wish-factor makes it easy to make such erroneous leaps of logic.</p>
<p>Once and for all: There is nothing at all sinister about going to reporters and providing the truth behind Wilson’s lies.</p>
<p>FF, “the truth behind Wilson’s lies”, even if we stipulate that Wilson was lying (which we don’t), he wasn’t lying about his wife, so I hardly think there was any reason for that to have been part of correcting any record.</p>
<p>Regarding your comment about Armitage being the source of the Novak column: Cheney’s staff was, at the direction of Cheney, contacting many reporters to discredit Wilson. That’s why so many appeared in court. The fact that Novak printed first does not make Armitage more of a leaker than Libby or Rove. But once the info was declassified, it didn’t make any difference who leaked. Apparently Armitage and Rove didn’t lie to the GJ, or didn’t lie with quite as many witnesses to the truth as Libby did. Was it 8 or 9 people who contradicted Libby?</p>
<p>And for all of you who continue to think that Plame wasn’t covert, where do you get this stuff?? Why did the CIA demand an investigation into the release of an identity that wasn’t secret? And why - if she were not covert - did she work for something called Brewster Jennings, a “consultant”. If this wasn’t a cover organization, why didn’t they just call it the CIA ?</p>
<p>The biggest question was and remains, what was Cheney so upset about? We are fighting in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and OBL is still free. Why was he so amazingly caught up in spending time and energy - his own and his staff’s - on trying to discredit a man who the Republican right seems to all think no one would ever take seriously anyway?</p>
<p>“he wasn’t lying about his wife, so I hardly think there was any reason for that to have been part of correcting any record”</p>
<p>There you go. The “lies” that needed to be “debunked” alleged that there was no evidence that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium in Niger. That’s the only part of the article that mattered.</p>
<p>The problem with debunking that part of the article is that it was true. So they decided to attack Wilson personally instead.</p>
<p>Sydney Blumenthal’s answer to “Where’s Rove” in Salon today.
Very interesting read for anyone interested.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/03/08/scooter_libby/index.html[/url]”>http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/03/08/scooter_libby/index.html</a></p>
<p>its so cute when the right gets all flustered and is getting so dizzy with the spin</p>
<p>Shooting Elephants in a Barrel
by Ann Coulter<br>
Posted: 03/07/2007</p>
<p>"Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.</p>
<p>It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame’s name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department’s Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.</p>
<p>With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with “perjury” and enjoy the fawning media attention.</p>
<p>As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.</p>
<p>This makes it official: It’s illegal to be Republican."</p>
<p>Go ahead, fire away :)</p>
<p>Clifford D. May
July 12, 2004, 11:05 a.m.
"Our Man in Niger
Exposed and discredited, Joe Wilson might consider going back.</p>
<p>Joe Wilson’s cover has been blown. For the past year, he has claimed to be a truth-teller, a whistleblower, the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy — and most of the media have lapped it up and cheered him on.</p>
<p>After a whirl of TV and radio appearances during which he received high-fives and hearty hugs from producers and hosts (I was in some green rooms with him so this is eyewitness reporting), and a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair, he gave birth to a quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover, and verbosely entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity: A Diplomat’s Memoir. </p>
<p>The book jacket talks of his “fearless insight” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) and “disarming candor” (which does not extend to telling readers for whom he has been working since retiring early from the Foreign Service). </p>
<p>The biographical blurb describes him as a “political centrist” who received a prize for “Truth-Telling,” though a careful reader might notice that the award came in part from a group associated with The Nation magazine — which only Michael Moore would consider a centrist publication.</p>
<p>But now Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — he of the Hermes ties and Jaguar convertibles — has been thoroughly discredited. Last week’s bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report concluded that it is he who has been telling lies.</p>
<p>For starters, he has insisted that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, was not the one who came up with the brilliant idea that the agency send him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had been attempting to acquire uranium. “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson says in his book. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.” In fact, the Senate panel found, she was the one who got him that assignment. The panel even found a memo by her. (She should have thought to use disappearing ink.)</p>
<p>Wilson spent a total of eight days in Niger “drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people,” as he put it. On the basis of this “investigation” he confidently concluded that there was no way Saddam sought uranium from Africa. Oddly, Wilson didn’t bother to write a report saying this. Instead he gave an oral briefing to a CIA official. </p>
<p>Oddly, too, as an investigator on assignment for the CIA he was not required to keep his mission and its conclusions confidential. And for the New York Times, he was happy to put pen to paper, to write an op-ed charging the Bush administration with “twisting,” “manipulating” and “exaggerating” intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs “to justify an invasion.” </p>
<p>In particular he said that President Bush was lying when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he pronounced these words: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”</p>
<p>We now know for certain that Wilson was wrong and that Bush’s statement was entirely accurate. </p>
<p>The British have consistently stood by that conclusion. In September 2003, an independent British parliamentary committee looked into the matter and determined that the claim made by British intelligence was “reasonable” (the media forgot to cover that one too). Indeed, Britain’s spies stand by their claim to this day. Interestingly, French intelligence also reported an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Niger." …</p>
<p>By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09</p>
<p>"Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.</p>
<p>Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.</p>
<p>Wilson’s assertions – both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information – were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.</p>
<p>The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address.</p>
<p>The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him."</p>
<p>Hayden,</p>
<p>Here is why Plame matters in this thing: A major part of Wilson’s thesis that he was selling to the media was that Cheney sent him on this trip and therefore should have been most attentive to the results that he came back with. Instead, Wilson’s thesis goes, Cheney ignored Wilson’s findings and continued to promote the Niger angle. However, the facts are (and have been confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and recently re-iterated by the Washington Post): Cheney had nothing to do with sending Wilson. What evidence is there of this? Plame was the one who nominated her husband to go. The other facts are that Wilson’s actual report was 180 degrees out of synch with what he “claims” to have reported. Again, the Senate report indicated that Wilson’s report **did **actually add additional weight to the story that Saddam was trying to get yellow cake from Niger. </p>
<p>If you doubt the impact of Plame’s involvement in this thing on the media, check out the transcribed tapes that Woodward has of his meeting with Armitage. Woodward’s reaction to Plame’s involvement leaves no doubt that Plame’s roll in this is a significant part of the entire debunking of Wilson’s concocted pack of lies.</p>
<p>
What information are you referring to that was declassified? There is no evidence that I am aware of that Plame’s status was declassified. The information that was declassified was the NIE which was also useful in debunking Wilson’s thesis that the entire hypothesis of Saddam getting nuclear weapons was built around the yellow-cake issue which he claims to have debunked (but as indicated above, this claim was a lie). The NIE showed that the yellow-cake issue was really a non-issue with respect to the case for Saddam’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>So, the bottom line is that all of the information that was leaked was true and pertinent to the point of debunking Wilson’s lies.</p>
<p>
For the same reason why years later we still have to fight the disillusioned notion that “Bush lied - people died”. Falsehoods as spread by Wilson found fertile ground in the minds of those pre-disposed to hate Bush and/or the war.</p>
<p>“For the same reason why years later we still have to fight the disillusioned notion that “Bush lied - people died”.”</p>
<p>Actually, it was “Clinton lied - people died.” Bush was just a camp-follower.</p>
<p>For anyone who is interested in the underlying issues re: Plame, Wilson, Niger, etc., they were pretty thoroughly hashed out in three earlier threads:<br>
“Plame leaker comes forward.”
“Novak names names in Plame leak case”
“Claim Karl Rove was leak in CIA outing”</p>
<p>A synopsis: I’ve read the Senate report, the Butler report, etc. Both Fundingfather and OdysseyTigger are repeating distortions and half-truths peddled by the right wing blogsters which don’t actually stand up under scrutiny. Sorry, guys, but every time I read your lockstep righty echos I picture you rushing to line up at the Kool-Aid bowl when the Reverend Jim gives the call. </p>
<p>I still find it interesting that the right feels compelled to savage Joe Wilson, with mouth frothing, lip quivering fervor. I guess it’s hard to let go of the “destroy the opposition messenger by any and every means” mentality which has dominated the “philosophy” of the right for years now. Joe Wilson is not significant. Your need to destroy him is. BushCo’s need to attack him personally - as opposed to the message he carried - is, and it’s what got Libby in trouble. FF - you’re a smart guy. You deserve to consider why it is so important to you.</p>
<p>And why is it so important for you to keep defending someone who has such a problem with the truth?</p>
<p>Wilson’s a known liar. That’s a fact.</p>
<p>We all know who the convicted liar is, found so by a jury of his peers. What’s so difficult to understand? First White House employee convicted of perjury in more than 130 years.</p>
<p>Of course, there are much bigger liars out there. ;)</p>
<p>Yup, kluge, the Washington Post is the lockstep mouthpiece of the Kool-Aid sipping right. Have you checked the contents of your sippy cup lately?</p>
<p>Actually, Fred Hiatt, WP editorial page editor, is a well known right wing conservative and Bush supporter, who has championed the war from the beginning.</p>
<p>It’s a mistake to think that the editorial pages and the news pages are necessarily coming from the same ideological place - WaPo and WSJ are good examples of papers where the editorial boards are much more “conservative” than the newspaper. One well known blogger at Firedoglake, who was present at the Libby trial and gave a day-by-day account asked, “Does Fred Hiatt even READ the Washington Post???”</p>
<p>Hiatt’s editorial has been taken to task for repeating what has already been debunked in its own news pages on many other venues, not just this year for this article, but previous years as well. Like I said, Hiatt’s views are no secret, and his take on this is not surprising.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/030707a.html[/url]”>http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/030707a.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://consortiumnews.com/2006/090106.html[/url]”>http://consortiumnews.com/2006/090106.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001505.php[/url]”>http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001505.php</a></p>
<p>ASAP keep up the good work, but you realize that nothing that one says that in any way impeaches this administrations perfect record for facts, truthiness, etc will every be taken with any credibility, because they are almost Godlike in their perfection</p>
<p>ANd it is never their fault…the intelligence was faulty, but when they are told that, they bash the people telling them that</p>
<p>they want it both ways…but hey…its kind of fun watching the spin on this</p>
<p>There were plenty of editorial pages around the country that took their facts from their news sections. Lots, actually.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16670715.htm[/url]”>http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16670715.htm</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/07/the_cloud_over_cheney/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/03/07/the_cloud_over_cheney/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/opinion/07weds1.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/opinion/07weds1.html</a></p>
<p>cgm- I get your point, but I’d find it a lot more fun if the consequences of this criminal administration weren’t so devestating. I try to keep it light, but it’s hard.</p>
<p>I need my dose of Colbert. Where’s my Tivo!</p>