Novak/Plame - Page 4

Needless to say there are several points that you mentioned that I disagree with. I could type out a long response to it, but a few professionals have done a better job that happens to match my own views.

WSJ

They do a very good job.

Nick

Too bad that WSJ article is frought with falsehoods and bad information.

In fact, do a compare-and-contrast between the RNC and WSJ statements. They didn't even bother to change the ordering of claims, in some cases.



1st Talking Point

"Once Again, Democrats Are Engaging In Blatant Partisan Attacks."

1st Paragraph of WSJ op/ed:

"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."

...

2nd Talking Point

"Karl Rove Discouraged A Reporter From Writing A False Story Based On A False Premise."

2nd Paragraph of WSJ op/ed:

"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."

...

3rd Talking Point

"The False Premise Was Joe Wilson's Allegation That The Vice President Sent Him To Niger"

2nd Paragraph, 2nd sentence of WSJ op/ed:

"He [Rove] is 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."

...

And on, and on, and on...it's really hard to read through the whole neurotic piece which ends with this foul little morsel:

"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."


They've got NOTHING! Just more of the same "blame the victim" and ignoring the issue at hand, per usual. It's damage-control, nothing more.

Of course, it's their opinion and not neccessarily the truth.

When you cut through the crap, this case is simple: a couple of political officials in the Bush White House decided to deliberately and systematically release the name of a covert CIA operative to the press solely in order to score some minor debating points against her husband, a man who had recently embarrassed them in the pages of the New York Times. The rest is just fluff. Either you're outraged by such a casual attitude toward national security or you aren't.

I wish more Republicans were acquitting themselves honorably on this question. So far the score on their side is pretty poor.

Thank you Kevin Drum

No, dmz, I think you can sort it out.

1. Bush hyped discredited information about Iraq's nukes in order to justify the war. The administration has admitted that Bush shouldn't have said what he said about the nukes.
2. Wilson knew something about the Africa nukes story, was ticked off by what he saw as their dishonesty, and so wrote an op-ed telling them off.
3. The Bush administration went after Wilson, and tried to discredit him by telling lots of reporters that it was his wife, a CIA agent, who got him the job, and therefore (for reasons that I still don't understand) he shouldn't be believed.

Here are my specific responses to the op-ed you cited. Feel free to disagree.

Here's a link to the piece.


Most of this is false. Here's a link to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

1. The term "maliciously" does not appear, and is not implied. You simply have to know you're outing a covert agent.
2. The information does not have to be obtained in an official capacity - that's one possibility, but not the only one.


This is the same shit talking point that ticked me off earlier in this thread. No, Cheney didn't personally say "hey let's get that Joe Wilson to check this out." But Wilson didn't claim that. He said Cheney asked the CIA about it, and the CIA asked him to look into it.


He didn't claim to have thoroughly debunked it, the CIA claimed that, George Tenet claimed that, and the White House ultimately admitted it by saying they shouldn't have included those 16 words.

Here's what Wilson said about it in his op-ed.


and later:

"Played a small role" and "help formulate the answer" and "if my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand" are very, very different from "he claimed to have thoroughly debunked" the issue.



His wife claims that she didn't recommend him, but her bosses asked her about him after they or someone else thought of him first, because of his expertise (ambassador to Africa and Iraq, Africa director for NSC). She responded to their request by saying yeah, he's qualified. See this article - guess who initially leaked a supposed CIA memo saying that Plame was at the meeting where Wilson was recommended? Talon News. That's right, Jeff Gannon.


That might be true, but this is what Wilson said about the forged documents: "While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake..." and then later "As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government and were probably forged." So he was told that someone had this document, and that's why the CIA was interested in this issue, but he never saw them himself, and he also read in the media that they were believed to have been forged. Maybe it was that specific document that got the CIA's interest in the Niger-Iraq connection, or maybe it was something else. But it doesn't matter to his trip or his conclusion.


Yup, the Brits stood by it. But it had been explicitly discredited by the CIA and removed from a Bush speech at Tenet's insistence. The White House has subsequently acknowledged that it shouldn't have been in his speech. So why does it matter that someone else in a different country is standing by it?

They reluctantly admitted those 16 words should've remained off the SOTU......or from any speeches FROM any speeches after the speech in Cincinnati where they were removed.

I don't know how it came about, but it's obvious he went "against them" by revealing his conclusion about the Niger uranium. The same conclusion reached by our embassy there, and by a four star General who also went to investigate.
Isn't that cute? They not only told one reporter ("we were discussing something else and then Wilson's wife was briefly mentioned')"casually", but they told lots of them. At least 6 of them.
Correct. And even if it were true that Plame recommended hubby for the job....like Mrs. Wilson had the capacity to order Joe Wilson to Niger on behalf of the CIA. Stupid nonsense.
I need to confirm this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the gay-fake-reporter-"escort" was involved. Can it get more farcical than this?

You're making too much sense for this place. The worrying thing is that the usual far right wing suspects who accuse the rest of us of hating the country and not being patriots don't seem to have a problem with the possibility that indeed a CIA covert operative involved with WMDs has been outed for petty political gain thus endangering our national security. It's absurd, but expected.

You got it absolutely right BRussell.

It really is that simple.

But wingnutteryland will still peddle falsehoods without blinking an eye. It's what they do best.

I know. I just learned that today. This scandal takes everything about the Bush administration and just scrunches it all into one big ball. Next we'll find out that Enron funded Wilson's trip and Terry Schiavo forged the Niger documents.

Huh. Turns out Ken Mehlman, chairman of the RNC, is a lying, duplicitous sack of shit. Who woulda thunk it?

Here's a passage from the "why this whole thing is about what a self aggrandizing bozo Joe Wilson is"smear sheet he's sent out so all the good little talking heads can be on the same page:


Here's what he actually said, via the cited transcript: (scroll down about half way)


So the fucking chairman of the RNC very obviously, very deliberately takes a quote out of context to make it appear that Wilson claimed that Cheney personally sent him to Niger, just so he can refute it and build a case that Wilson is the bad guy here.

Jesus. I think the worst thing is that the national discourse is so utterly debased that Mehlman figures he can traffic in such transparent bullshit and nobody will call him on it, and that he's probably right.

Certainly we have our own gang of ditto heads that will hang onto the "but Joe Wilson is a proven liar" meme no matter how many times they have the truth shown to them, and no matter how irrelevant such spurious smears are to the case at hand.

Gosh, after the thirtieth or fortieth time, you might start to get the idea it was deliberate.

That has been the GOP way for years.

And Dean's the "disaster".

Maybe I am an idiot, but what does Joe Wilson have to do with the current case at all?

Is Rove actually attempting to justify an idiotic act?

Nobody cares about Joe Wilson, no one cared about Joe Wilson, people are saying to themselves Joe Wilson - who?

This was a battle that Rove shouldn't have taken on in the first place. Joe wilson's claims would have died right along with the fact that we didn't find any goddamn WMDs in iraq, and instead we have, two years subsequently, a regurgitation of some brutal political nastiness.

The War in Iraq isn't unpopular because we have no reason for being there, it is unpopular because we have had people there dying for more than two years, and have been in a war like state for almost four years... A suicide bomber blows himself in Iraq killing about as many people as died in london last week, and our national conscience dies a little... 18 children. ok. 21 people at a mosque. ok. 5 recruits. ok. but each time we say ok, it gets pounded into our heads that if we weren't there, we wouldn't have to care, and possibly, just possibly the suicide bombings would stop.... the blood leting would stop.

I think in light of the British stance and the stance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings, that is not accurate --- GW ran for cover a little too early on the 16 words business.


The text of the statute reads:

"...knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agents intelligence relationship to the United States."

I would have to say that that would constitute a certain measure of 'malicious' behavior.


Well, it matter's to the British, they seem to be operating under the impression that there was some smoke to go with that fire.

At any rate, we have serious questions as to what is going on with this; one reporter sitting in the can, limited information as why Novak is out and Miller and Cooper are getting the screws put to them, speculation running as wild as the washington press corps --- including "was Miller here own source" --- then their is Rove, who carries a political bounty on his head, regardless.

Too deep for me. I'll let you nail down all the hard-and fast-details.

Some reading from 2 years ago, a long thread on this same topic! Hindsight is fascinating!

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...0&pagenumber=1

The snail-pace of our media never ceases to amaze. This was a major issue so long ago, and it looked back then as if Karl Rove was responsible, via Novak, for outing Plame. What is so different about this case now? Quite possibly, the fact that we had just gone to war with the approval of some 70% of the American people, and the media didnt want to appear "unpatriotic" by running a story implicating the brain behind the Bush White House in serious criminal activity. Right now, public approval for the same Bush White House and the same war is running low, at around 42%, so it is now "safe" for the corporate media to air this story.

Typical, sickeningly cowardly conduct by the axis of weasels CNN, ABC and Fox, etc: they don the knee-pads when the admin. is popular, and only get the whips and chains out when they are having a tough time.

You said it, brother.

Scanning the old thread, I'm struck by the quick deployment by our own little ditto heads of the Bush White House (aka Rove) SOP: find someone who you can characterize as a "Bush hater" and begin to belittle them as a petty, self-aggrandizing martinet with an ax to grind.

In some of the posts from the earlier thread, you could literally take the estimations of who Joe Wilson is, his character and motivations, and swap them out with the smear jobs on other admin figures that dared to stray from the compound (hey, remember Richard Clarke?).

Funny thing, that every single in-house critic of Bush has the same interchangeable personality. Small minded, looking for a book deal, hell bent on revenge for some career slight, a glory hound, an implacable and long term foe of everything Bush has tried to achieve, possibly doing the bidding of Unknown Agents.......

Fuckers don't even bother to switch up the smear profile, since they know that it will be taken up with tooth rattling fierceness by the legions of haters, each and every time, without question.

That Joe Wilson! What a jackass! Pretending to be a player! Pretending his wife is a real spy! Willing to say anything to get his face on TV! Consumed with hatred for Bush, probably cause he didn't get the promotion he wanted!

That Richard Clarke! What a jackass! Pretending to be a player! Pretending he actually influenced policy! Willing to say anything to get his face on TV! Consumed with hatred for Bush, probably because he didn't get the promotion he wanted!

That Paul O'Neill! What an jackass! Pretending to be a player! Glorified bean counter pretending to know something about foreign policy! Willing to say anything to get his face on TV! etc....

Rove must have it set up as a Word template.

Sydney Blumenthal, in Salon, with an excellent play by play.

A good refresher course on how every talking point in circulation amongst the screaming heads is a calculated lie (just like they were two years ago), from "Plame got her husband the job", to "She wasn't really covert" to "Wilson is an under-qualified opportunist" and so on.

He also makes the important point that while Rove knows how to work the punditry to a fine froth, his mojo has no sway over a professional prosecutor doing his job, and that is where Unka Karl's future will be decided.

Another heads up.

This just keeps getting weirder.

Not weird at all. It was to be expected that they'd have to synchronize stories and probably look for a fall guy so to speak. We'll see who the poor idiot is.
So who gave Novak the info.? And who gave Rove the info. if Rove was just confirming with Novak? ....and WTF is Rove doing talking matters of National Security with the press? discussing the identity of a CIA operative with a member of the press? Why didn't he refuse to comment in the interest of National Security?

"I heard that too".

The plot thickens.....

What was the line from The Matrix? ..."follow the pink bunny..."

now Wilson:

far out

I'd like to see the source for that line, dmz. It's not consistent with other things I've seen that all suggest she was covert at the time.

I made it up!

just kidding


from an AP writer in newsday:
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nation...home-headlines

here's another (more partisan) link, too:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20...1257-9887r.htm

Pesonally, I'm looking for a second bunny on the grassy knoll behind a Roswell Circle-K theory.

Your second link....the "more partisan" (as opposed to totally partisan WT)one makes no reference to your first link. Of course, you just had to throw more "even her neighbors knew she was CIA" BS into the mix even though the neighbor they interviewed had no idea. Brilliant!

Well done.

no conclusions, yet, Gilsch -- just a whole bunch of people contradicting each other in some very strange circumstances.

Here ya go-- The CNN interview that has wingnuttery all atwitter.

Relevant quote:


So, it's very obvious indeed that Wilson is responding to the idea that he somehow contributed to "outing" his own wife by granting interviews, making the point that once the Novak column hit the streets she was no longer clandestine and that her previous status could in no way be used to argue against his subsequent choices.

In fact, it's so obvious this is what he meant it seems like a stretch that anyone could legitimately mistake his meaning.

So, DMZ, the reason it seems to you that "a lot of people are contradicting a lot of other people" is that creating a sense of hard to follow accusation and counter accusation is, specifically, part of the Republican strategy for damage control, which depends on people like you, who can pretend to be reasonable folks just wanting "all the facts" while in fact eagerly disseminating endless heaping portions of ludicrous disinformation.

There really is a "slippery slope", and it really does have a moral dimension, and you really are a fan boy of shoving us down that slope.

You're right, addabox. Wilson meant that, because of Bob Novak, she lost her status: "As soon as his article came out, my wife was no longer clandestine." I think the spin is that he's admitting she wasn't clandestine at the time Novak's article came out.

I bet that's it. It just came out weird the way he said it. Everything that I've seen suggests she was covert at the time the article came out.

DING, DING, DING, DING... What he said.

It's also interesting to note that in that interview Wolf Blitzer, he of the (ahem) "liberal media", gravely recites these idiotic right wing talking points about Wilson's public profile, calling them "serious charges", when, in fact, they are not "charges" at all but nothing more part of an effort to smear Joe Wilson by whatever means necessary.

The primary point, of course, is that Wilson could be a cannibalistic pedophile and it would not any bearing, whatsoever, on the legality of revealing the identity of a clandestine CIA officer.

I bet Blitzer would be great interviewing the family of sexual assault victims:

"Now, you say your wife was raped, yet here you are, granting me an interview. How do you respond to these charges?

That and the Word template. Man that really had me laughing.

I say...OFF WITH HIS HEAD! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!

I'm not sure what the truth is here, but somehow I don't think I'll be taking your word for it. It's funny that you attempt to pick apart "Republican talking points", and yet in the very next post you regurgitate the Democratic party line.

Why change the mode of operation in mid-stream? It has gotten them this far . . . that same strategy and NOTHING else!

You watch, they'll end up blaming Collin Powell . . . . who, if we're lucky will say "enough already!!"

and

just because it sums it all up so nicely:

I
shall
repeat this:
So, DMZ, the reason it seems to you that "a lot of people are contradicting a lot of other people" is that creating a sense of hard to follow accusation and counter accusation is, specifically, part of the Republican strategy for damage control, which depends on people like you, who can pretend to be reasonable folks just wanting "all the facts" while in fact eagerly disseminating endless heaping portions of ludicrous disinformation.

Oh, puuuuuleeeease. You guys welded to a particular party need to take off the blinders and speculate in a wider context. Plame as payback? Most definitely. Wilson lying. Sounds like that's true too. Wilson somehow being ready to go, making hay out of the outing --- hmmm, yes. The email about Rove being a source was used to call for Rove's resignation, but OOPS! it tuns out that Novak told him about Plame, and that Rove emailed the WH security bubba about the conversation with Cooper.

I've told you guys before and I'll tell you again, this is a nasty little catfight, and the energizer bunnies out there, guys on a par with a Clinton or a Rove you will play hell laying a glove on them --- they will turn the accusations around, play passive/agressive and end up making the preception of their opposition into a wheezing, learing lunatic mob with torches and pitchforks -- and walk away smelling like roses.

And in the end we will not know what happened. But in any case, you guys tend to see conspiracy in any outcome that doesn't blow your skirt up, so I'm not sure what the real point is here. Overall, the left seems to have replaced having a plan with making gulag accusations about Gitmo, going after Delay Rove, whoever-it-is-this-week, and feeding Al Jezzera talking points.

Politics is a phony business from top to bottom, but the least these parties could do is actually give us different options, rather than setting up special porsecutors in between co-opting each others economic and domestic policies.

"Strange days, indeed --- most peculiar, mama."
-John Lennon

dmz, I agree that there are lots of details here, and we don't really know all the facts yet. So, as you say, it's important to set that aside and look at the wider context. That wider context is this:

Did the Bush administration hype evidence of WMDs to go to war?

The other questions, like whether Rove and others violated any laws while engaged in the hyping, are really minor in comparison, IMO.

What "context" would that be? That when people you are politically sympathetic to behave hideously we should adopt the convenient and cowardly line of "everybody's bad and nothing can be known?"


OK.


"Sounds like?" In which echo chamber? You not only have no evidence for this (which makes it nothing but flak), but given "Plame as payback", it is completely and utterly irrelevant (which I believe makes about the 49th time you've had this pointed out to you).


For someone who wants to chalk it all up to "hopelessly complex doings of corrupt untouchables", you sure do seem to keep track of all the little bogus "gotchas" and right wing chatter. I already explained the "Wilson says his wife wasn't covert" lie you were quick to throw in the mix. This "Novak told Rove" shit is coming form Rove's lawyer and means exactly nothing. Just more hand waving for people like you.


AKA "Everybody is bad and nothing is knowable".


AKA "Everybody is bad and nothing is knowable, except the Democrats are the worst of all".


You know, I wish you could bring some of your oddly diffident and laissez faire feelings about compromising national security for political payback to other arenas......say, human sexuality.

I think we would all be very impressed by your integrity and consistent moral stance if you would begin posting things like

"Well, yes, people are going to have sex lots of different ways, and mostly under cover of darkness, and some of it will no doubt be creepy, but what are you gonna do? Start passing a bunch of laws and making a big deal out of it? Please. This is just another opportunity for angry people with an ax to grind to spin their little dramas, and in the end folks will keep having sex how they want and you will have no way of knowing about it. Life is strange. Go figure. Democrats are bad."

Oh, and John Lennon came to me in a vision and said that his grave is getting damaged from all the spinning.

hype, absolutely -- lie, no. Saddam was going down one way or another to make way for this expensive social studies experiment. This is just like taking Al Capone down for cheating on his taxes.

Really. Well if it's that easy to figure out a couple thousand uber-egos internacting, then lay it on me. We are still find things out about Jack Kennedy, for heaven's sake.

No one said what they are doing is right -- in fact, Washington should be an object lesson that political power cannot be wielded without corruption en masse.

Well of course.

And that corporate world? Rotten to the core, way too hard to unravel. This whole "prosecuting CEOs for the wholesale looting of shareholders assets?" Just a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I mean, Ken Lay says one thing, the prosecutor says another...... how is anyone ever to make sense of that mess?

No, better to just lay back and withhold judgment for, um..... ever, and let powerful people do as they will. Because they will do as they will, and there is no way to stop them.

I mean, if there was some mechanism by which there could be a systematic evaluation of the actions of the relevant parties, wherein those actions could be held against some further codified regulation of behavior, or "laws", then it might actually be possible to determine if, in fact, any of the relevant parties were athwart of these so called "laws", and by administrating appropriate sanctions against such individuals it might be possible to administer, oh, what would you call it? " Justice"?

Naw. That would mean knowledge is knowable, which is an obvious partisan attack.

You aren't actually saying anything . . . what you are saying here is that, yes, they lied but its ok cause Saddam had it coming.

Open your damn eyes!! Treasonous behavior on the part of a "top Administrative Official" is not mere cat fighting and "well politicians will be politicians". . . that's the most idiotic of dismissals possible! and that's all you've got!
Make note that he who called such an action as outing CIA agents a Treasonous act was G Bush Sr himself. Wipe the faux from your eyes.

pfflam!! It's called A Grand Jury -- the're working on it. Relax, freaking out about about Rove isn't going to speed this up.

And no on Saddam, he didn't 'disarm', which is technically correct.

I hear tell that some coporations actually document the movement of their capital. There actually isn't an accounting system for political chicane, dishonesty, double-dealing, fourberie, fraud, hanky-panky, highbinding, sharp practices, or trickery.