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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 12:49:50 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Plamegate: The Everlasting Non-Scandal By Texas Rainmaker on Plamegate The prosecutor has closed the case. The leaker is known, but wasn’t charged with a crime. Another was convicted of lying, not leaking. And now Democrats have called Valerie Plame to testify about… nothing. The Washington Post starts its article with this jewel: << She has been silent nearly four years. >> Really? Is the $2.5 million book deal part of her “silence”? Is the Warner Brothers movie part of her “silence”? Is the website setup soliciting donations for her part of her “silence”? Was the Vanity Fair interview, complete with full color centerfold picture of her part of her “silence”? Is pretending to be a celebrity on the red carpet part of her “silence”? Was posing for Time Magazine in her pajamas part of her “silence”? She’s about as “silent” now as she was “covert” then… all supporting links found here feeds.feedburner.com

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 1:38:23 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Evening Newscasts on Plame's Testimony: 'Impeach Bush' and No Mention of Armitage NewsBusters.org newsbusters.org

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 1:58:14 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

More Plame Cliff May The Corner My friend the ex-CIA officer reminds me that, in addition to Valerie Plame's new and very creative assertion that sending Joe Wilson to Niger was the idea of a guy who just happened to be strolling by her desk one day, there also is the fact that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the Wilson was known to the CIA because Plame had recommended him for an earlier mission. See attached excerpt. www2.nationalreview.com corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 2:05:26 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Valerie Plame Wilson vs. the Senate Intelligence Committee Byron York The Corner At her appearance before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, Valerie Plame Wilson flatly denied playing a role in the choice of her husband for a CIA mission to Niger. "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," she said. She also testified that a Senate Intelligence Committee report which concluded she did suggest her husband was wrong. In particular, Mrs. Wilson said a CIA reports officer who, according to the Senate report, told Senate investigators that she had suggested her husband, "came to me almost with tears in his eyes. He said his words have been twisted and distorted." Tonight a key senator is disputing Mrs. Wilson's testimony. In response to an inquiry from National Review, Senator Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, released the following statement: I stand by the findings of the Committee’s report on the Niger-Iraq uranium information, including the information regarding Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the Committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the Committee’s description of his comments. If the reports officer would like to clarify or change his remarks, I’m certain that the Committee would welcome his testimony. We have also checked the memorandum written by Ms. Wilson suggesting her husband to look into the Niger reporting. I also stand by the Committee’s finding that this memorandum indicates Ms. Wilson did suggest her husband for a Niger inquiry. Because the quote [the portion of the memo quoted in the Senate report] obviously does not represent the entirety of the memorandum, I suggest that the House Government Reform Committee request and examine this memorandum themselves. I am confident that they will come to the same conclusion as our bipartisan membership did. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWViZGQyOTc2OTJjY2JkMzE2YjI4Y2M2ZGMzZTkyMjQ=

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 2:10:58 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

What Does "Covert" Mean? Andy McCarthy The Corner Valerie Plame Wilson said in her testimony that she continued to be "covert" while working at Langley — long after her assignment overseas — because she had been covert while working overseas. Her analogy was to a general in the army. A general, she said, remains a general even if he is rotated from combat overseas to a post in the U.S. This seems pretty silly to me. It conflates RANK with STATUS. The better analogy, I think, would be to a DEA or FBI undercover agent. When the agent is on the undercover assignment, he/she is "covert"; when the agency ends the U/C assignment and transfers the agent (often to a supervisory position), the agent is no longer covert, even though aspects of the former assignment remain closely guarded. Obviously, when an undercover agent moves onto new, non-undercover responsibilities, that does not mean all entanglements of the covert assignment are over. If, for example, there were classified aspects of the assignment (e.g., the agent's cover was a sham corporation that the agency is still using for undercover purposes), or if the agent, while covert, reported information that is still regarded as sensitive or classified intelligence, all that remains closely guarded (perhaps even classified). So, to that extent, it can still be said that the agent has "covert" responsibilities. BUT, that doesn't mean his or her day-to-day responsibilities are any longer covert. The agent, for example, walks in and out of headquarters everyday, like hundreds of other people, because there is no longer any imperative to conceal his/her connection to the agency. We don't know all the facts necessary to render a definitive judgment, but it sure seems like Mrs. Wilson is using the continuing sensitivity of facts about her formerly covert STATUS to suggest, misleadingly, that she continued to have a covert RANK once she returned back home and was assigned to headquarters — where a zillion people a day saw her walk in and out of CIA and the Agency was obviously not trying to conceal the fact that she worked there. corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/17/2007 2:12:05 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

This White House is guilty of treason for outing a key covert CIA official on Iranian WMD during war-time. The ripple effect of that outing, turned into a wave, and as Plame testified yesterday, expose and ruined every operation she was ever a part of, putting all our informants, allies and secret agents in danger at a crucial time in history, when more than anything we need accurate intel on Iran's WMD program, which we probably don't have now thanks to Bush-Cheney-Rove-Libby. Also, Bush lied to the American people about Plamegate. He promised that he'd get to the bottom of it and anyone who leaked would be removed from office. So why are Cheney and Rove still there? Why hasnb't Bush himself stepped down? And why was there no internal White House probe whatsoever on this matter?

To: Sully- who wrote (56012)	3/19/2007 2:43:04 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Can't anybody here play this game? By Jay Tea on Politics Wizbang Over the past few years, I've reluctantly come to a conclusion about the Bush administration. They have one huge, gaping, flagrant flaw, one area where they are incredibly inept: they simply have no clue how to deal with certain types of political attack. And as a consequence, they end up getting slammed for doing the right (or, at least, legal) thing -- but utterly and completely bollixing up the whole situation. We see that in Iraq. There were sound, valid reasons for our invasion and removal of Saddam's regime. Those reasons are still valid today, and I still support it. But critics of the war managed to rewrite the argument into "Bush said Saddam has stockpiles of WMDs to justify the invasion, he didn't, so Bush lied us into war." And no matter how many times you go back to the actual historical record, it's ignored by the critics and their own "reality." We see that in the Plame/Wilson mess. Wilson out-and-out lied about his CIA-sponsored mission to Niger, saying that he found no evidence Iraq was seeking uranium. Plame lied when she said she had no role in his getting that assignment. And their supporters lie when they say Wilson's report disproved the "16 words" in Bush's State Of The Union speech, when Bush specifically said "British Intelligence" had uncovered evidence that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa. And Plame's identity was not first revealed on orders from Bush, but by bumbling idiot (and war critic) Richard Armitage. But the Bush administration's response to the attacks were so inept that Scooter Libby is now facing prison time for, as someone far wiser than I opined, "lying about telling the truth about a liar." We see that in the fired US attorneys mess. There should have been no story there. All eight had served their full four-year term; from the moment that anniversary passed, they continued to serve solely at the president's pleasure. And as others have noted far more thoroughly than I ever could, the paper trail on these attorneys (which many media had access to, and selectively excerpted to prove their point and suppress "inconvenient truths") shows that the "political" issues revolving around these attorneys were often a conflict between what the Bush administration held as priorities for prosecutorial resources, and what these attorneys considered important -- or not. What the Bush administration should have done was to say, simply, that these attorneys' policies and practices were in conflict with the administration's, and as such the president exercised his legal and established authority to remove them and replace them with those more in tune with his priorities. Period. End of discussion. But no. They let themselves get blindsided, run over by a rampantly partisan freight train, and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is on the hot seat over allegations that he lied and/or misled Congressional inquiries on the matter. And like Scooter Libby, he could get nailed to the all over it. One of the lasting legacies of the Watergate scandal was the lesson that "it's not the crime, but the coverup" that most often gets people. Now we see that evolved further, where there doesn't even have to be a fundamental underlying crime, or even an orchestrated conspiracy to cover up matters, to trigger legal troubles. I'm not overly comfortable with this development. It strikes me as getting dangerously close to politicizing the judicial process, turning what should be political matters into legal and criminal ones. But that doesn't change the fact that such things are reality now, and must be dealt with now. And the Bush administration damned well better get its head out of its ass and learn to deal with it, because it ain't getting any better any time soon. feeds.wizbangblog.com wizbangblog.com patterico.com