[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by bewebste

I disagree that Wilson's trip was a partisan attack, and I think there would be plenty of voters that would frown on Bush et al smearing them in response. Even if they did so legally, it's still a pretty slimeball maneuver.

Using your wife to get a position to provide intelligence for the government, then turning around and publicly making false claims during an election year under the cover of that action, to help the guy you are trying to get elected President would be considered a pretty slimeball maneuver as well by most. It's called "politics". Wilson was playing politics and now he cries "foul" when it backfires and his lies are exposed. Boohoo. I don't feel sorry for Rove or Wilson. They are big boys playing big boy games, though Wilson is the only one really out there crying like a little girl

....and it wouldn't have been had Rove revealed that he talked to Novak and Cooper back in 2003. Just like if Clinton had admitted the Lewinsky affair instead of lying about it, they couldn't have pinned perjury charges on him later.

True, but most people I don't think would have a big problem with someone hired to play politics doing so, especially if the claims against him (that he illegaly leaked) turn out to be untrue. Clinton was guilty as charged (diddling his intern), and I'd bet Rove didn't do anything illegal (what he's been accused of).

[Y3a]

<< she didn't work for the DOD, but for the CIA. Apparently it is illegal to blow the cover of CIA agents in the States. It also doesn't make a difference what Rove thought about her husband, legally, that is.

Furthermore, I don't think legal responsibility equals legal responsibility, Rove should step back to protect Bush >>

She apparently used a KNOWN fake CIA company as her work address when she donated money to the Democrats in 1999 (Clinton era). Thats rather sloppy. She blew her OWN cover by using her name and the fake CIA company. She could have donated the money on her OWN time and used her home address, unless it was some sort of comment she was trying to make.

Funny how the libs want Rove to disconnect from the Bush admin even before the facts are known. They are really afraid of him it seems.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

No, I didn't say that.
I was merely saying you can stop thinking about alternatives (e. g. Palmer working for the DOD) and instead stick to the facts.

Then obvously you completely missed the point I was making. I was suggesting alternative facts to examine the situation by removing facts that seem to be confusing people. Can your brain handle hypotheticals? I think most people of intelligence can. But let me spell it out.

People are basing their opinions on a contingency that might not be true. People are assuming that just being CIA makes someone automatically protected by the statute. People are assuming that being a CIA employee necessarily makes someone under cover, and if you are in government and know someone who is CIA, you therefore should assume that person is under cover.

But that isn't the case, and as a matter of fact, most CIA employees are not under cover. If you meet a CIA employee with a desk job, the chances are that they are not under cover, and you would have no reason to think that they would be under cover. Therefore, Rove could know that Plame was CIA, but might well have had no reason to suppose that she was under cover even if it in fact turns out that she was under cover. Under the terms of the statute, such an innocent misunderstanding would not be criminal. Understand?

In fact, it isn't even unethical by any weird definition you choose to use. The reason I posed that as a hypothetical where Plame is a DoD or State employee is to kind of hammer home that being a CIA employee in and of itself is nothing special. They don't wear trenchcoats and dark glasses. They are mostly office workers, who quite often work in ordinary offices along side other government officials. If you work in those kinds of offices, you become especially used to seeing them. Oh, such and such is with DoD, there is Major so-and-so, he's a Marine, Bob in the corner is with Commerce, Jane is with DOJ, oh, and Valarie, her with the blond hair, she's CIA. No biggie. All routine stuff in Washington.

Now, if Plame had been a DoD or State employee, and someone casually mentioned her employment, I don't think that anyone would leap to the conclusion that the person who mentioned it was out to attack her. The leaping here is dependent entirely on her CIA employment. But that is only relevant if the person who mentioned it knew she was under cover, if indeed she was. If not, she was just another office worker. And in this case, she was one whose name came up because she recommended her husband for a government contract.

And of course, the reason this matters is because of the spin now being given the story. A while ago, it was all about how Rove broke the law. Now we are told that the law doesn't matter. Supposedly he broke some unspoken code against revealing that a person who did something is the wife of the person she did the favor for. I use the hypothetical to show that there is no such code. It's normal to indicate a person's employer, and in no way an attack. If she weren't a CIA employee, this issue would have gone away months ago. The whether or not the law applies IS the issue, and you can't keep it alive without a conviction.

[BRussell]

Another leak yesterday undermines the argument that Rove et al. didn't know her identity was sensitive information.

A classified State Department memo that may be pivotal to the CIA leak case made clear that information identifying an agent and her role in her husband's intelligence-gathering mission was sensitive and shouldn't be shared, according to a person familiar with the document.
...
The memo's details are significant because they will make it harder for officials who saw the document to claim that they didn't realize the identity of the CIA officer was a sensitive matter. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed.

The paragraph in the memo discussing Ms. Wilson's involvement in her husband's trip is marked at the beginning with a letter designation in brackets to indicate the information shouldn't be shared, according to the person familiar with the memo. Such a designation would indicate to a reader that the information was sensitive. The memo, though, doesn't specifically describe Ms. Wilson as an undercover agent, the person familiar with the memo said.

If true, that the memo said the info was sensitive but didn't specifically say she was covert, I wonder if that's enough to convict. I suppose a jury will need to decide that.

The other scuttlebutt is that, in addition to this "outing a covert agent" law, that they'll go after them on perjury and conspiracy-type charges. Martha spent how long in prison for something similar?

[bewebste]

But that isn't the case, and as a matter of fact, most CIA employees are not under cover. If you meet a CIA employee with a desk job, the chances are that they are not under cover, and you would have no reason to think that they would be under cover. Therefore, Rove could know that Plame was CIA, but might well have had no reason to suppose that she was under cover even if it in fact turns out that she was under cover. Under the terms of the statute, such an innocent misunderstanding would not be criminal. Understand?

But the whole point of being under cover is that nobody (without authorized clearance) is supposed to know that you work for the CIA at all. As far as anyone without clearance is concerned, that person works for some private entity that is a cover and is also not known to be connected to the CIA. If you meet a person who you know works for the CIA, they are, by definition, not under cover. If Rove found out that Plame was CIA and was authorized to know that information (which he was), then it was his responsibility to find out whether she was under cover or not before telling any unauthorized person.

If Rove did not know her covert status (which his lawyer is claiming, we'll see what the grand jury thinks), then telling Cooper and Novak she was CIA wouldn't be a criminal act under the IIPA since it would then be unintentional, albeit grossly negligent. If Fitzgerald can show that Rove did know she was covert, then he may be able to make a case under that statute. Otherwise, he could possibly try to indict based on some other law, e.g. the Espionage Act, although there is no indication thus far whether he'll go that route.

Novak claimed that Plame's status as a CIA employee was an "open secret" in Washington. This has been contradicted by numerous CIA officials, not to mention the fact that the CIA sought prosecution based on the disclosure of that classified information in the first place.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by SimeyTheLimey

Then obvously you completely missed the point I was making. I was suggesting alternative facts to examine the situation by removing facts that seem to be confusing people. Can your brain handle hypotheticals? I think most people of intelligence can. But let me spell it out.

People are basing their opinions on a contingency that might not be true. People are assuming that just being CIA makes someone automatically protected by the statute. People are assuming that being a CIA employee necessarily makes someone under cover, and if you are in government and know someone who is CIA, you therefore should assume that person is under cover.

But that isn't the case, and as a matter of fact, most CIA employees are not under cover. If you meet a CIA employee with a desk job, the chances are that they are not under cover, and you would have no reason to think that they would be under cover. Therefore, Rove could know that Plame was CIA, but might well have had no reason to suppose that she was under cover even if it in fact turns out that she was under cover. Under the terms of the statute, such an innocent misunderstanding would not be criminal. Understand?

In fact, it isn't even unethical by any weird definition you choose to use. The reason I posed that as a hypothetical where Plame is a DoD or State employee is to kind of hammer home that being a CIA employee in and of itself is nothing special. They don't wear trenchcoats and dark glasses. They are mostly office workers, who quite often work in ordinary offices along side other government officials. If you work in those kinds of offices, you become especially used to seeing them. Oh, such and such is with DoD, there is Major so-and-so, he's a Marine, Bob in the corner is with Commerce, Jane is with DOJ, oh, and Valarie, her with the blond hair, she's CIA. No biggie. All routine stuff in Washington.

Now, if Plame had been a DoD or State employee, and someone casually mentioned her employment, I don't think that anyone would leap to the conclusion that the person who mentioned it was out to attack her. The leaping here is dependent entirely on her CIA employment. But that is only relevant if the person who mentioned it knew she was under cover, if indeed she was. If not, she was just another office worker. And in this case, she was one whose name came up because she recommended her husband for a government contract.

And of course, the reason this matters is because of the spin now being given the story. A while ago, it was all about how Rove broke the law. Now we are told that the law doesn't matter. Supposedly he broke some unspoken code against revealing that a person who did something is the wife of the person she did the favor for. I use the hypothetical to show that there is no such code. It's normal to indicate a person's employer, and in no way an attack. If she weren't a CIA employee, this issue would have gone away months ago. The whether or not the law applies IS the issue, and you can't keep it alive without a conviction.

I didn't miss the point you were making, I simply don't agree with the conclusions you draw.

While we might argue all day long that (good and bad) politicians sometimes have to `take political responsibility' is a good/bad thing, that's business as usual in politics. There needn't be any conflict with the law involved to make it happen.

I didn't argue he should step down, because he spilled the beans with malicious intent, I argued that he should step down to prevent further damage to Bush and his administration.

[tie]

Originally Posted by Troll

That wasn't a reiteration, it was a modification. In June 2004 at Sea Island he said he would fire anyone involved in the leak. Now he says he will fire anyone that has committed a crime. Not the same thing.

For Bush to lose the Architect would be like losing your Queen in a game of chess.

Oops, did Bush lie again? Again?

The US is arguing that Padilla can be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime because we are in a war on terror, and the US itself is a "battlefield." Shouldn't Rove be hung?

I really don't understand the Republican party's current anti-American stances. They don't think McCain deserves his medals, they think Kerry should have stayed home and joined the National Guard (without showing up), they think it is okay to expose CIA agents in the middle of a war on terror.

And the usual suspects, Simey "Can your brain handle hypotheticals?" TheLimey et al. stand behind them all the way as they smear our soldiers and CIA agents, even in the middle of a war. I don't care so much about the particular law. Of course Rove is innocent until proven guilty, this forum isn't a court, and it will be quite a while before Rove could face jail time. So what? In the meantime, Rove should not have a security clearance, and he should be out of all government.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

Using your wife to get a position to provide intelligence for the government, then turning around and publicly making false claims during an election year under the cover of that action, to help the guy you are trying to get elected President would be considered a pretty slimeball maneuver as well by most.

False claims?

...

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I argued that he should step down to prevent further damage to Bush and his administration.

Exactly how concrete do you suppose this "damage" is? What harm do you think it is causing?

Do you think it might damage Bush's reelection prospects?

Cause him legal troubles with that solid Democratic majority in Congress?

Cause him to lose his solid support and positive coverage in the media?

Suddenly turn the left against him?

Hm?



Think about it.

[Troll]

What's so interesting about this case to me is that it brings together so many of the elements that a lot of us have been criticising about the Administration. It starts with the core accusations about the Administration rushing into war and manufacturing evidence to support it, it involves the whole tension between the Administration and the Intelligence agencies, it deals with the Administration's style of smearing anyone who is a threat with the Architect of that style at the center of the controversy, it deals with the issues of the restrictions on American liberties that are characteristic of this Administration notably in the form of restrictions on a fair press. It shows up the jingoism within the Administration, the willingness to mislead and go back on statements and be selective with words and generally with their refusal in all circumstances to admit to error. Most importantly it highlights the difference that the Administration apparently refuses to acknowledge between what's legal and what's right.

This single case is really representative of what is happening in America today. If no one gets punished for this, then that really is a sad indictment of what America has become under GW Bush.

[mr. natural]

Posted by BRussell:
The other scuttlebutt is that, in addition to this "outing a covert agent" law, that they'll go after them on perjury and conspiracy-type charges.

Posted by bewebste:
If Rove did not know her covert status (which his lawyer is claiming, we'll see what the grand jury thinks), then telling Cooper and Novak she was CIA wouldn't be a criminal act under the IIPA since it would then be unintentional, albeit grossly negligent. If Fitzgerald can show that Rove did know she was covert, then he may be able to make a case under that statute. Otherwise, he could possibly try to indict based on some other law, e.g. the Espionage Act

Exactly!

It does look more and more like the the post-modern wild native american Indians (aka: true patriots) are about to nab themselves a real big trophy scalp!

Yee Haaaaaah!

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by zigzag

You still don't know the history of it all, only Simey's version.

1. Plame did not "send" Wilson to Niger - by all available accounts, she gave his name to the people in charge, who appear to have concluded that he was qualified, which, by all indications, he was. As far as I know, no one has produced any evidence that this was improper, but Simey has described it as "high-level corruption," while dismissing the impropriety of using Plame's identity as a political weapon. Draw your own conclusions.

2. Plame's identity as a CIA agent was not "common knowledge" or "public knowledge." If it were, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Note the careful wording of Simey's statement: "his relationship to his wife was public knowledge " - well, of course everyone knew they were husband and wife, the question is whether everyone knew she was a covert CIA agent. Apparently, they didn't - they thought she worked for an energy company, which was part of her cover.

3. On the notion that there's no harm done:



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8598301/site/newsweek/

4. I agree with you that the fact that Wilson might be an arrogant, partisan SOB did not make his wife "fair game." I agree with Simey that it might not have been illegal, and that the Democrats are trying to milk it for all its worth, but I still think it stinks.

I owe you a small debt of gratitude for taking the time to bring me (and the whole community) up to a new understanding of the truth.

By the way, I'm sad to say this, but I have just become disillusioned. Until now I always held Simey in the highest regard and when he said something I always felt it was either, TRUE or true enough. This is the first time I've ever even THOUGHT Simey was acting as a shill or a misinformant.

I'll take this moment to shed a tear for my loss of innocense.


Next, and a small matter indeed, but for the record, I never thought, much less said anything about Wilson being as you characterize him, "an arrogant, partisan SOB." I didn't know enough about ANY of the background of this story (as this and previous posts will attest).

Without any rancor, I wholeheartedly celebrate your joining me in saying this situation thrust upon the Wilsons does indeed stink. It is almost at the level of being "comic book fiendish."

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by mojo2

I owe you a small debt of gratitude for taking the time to bring me (and the whole community) up to a new understanding of the truth.

By the way, I'm sad to say this, but I have just become disillusioned. Until now I always held Simey in the highest regard and when he said something I always felt it was either, TRUE or true enough. This is the first time I've ever even THOUGHT Simey was acting as a shill or a misinformant.

I'll take this moment to shed a tear for my loss of innocense.


Next, and a small matter indeed, but for the record, I never thought, much less said anything about Wilson being as you characterize him, "an arrogant, partisan SOB." I didn't know enough about ANY of the background of this story (as this and previous posts will attest).

Without any rancor, I wholeheartedly celebrate your joining me in saying this situation thrust upon the Wilsons does indeed stink. It is almost at the level of being "comic book fiendish."

I think your naivite is believing the story being told by Wilson and his supporters. But you are entitled to your opinion. I won't call you names for it.

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by Y3a

<< she didn't work for the DOD, but for the CIA. Apparently it is illegal to blow the cover of CIA agents in the States. It also doesn't make a difference what Rove thought about her husband, legally, that is.

Furthermore, I don't think legal responsibility equals legal responsibility, Rove should step back to protect Bush >>

She apparently used a KNOWN fake CIA company as her work address when she donated money to the Democrats in 1999 (Clinton era). Thats rather sloppy. She blew her OWN cover by using her name and the fake CIA company. She could have donated the money on her OWN time and used her home address, unless it was some sort of comment she was trying to make.

Funny how the libs want Rove to disconnect from the Bush admin even before the facts are known. They are really afraid of him it seems.

Yeah, a guy who will ALLEGEDLY (wink, wink) out an ARGUABLY (wink, wink) covert CIA agent and POSSIBLY (wink, wink) though UNINTENTIONALLY (wink, wink, wink, wink) endanger her just to REPORTEDLY (wink, wink) get even with her husband, well you don't want to mess with a guy like that.

And just like that the chilling effect is alive and well and working 24/7 to deter anyone who would dare risk criticizing him or his master.

[zigzag]

Originally Posted by mojo2

I owe you a small debt of gratitude for taking the time to bring me (and the whole community) up to a new understanding of the truth.

By the way, I'm sad to say this . . .

I wouldn't be that harsh - we all jump to conclusions from time to time, myself included.

As it turns out, Plame didn't even seek to recommend Wilson - apparently she just responded to an inquiry. Which, of course, is what Simey says is all Rove might have done, although, based on the Novak column, I suspect that Rove et al. were pushing the story, not just reacting to it.

I do find it interesting that Bush hasn't distanced himself in any way from Rove or anyone else. I'm inclined to believe that they know more than we know, which suggests to me that they're not worried. But I still think it stinks.

I see now that you didn't disparage Wilson - I mistakenly conflated things others have said to make the point that even if he's up to no good, they shouldn't have brought his wife into it. I think Wilson's showboating has been a disservice to his cause, but I think he's essentially correct on the merits. Besides, he looks like Beau Bridges.

Meanwhile (no sex yet . . . ):

Eleven former intelligence officers are speaking up on behalf of CIA officer Valerie Plame, saying leaking her identity may have damaged national security and threatens the ability of U.S. intelligence gathering . . . .

There are thousands of U.S. intelligence officers who work at a desk in the Washington, D.C., area every day who are undercover as Plame was when her identity was leaked, the 11 former officers said in a three-page statement . . . .

"Intelligence officers should not be used as political footballs," the 11 said. "In the case of Valerie Plame, she still works for the CIA and is not in a position to publicly defend her reputation and honor."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/20/cia.leak.ap/index.html

These guys might be dismissed as partisans as well, but I'm not aware of any CIA people who have said that Plame's status wasn't an issue.

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by zigzag

I wouldn't be that harsh - we all jump to conclusions from time to time, myself included.

As it turns out, Plame didn't even seek to recommend Wilson - apparently she just responded to an inquiry. Which, of course, is what Simey says is all Rove might have done, although, based on the Novak column, I suspect that Rove et al. were pushing the story, not just reacting to it.

I do find it interesting that Bush hasn't distanced himself in any way from Rove or anyone else. I'm inclined to believe that they know more than we know, which suggests to me that they're not worried. But I still think it stinks.

I see now that you didn't disparage Wilson - I mistakenly conflated things others have said to make the point that even if he's up to no good, they shouldn't have brought his wife into it. I think Wilson's showboating has been a disservice to his cause, but I think he's essentially correct on the merits. Besides, he looks like Beau Bridges.

Meanwhile (no sex yet . . . ):

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/20/cia.leak.ap/index.html

These guys might be dismissed as partisans as well, but I'm not aware of any CIA people who have said that Plame's status wasn't an issue.

Continuing with the Newsweek ( ) article from which you previously quoted:

If Bush isn't a hypocrite on national security, he needs, at a minimum, to yank Rove's security clearance. "Whether you do it [discuss the identity of CIA operatives] intentionally or unintentionally, you have not met the requirements of that security clearance," Mahle told me.

The bigger question is what this scandal does to the CIA's ability to develop essential "humint" (human intelligence). Here's where the Iraq war comes in again. The sooner we beef up our intelligence, the sooner we crack the insurgency and get to bring our troops home. What does it say to the people doing the painstaking work of building those spy networks when the identity of one of their own becomes just another weapon in the partisan wars of Washington? For a smart guy, Karl Rove was awfully stupid.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8598301/site/newsweek/

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by goMac

False claims?

...

That Bush lied during his state of the union address when he claimed that Iraq had been seeking uranium for weapons of mass destruction. Both the unanimous senate report and the investigation by the British government concluded that it was a reasonable assumption that such a thing had taken place, given the evidence.

Wilson was either wrong and was making false claims or knew the truth and he was telling lies. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he simply didn't know any better and acted irresponsibly based on partisan passions.

[BRussell]

stupendousman, the White House admitted that Bush shouldn't have made the claim he did. Why do you keep insisting otherwise?

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by BRussell

stupendousman, the White House admitted that Bush shouldn't have made the claim he did. Why do you keep insisting otherwise?

IF Wilson had maintained that the White House was confused and didn't have all the information it needed, even after Wilson made his claims, that would be a true claim.

The fact remains that after a lengthy investigation, both the senate (it was in the unanimous findings) and the British government found that Bush's statement regarding Iraq's attempts to buy uranium was the truth. Whether they should have included that in his speach or not is another matter entirely and doesn't refelect on Wilson's false claims that Bush lied which (added to his other false claims regarding who it was that suggested him for the job) severely hurt his own credibility.

[EdGein]

I see some people still don't know what the word lie means.

[himself]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

IF Wilson had maintained that the White House was confused and didn't have all the information it needed, even after Wilson made his claims, that would be a true claim.

The fact remains that after a lengthy investigation, both the senate (it was in the unanimous findings) and the British government found that Bush's statement regarding Iraq's attempts to buy uranium was the truth. Whether they should have included that in his speach or not is another matter entirely and doesn't refelect on Wilson's false claims that Bush lied which (added to his other false claims regarding who it was that suggested him for the job) severely hurt his own credibility.

It isn't as clear cut as that. There were reports flying around that presented the story both ways. The senate intelligence committee got what the White House got, which was a mixed bag of evidence (much of which is suspected of being"influenced" by the White House). They erred on the side of caution (I assume). The Downing Street Memo (and other reports) shed plenty of doubt on the British and American evidence.

Wilson was sent to Niger to settle the matter once and for all. He came back and told the Bush Administration that there was no evidence of any transactions or attempts of transactions to obtain nuclear material.

According to Wilson, when Bush continued to push the false claim in his address, he thought it best to present the facts that he obtained (and that Bush apparently ignored) to the public, as he believed (and I agree) that the push to the Iraq invasion was under false pretenses. This "War Against Wilson" as it is now called, happened only because he dared rebut Bush in public.

So, the White House did have the information it needed before Bush made that infamous speech, and Wilson provided them with that information (the White House doesn't deny this).

Wilson made his public claims because the White House ignored his report and made false claims in that address. Wilson's claim that Bush lied cannot be false if he knows that he gave Bush the truth, to the best of his knowledge, and Bush tells the world otherwise.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by himself

Wilson made his public claims because the White House ignored his report and made false claims in that address. Wilson's claim that Bush lied cannot be false if he knows that he gave Bush the truth, to the best of his knowledge, and Bush tells the world otherwise.

Or by the same logic, Bush cannot have lied if he knew he gave the truth to the best of his knowledge in his address. If Wilson can have the defense of honest opinion according to his own lights, so can others.

Lies implies knowing falsehood at the time, not just disagreement with subsequent conventional wisdom. Bush's mistake (if any) was relying on the CIA, who signed off on the claim in the State of the Union address. At the time he delivered it, he was told the information was reliable. That is what the 9/11 Commission reported.

Wilson claims that his information debunked that claim, and that his report got to the White House in time. That's a self-serving statement. The Senate report, which was a neutral examination of the facts tells a different tale. This article sums up the discrepencies between the stories told by Wilson, and what the Senate found out he actually reported to the CIA and DIA and what the CIA and DIA actually thought about it.

Now, if you want to claim that the Senate is in on some grand conspiracy to undermine Wilson, then I suppose you are free to believe his account and discount theirs. But most fair minded people I think would conclude that perhaps this salesman oversold things somewhat. For example, here is Kevin Drum, who is not exactly known for his love of George W Bush:

Here, then, are the three lies:

Back in the days before he wrote his op-ed, Wilson was an anonymous source for a couple of Nick Kristof columns. In those columns, Wilson (via Kristof) claimed that he had seen the Niger memorandum and had reported to the CIA that it was forged. In fact, Wilson had not seen the memorandum back in February 2002 (he had only heard about it) and had no idea if it was a forgery.

Wilson's response: None, really. Wilson does some hemming and hawing about other press acounts, but for some reason nobody has asked him about the Kristof columns.

Possible mitigation: In his NYT op-ed, Wilson wrote, "as for the actual memorandum, I never saw it." So while Wilson pretty clearly misspoke to Kristof, he corrected himself on this point over a year ago.

Wilson claimed he had "debunked" the uranium story and that Dick Cheney knew this. In fact, his report was only one piece of evidence, not a conclusive debunking, and it was never shown to Cheney.

Wilson's response: He claims that he never said he had singlehandedly debunked the story. What's more, although he believes that the 16 words were "a deliberate attempt to deceive," he bases this conclusion on more than just his own trip to Niger.

Possible mitigation: The best defense of Wilson's claims is that ten days after his op-ed was published CIA Director George Tenet publicly admitted that the evidence for the uranium claims was weak and should not have been included in the State of the Union Address. That's pretty strong confirmation that whether or not it was Wilson who did the debunking, the intelligence community pretty much agreed with him.

Beyond that, this is obviously a matter of opinion. There's not much question that Wilson has been outspoken in his opposition to the Bush administration, but trying to gauge exactly how categorical his claims have been is a mug's game. As for Cheney, Wilson says that he really did think Cheney had seen his report and is surprised to learn that he didn't.

Wilson claimed that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. However, although the evidence is contradictory about whether Plame recommended him in the first place, she did write a memo to her superiors telling them that Wilson was well qualified for the trip they had in mind.

Wilson's response: He says that his wife had nothing to do with the trip and deliberately recused herself from meetings related to it. Her memo was written in response to her boss, and was limited to a recitation of his qualifications.

Possible mitigation: None. Wilson said flatly that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," and apparently that's just not true. It's especially unclear why he said this when the truth would have been perfectly adequate.

(hat tip for the above two links: David Adesnik at Oxblog)

Drum is kind to Wilson, and says that his detractors have made too much of these discrepancies. That's fine, there is certainly room for debate. However, a little honesty is welcome. Wilson has a record of personally making claims that he had to have known were not accurate. The best that anyone has been able to claim about Bush is that he made claims that if he were omniscient he might have known were not as certain as he was told they were. Bush is the head of a very large committee, Wilson is responsible for his own mouth, and no other. So if you are going to attach the label "liar" on anyone, it would be on Wilson.

And note: you can still think that Rove planned a personal vendetta, and that Wilson is a victim, and still be honest enough to confront the fact that Wilson has a documented record of making statements he had to have known were untrue.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

IF Wilson had maintained that the White House was confused and didn't have all the information it needed, even after Wilson made his claims, that would be a true claim.

The fact remains that after a lengthy investigation, both the senate (it was in the unanimous findings) and the British government found that Bush's statement regarding Iraq's attempts to buy uranium was the truth. Whether they should have included that in his speach or not is another matter entirely and doesn't refelect on Wilson's false claims that Bush lied which (added to his other false claims regarding who it was that suggested him for the job) severely hurt his own credibility.

It's not another matter entirely. Wilson said Bush shouldn't have made the Iraq-Arica-nuke claim. The White House has admitted they shouldn't have made the Iraq-Africa-nuke claim. Everything else is spinning your wheels.

About the Senate report, did you read it? I provided the link earlier in this thread. It very clearly states that there was no evidence of WMDs or nukes. You're misrepresenting what it said. In addition, the CIA had directed the White House to remove the Africa-nuke reference in a speech a few months before the SOTU, and they did omit it. The State Department had also said, at the time, that the story was bogus.

So both prior to the allegation and after the allegation, the story was known to be false. Yet you still maintain that Wilson lied about it?

[TheMosco]

Originally Posted by BRussell

It's not another matter entirely. Wilson said Bush shouldn't have made the Iraq-Arica-nuke claim. The White House has admitted they shouldn't have made the Iraq-Africa-nuke claim. Everything else is spinning your wheels.

About the Senate report, did you read it? I provided the link earlier in this thread. It very clearly states that there was no evidence of WMDs or nukes. You're misrepresenting what it said. In addition, the CIA had directed the White House to remove the Africa-nuke reference in a speech a few months before the SOTU, and they did omit it. The State Department had also said, at the time, that the story was bogus.

So both prior to the allegation and after the allegation, the story was known to be false. Yet you still maintain that Wilson lied about it?

Don't foget to mention how bullet proof the previous inteligence was from great britian. He can read my preivous reply to his previous comment about tenent apologising.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by SimeyTheLimey

Wilson has a record of personally making claims that he had to have known were not accurate. The best that anyone has been able to claim about Bush is that he made claims that if he were omniscient he might have known were not as certain as he was told they were. Bush is the head of a very large committee, Wilson is responsible for his own mouth, and no other. So if you are going to attach the label "liar" on anyone, it would be on Wilson.

And note: you can still think that Rove planned a personal vendetta, and that Wilson is a victim, and still be honest enough to confront the fact that Wilson has a documented record of making statements he had to have known were untrue.

OK, but:

1. Wilson was one guy being attacked by the government. The stakes were whether the government misled the country into a war, i.e., about as high as you can imagine. In that context, I'm willing to cut him some slack if his basic story was right, as the administration almost immediately admitted.

2. Even if Wilson had been a pathological liar, there is no "but someone else lied" exception to the laws that Rove et al. are alleged to have broken.

3. The notion that Bush was just an innocent victim of his own administration, and can't be expected to not go to war because he's not omniscient, is... well it stretches the notion of burden of proof at the least. The president should make sure that the people who work for him - no less than the entire federal government, CIA, State, Defense, the NSC, etc. etc. - obtain solid proof before going to war. This notion that he was just a gullible bystander sounds like some kind of conspiracy of puppet-master neocons that the extreme left would assert.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by himself

There were reports flying around that presented the story both ways. The senate intelligence committee got what the White House got, which was a mixed bag of evidence (much of which is suspected of being"influenced" by the White House). They erred on the side of caution (I assume). The Downing Street Memo (and other reports) shed plenty of doubt on the British and American evidence.

Both reports concluded that Bush hadn't lied, and that the intelligence that showed that Iraq had tried to buy (but likely did not succeed) uranium was sound.

Wilson was sent to Niger to settle the matter once and for all. He came back and told the Bush Administration that there was no evidence of any transactions or attempts of transactions to obtain nuclear material.

If true, then he lied. Even his own report stated that there were nigerian officials who told him that Iraq had tried to set up a uranium deal (that's called "evidence" where I come from). I believe there was no evidence that Iraq actually BOUGHT uranium, but that wasn't Bush's claim. The CIA stated that after reading Wilson's report, that they were even more confident that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium than they had been prior to it.

According to Wilson, when Bush continued to push the false claim in his address...

There was no false claim. The CIA says so, and so does the unanimous report given by the senate after they looked into Wilson's claims. Sorry.


[quote] ... he thought it best to present the facts that he obtained (and that Bush apparently ignored) to the public, as he believed (and I agree) that the push to the Iraq invasion was under false pretenses. This "War Against Wilson" as it is now called, happened only because he dared rebut Bush in public.[quote]

He dared to falsely call Bush a liar for those "sixteen words" in his state of the union address, lied about who it was that had prompted his getting the job, and went above and beyond presenting facts...he stated opinions as facts and gave false information. Yeah...anyone in their right mind would rebut such actions and question a person's credibility who'd do something like that.

So, the White House did have the information it needed before Bush made that infamous speech, and Wilson provided them with that information (the White House doesn't deny this).

Wilson provided them with information. So did the CIA. So did other intelligence sources. After a thorough examination of all sources, the senate and British government found that Wilson wasn't telling the truth when he claimed that Bush lied.

[quote]Wilson made his public claims because the White House ignored his report and made false claims in that address. [quote]

Bush claimed Iraq had been trying to buy uranium. The sentate report investigating the matter says the same thing. The British report investigating the same matter found the same. The only one making false claims was Wilson.

Wilson's claim that Bush lied cannot be false if he knows that he gave Bush the truth, to the best of his knowledge, and Bush tells the world otherwise.

He didn't. Wilson didn't know the truth. He apparently has a lot of trouble discerning truth from his own brand of fiction.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by BRussell

It's not another matter entirely. Wilson said Bush shouldn't have made the Iraq-Arica-nuke claim. The White House has admitted they shouldn't have made the Iraq-Africa-nuke claim. Everything else is spinning your wheels.

At the time the claim was made, all the information hadn't been thoroughly assesed and they were taking Wilson, et. al's assurances. The fact of the matter is, that Wilson didn't have a clue in regards to what Iraq had tried to do (or if he did, he wasn't telling the truth about it...though he did accurately report that there was no real evidence that Iraq succeeded in it's quest), and they were stupid for taking him seriously.

The senate and the British government found that the intelligence that showed Iraq had been trying to get uranium was sound, which is what Bush's claim was. Everything else is what is an example of spinning wheels.

[quote]
About the Senate report, did you read it? I provided the link earlier in this thread. It very clearly states that there was no evidence of WMDs or nukes. [quote]

Wilson claimed that Bush lied when he stated that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. Whether there was WMD's or nukes or not, Wilson's claim was false and his interest in the matter obviously partisan. The fact of the matter is that Wilson hadn't told the truth regarding what Bush claim about Iraq. The question "why" is up for debate. It's my belief that Wilson was so blinded by his partisanship that he couldn't accept any facts or alternate explanations for things that did not result in the administration looking bad.

You're misrepresenting what it said. In addition, the CIA had directed the White House to remove the Africa-nuke reference in a speech a few months before the SOTU, and they did omit it. The State Department had also said, at the time, that the story was bogus.

Yes, they went back and forth. At one point they thought everything was sound, the next that maybe the intelligence was based on forged documents. Pressured by people like Wilson making false claims, they backed down and suggested that maybe they should not have said it. The truth of the matter is that there was no reason for them not to have, as every investigation into the matter showed there was ample reason to believe that Iraq was seeking uranium.

So both prior to the allegation and after the allegation, the story was known to be false. Yet you still maintain that Wilson lied about it?

I don't think I said Wilson "lied" (if I did, I retract). I said that he made false claims, which he did as the evidence shows Bush didn't lie about Iraq seeking uranium despite his claims otherwise.

[bewebste]

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

...

Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife.

...

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the memo made it clear that information about Wilson's wife was sensitive and should not be shared. Yesterday, sources provided greater detail on the memo to The Post.

The material in the memo about Wilson's wife was based on notes taken by an INR analyst who attended a Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at the CIA where Wilson's intelligence-gathering trip to Niger was discussed.

...

The description of Wilson's wife and her role in the Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at the CIA was considered "a footnote" in a background paragraph in the memo, according to an official who was aware of the process.

It records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Attached to the INR memo were the notes taken by the senior INR analyst who attended the 2002 meeting at the CIA.

To sum up, if this memo was the source of information about Plame, then it was indeed classified and clearly marked so. She also did not play a significant role in the CIA meeting that resulted in Wilson's trip, and the State department actually opposed Wilson's trip because they thought the allegation had already been disproven, even in 2002, well before the SOTU address.

Now the question becomes whether the memo was in fact the original source for Plame's identity, and whether Rove himself saw the memo, which he did have the opportunity to on the president's trip to Africa. It could also be the case that it was someone else that saw the memo (Bartlett? Libby? Fleischer?) and either told Rove, or told a reporter who in turn told Rove. We'll see what Fitzgerald discovers.

[BRussell]

stupendousman: I honestly believe the Senate report doesn't say what you think it says. This page has the full report. At least look at the "Conclusions" section. It very clearly says that the intelligence did not support the idea that Iraq had WMDs or was trying to get nukes. You can argue that Bush was an unwitting victim of bad intelligence, rather than a liar, but you simply can't argue that the Senate report "said the intelligence was sound." It said exactly the opposite.

[bewebste]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

The senate and the British government found that the intelligence that showed Iraq had been trying to get uranium was sound, which is what Bush's claim was. Everything else is what is an example of spinning wheels.

So both the CIA and the State department thought the Niger/Iraq allegations were false, but the British government still thought they were true, so Bush decided to cite the British goverment over his own intelligence agencies in the SOTU speech? Sounds like cherry picking to me.

[Y3a]

Our Intel sucked and still does. Too many liberal types tampering for it to be a worthwhile service!

[osiris]

Originally Posted by Y3a

Our Intel sucked and still does. Too many liberal types tampering for it to be a worthwhile service!

No, you mean to say "Too many liberal types interfering with what we want the intelligence to say"

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by bewebste

So both the CIA and the State department thought the Niger/Iraq allegations were false, but the British government still thought they were true, so Bush decided to cite the British goverment over his own intelligence agencies in the SOTU speech? Sounds like cherry picking to me.

No. According to the Senate report, the State Department simply believed it was proof that Iraq did not actually get the nuclear materials (which no one is refuting at this point). The truth is that all parties seem to agree that Iraq DID attempt to get the materials as Bush claimed.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by BRussell

stupendousman: I honestly believe the Senate report doesn't say what you think it says. This page has the full report. At least look at the "Conclusions" section.

"Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador’s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.”  (Select Committee On Intelligence, “Report On The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04)"

In other words, Wilson's findings/report did not change the CIA's belief that Iran was seeking uranium. In fact, I believe his report made mention of Nigerian officals who had been approached by Iranian officials in what they believed was an attempt to purchase uranium, and this strengthened their beliefs.

Wilson on the other hand claimed that his short time investigating provided irrefutable proof that Bush had lied in regards to Iran's attempts to buy uranium. The report did state that the CIA did agree with Wilson's conclusion that Niger likely never sold any uranium to Iraq. Bush had never claimed that they did.

This is in addition to the British who had found the same thing.

It very clearly says that the intelligence did not support the idea that Iraq had WMDs or was trying to get nukes.

Doesn't matter. The claim Wilson made, which was trumpeted by every left-wing activist and media source, was that Bush "lied" in the "sixteen words" in the State of the Union address were he repeated the belief that Iraq had been seeking yellow-cake uranium. Wilson's claim simply wasn't true. While Wilson may have had SOME expertise in regards to what was going on in Niger, he had no direct experience in any other search for WMD's that I know of. All he could offer was his opinion on:

Q. Did Iraq seek nuclear materials from Niger
A. Wilson says no, that Bush lied. Every other source says the intelligence in this regard was sound and that Bush did not lie.

Q. Did Iraq actually get nuclear materials.
A. Everyone seems to agree that they likely did not.

On the two questions Wilson had pertinent information he got one right, and one wrong. The wrong one he used as part of a partisan scheme to sully the President to help the guy he was advising and funding get into the White House. In addition to that, he lied in order to try and make his mission seem less like a partisan stunt by claiming that he was recommened by someone who did not have the same self interests he had. For all those things, Wilson's credibility is very low, IMO.

You can argue that Bush was an unwitting victim of bad intelligence, rather than a liar, but you simply can't argue that the Senate report "said the intelligence was sound." It said exactly the opposite.

It said that the intelligence was sound in regards to the one claim that Wilson et. al. tried to use to prove Bush as a "liar". It did not say that there were WMD's or Nukes. It simply exhonerated Bush from the false claims Wilson made in regards to him being a liar.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by BRussell

OK, but:

1. Wilson was one guy being attacked by the government. The stakes were whether the government misled the country into a war, i.e., about as high as you can imagine. In that context, I'm willing to cut him some slack if his basic story was right, as the administration almost immediately admitted.

2. Even if Wilson had been a pathological liar, there is no "but someone else lied" exception to the laws that Rove et al. are alleged to have broken.

3. The notion that Bush was just an innocent victim of his own administration, and can't be expected to not go to war because he's not omniscient, is... well it stretches the notion of burden of proof at the least. The president should make sure that the people who work for him - no less than the entire federal government, CIA, State, Defense, the NSC, etc. etc. - obtain solid proof before going to war. This notion that he was just a gullible bystander sounds like some kind of conspiracy of puppet-master neocons that the extreme left would assert.

There is a subtext to all of this, which is the resistance in some quarters of the government to the new ideas on foreign policy that the Bush Administration has adopted -- otherwise known as the Bush Doctrine. This is not one guy being attacked by the government. It's an intra-governmental turf war. There are, as I am sure you are aware, a number of different schools of thought in foreign policy, and government officials are intelligent, and tend to have rather strong views about them. Now, theoretically, civil servants in the CIA, the State Department, and so on are policy blank slates that will adopt whatever policy their political masters put forth, and will put their own preferences aside. But that isn't reality. In reality, bureaucracies have considerable momentum. Ideas become entrenched, and change is threatening. And people who are threatened by new ideas have their own ways of making those ideas go away. One of them is the bombshell op-ed in the pages of the New York Times timed carefully to have maximum effect on an election. Another is the kiss and tell book, a la Clarke.

But there are more subtle ways too. A little tweak here, and a little tweak there to the work you do for the political branches of the government. To be honest, I suspect that was part of the reason for sending an amateur like Wilson to Niger in the first place. He was supposed to go there, sit around a swimming pool and (in his words) drink tea, but not, you know, look too hard, because the result is what mattered. That kind of resting on conventional wisdom is especially easy to do when the information you receive is inherently ambiguous, and inherently involves the use of judgment and opinion. Opinions have a way of shaping what you look for. And if you want conventional thinking, there is no better place than the career foreign service.

The fact that intelligence is never clear cut and is always open to interpretation is one of the reasons this country has multiple intelligence agencies. You ask for absolute proof before going to war. That is exactly what the conservative elements in the government also want, and why they have waged a quiet little war against the Bush Administration. Because, of course, the Bush Administration policy is to preempt, not wait until it is too late. That's the subtext behind Wilson, and Clarke, and all the other little leakers. These are people trying to change the policy of an elected government, by using the power that they have as functionaries of the permanent government. The permanent government has interests, and opinions, and it dislikes being told what to do by those intermeddling elected representatives. That's what this really is, it is an inside-the-beltway power struggle. It's all below the radar screen, but it is there.

Now, obviously, you know where I stand on this. The old foreign policy is bankrupt, and it failed, miserably. And I think also that it is far too cautious in a world where waiting for absolute certainty is likely to mean waiting far too late. That's a new idea not popular in places like Foggy Bottom. But who ever gave them the idea that civil servants decide government policy? In our democracy, elections determine which direction the government goes, not the interests of enrenched bureaucracies, whether they be State, CIA, or their pals in the New York Times, CBS, or the Washington Post.

Anyway, Wilson blew his one shot before the election, and it ended up missing. Politically, this will have negligible ramifications -- even if you get your wet dream and have Rove carted away to jail. It won't change the election and it won't make the new ideas that Wilson opposes go away. It won't put Saddam back on his throne. Business as usual has changed. After 8 yearsI think a course is being charted that would be rather hard to reverse, and there is a lot of time to clean out the dead wood and dust the dusty cobwebs of the beaurocracy. That's always the most important, but usually least seen, effects of an election.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by SimeyTheLimey

It's an intra-governmental turf war.

I agree with what you've said here, and I'd go even further than you have here and say that the reason the administration went through such a concerted effort to point out that Wilson was sent by his wife, who was CIA, was because of that underlying difference between them and the administration hawks. In effect, Rove was saying that's "old America" talking, so take it with a grain of salt. Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt the leakers were evil enough to want to endanger an agent in order to get back at her husband.

I would only add the obvious - that this was not just about turf or foreign policy philosophy, it was also about factual assertions on WMDs. And on that count, Bush's people were wrong, and those bureaucrats like Wilson and Plame were right.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by BRussell

I agree with what you've said here, and I'd go even further than you have here and say that the reason the administration went through such a concerted effort to point out that Wilson was sent by his wife, who was CIA, was because of that underlying difference between them and the administration hawks. In effect, Rove was saying that's "old America" talking, so take it with a grain of salt. Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt the leakers were evil enough to want to endanger an agent in order to get back at her husband.

I would only add the obvious - that this was not just about turf or foreign policy philosophy, it was also about factual assertions on WMDs. And on that count, Bush's people were wrong, and those bureaucrats like Wilson and Plame were right.

Bushes people where right about some things and Wilson/Plame were wrong about others. Neither side had all the facts. It was Wilson thought that insisted he did and that everyone else was a liar, even when the facts ended up not supporting his claim.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

Bushes people where right about some things and Wilson/Plame were wrong about others.

Haha, is that like "heads I win, tails you lose?"

Neither side had all the facts. It was Wilson thought that insisted he did and that everyone else was a liar, even when the facts ended up not supporting his claim.

The facts ended up not supporting his claim? Come on. You keep saying this over and over, and it's flatly false. The Africa nuke documents were forged. Iraq did not have a nukular program. The White House retracted the statements that Wilson criticized. The best you can say is that Bush didn't have all the right information, and so didn't lie, he just was wrong accidentally. But you can't say "the facts ended up not supporting Wilson's claim."

[EdGein]

Originally Posted by mr. natural

HUGE IMAGE SNIPPED

Wow that one got by tooki even.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by BRussell

The facts ended up not supporting his claim? Come on. You keep saying this over and over, and it's flatly false.

I've cited the US Senate and the British Government who agree with me. I'll take their word for it over yours and Wilson's any day.

The Africa nuke documents were forged.

They were indeed. That doesn't kill out all the other evidence though, and most of the international intelligence community now believes that the documents where planted with the intention that they be found to be forged to mask Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium.

Iraq did not have a nukular program.

...yet. That's likely why they were seeking uranium.

The White House retracted the statements that Wilson criticized.

After lots of confusion over what the intelligence showed, and pressure from Wilson and the rest of the left-wing making false accusations, they claimed that maybe they shouldn't have included the information because they might not have had enough solid intelligence to make the claim. Time has shown that they were right in making the allegation, and the CIA, US Senate and the British Government state that there is still solid evidence to support the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium (though did not get it). In other words, Wilson wasn't telling the truth when he claimed Bush lied. Remember...Bush's claim was that Iraq was SEEKING the uranium, not that they had it.

[quote]The best you can say is that Bush didn't have all the right information, and so didn't lie, he just was wrong accidentally. [quote]

I will concede that Bush didn't have all the right information in general, in regards to WMD. In regards to the specific claim that Bush made, that Wilson said was a "lie", he had the correct information. Wilson was simply wrong. It was HE who didn't have the right information based on the investigations by the Senate and British government.

But you can't say "the facts ended up not supporting Wilson's claim."

I can and will because it's the truth as demonstrated

[Moderator]

The fact is NOONE can be critical of the White House without being a raging socialist left wing commy. This is ridiculous. Wilson was RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT. The neocons were WRONG WRONG WRONG. The White House told us that Rove had NOTHING to do with the leak. That was a LIE.

What else do I need to know? I personally think anyone arguing this in favor of Rove or Bush is doing so for sport...this is too obvious.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by stupendousman

I've cited the US Senate and the British Government who agree with me. I'll take their word for it over yours and Wilson's any day.

You've mischaracterized the Senate report. These are the first two "overall conclusions" from the report (pdf) :

The major key judgments in the NIE, particularly that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program," "has chemical and biological weapons," was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents," and that "all key aspects - research & development (R&D), production, and weopanization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons (BW) program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War," either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence provided to the Committee.

The assessment that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee. The intelligence reporting did show that Iraq was procuring dual-use equipment that had potential nuclear applications, but all of the equipment had conventional military or industrial applications. In addition, none of the intelligence reporting indicated that the equipment was being procured for suspect nuclear facilities.

They were indeed. That doesn't kill out all the other evidence though, and most of the international intelligence community now believes that the documents where planted with the intention that they be found to be forged to mask Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium.

I've never heard that. Evidence please?

That's likely why they were seeking uranium.

So they were seeking uranium? Even though the Senate report you like to cite says there wasn't any evidence of that? Where did you obtain this information, your own intelligence services?

After lots of confusion over what the intelligence showed, and pressure from Wilson and the rest of the left-wing making false accusations, they claimed that maybe they shouldn't have included the information because they might not have had enough solid intelligence to make the claim. Time has shown that they were right in making the allegation, and the CIA, US Senate and the British Government state that there is still solid evidence to support the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium (though did not get it). In other words, Wilson wasn't telling the truth when he claimed Bush lied. Remember...Bush's claim was that Iraq was SEEKING the uranium, not that they had it.

You are simply wrong about this. At best, those reports say that although there wasn't a nuclear program, the intelligence was mixed and so it was understandable to think it may have been true. But it wasn't true. Again, read the Senate report that you always cite. It doesn't say what you claim it says. I don't know about the British report, I haven't read it.

[mr. natural]

stupendousman keeps repeating that Wilson said "Bush lied." I have never seen such a quote by Wilson. So, unless he can show us such a quote with a link to its source and context, perhaps we should just call stupendousman a stupendous liar.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by Moderator

The fact is NOONE can be critical of the White House without being a raging socialist left wing commy. This is ridiculous. Wilson was RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT. The neocons were WRONG WRONG WRONG.

As I've pointed out, Wilson was right regarding whether Iraq had actually bought the uranium in question. He was wrong when he claimed that Bush lied regarding their attempts to buy it. You can keep shouting all you want. It won't change the facts.

The White House told us that Rove had NOTHING to do with the leak. That was a LIE.

Possibly, but this will probably end up as another "tempest in the teapot" as it doesn't appear (to me at least) anything illegal happened and there's at least a tiny amount of "plausible deniability" whether they lied or not.

[stupendousman]

Originally Posted by mr. natural

stupendousman keeps repeating that Wilson said "Bush lied." I have never seen such a quote by Wilson. So, unless he can show us such a quote with a link to its source and context, perhaps we should just call stupendousman a stupendous liar.

In his book, he refered to Bush's claim as the "sixteen-word lie". I believe there are a lot of other times he refered to Bush's claim as a "lie", but that's what I have so far. I'll look for more.

[mr. natural]

Simey thinks to cite Kevin Drum's article as a fair and balanced account of Wilson's "lies." But in fact, Kevin Drum is factually incorrect on a number of accounts.

Kevin Drum writes:
Back in the days before he wrote his op-ed, Wilson was an anonymous source for a couple of Nick Kristof columns. In those columns, Wilson (via Kristof) claimed that he had seen the Niger memorandum and had reported to the CIA that it was forged. In fact, Wilson had not seen the memorandum back in February 2002 (he had only heard about it) and had no idea if it was a forgery.

In fact Kristof's column says this:

In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information [of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal] was unequivocally wrong and that the documents [purporting to show such a deal] had been forged.

The discrepancy here is clear. As claimed by Kevin Drum, Wilson said these things to Kristof, but Kristof's column actually states: "according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported"; which indicates Kristof used a secondary source as a means to support whatever it was Wilson did say to Kristof. In fact, in an e-mail to the same Weakly Standard columnist Simey linked to above, Kristof says, "My reporting on that issue was obviously based on more than one source." But Kevin Drum gets simple journalistic practices wrong and Simey gets it wrong for posting this article as some sort of fact sheet.

Strike one.

Kevin Drum writes:
Wilson claimed he had "debunked" the uranium story and that Dick Cheney knew this.

I have yet to see this quote as attributed to Wilson in it's complete context, and especially as alleged here by Drum - e.g. that Wilson "debunked the uranium story and that Dick Cheney knew this." Note the inclusion of the word "and."

At least the Weakly Standard (via Simey's link) got it right: "His trip, Wilson told guest host Andrea Mitchell [on Meet the Press tv show], 'effectively debunked the Niger arms uranium sale.' "

And for all intents and purposes, what Wilson is quoted on as having actually said is the truth -- i.e. there was no uranium sale. Note the word: "sale."

The use of the phrase "His trip" is not his words, and short of an actual transcript of the show Wilson's answer, as proposed here even, is lacking its complete context. He might have said "we," suggesting the other intelligence agents/agencies that came to the same conclusion.

However, Drum does acknowledge that Wilson never claimed to have "singlehandedly" *debunked* the story, which is disingenuously generous after calling it one of Wilson's "lies" in the first place.

Furthermore, Wilson's own op-ed makes known that there had been other investigations into this story. In fact, of the so-called intelligence documents in question, the one revealed by the Italians, had - by this time - been publicly debunked by International Atomic Energy Agency in March of 2003 as forgeries. The particular one that the Senate Intelligence Committee says that Cheney saw, a Defense Intelligence Agency memo, was by the CIA's own reckoning "thinly sourced," but it ultimately led to Wilson's trip. However, we do know that the State Department's own intelligence bureau had also somehow heard about and already looked into this matter, and expressed "skepticism" about it all (see paragraph 6 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report).

As Drum himself writes in the mitigating section about this particular "lie":

...ten days after his op-ed was published CIA Director George Tenet publicly admitted that the evidence for the uranium claims was weak and should not have been included in the State of the Union Address. That's pretty strong confirmation that whether or not it was Wilson who did the debunking, the intelligence community pretty much agreed with him.

Beyond that, this is obviously a matter of opinion.

There you have it, it is Drum's "opinion" that Wilson told a *lie* for claiming to *debunk* this story.

Strike two.

About the other part of this lie as alleged by Drum, the part which states: "and Dick Cheney knew this."

What Wilson wrote in his op-ed is this:

"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office...

"Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau...

"Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure...

"Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government."

As you can see, Wilson is very specific about citing "the vice president's office." And based on his former government experience he assumes that a CIA report was written up and passed along to "the vice president's office." However, the Counter Proliferation Department within the CIA which sent him "did not distribute an intelligence report on his visit." (This according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report in the third paragraph.)

There are two things worth noting here. The obvious one is that this it isn't Wilson's fault that governmental procedure as he knew about them wasn't followed. He obviously believed that his findings would of been distributed to the "appropriate officials." Now, if a lie is speaking about something you know to be false, there is no *lie* in this by Wilson.

Secondly, if Valerie was so involved in this as everyone says, one would think that she would of known that no report was filed. Obviously, she didn't, or she might have told her husband while he was penning his op-ed. All of which suggests she wasn't in charge of this mission as has often been falsely claimed.

Strike three. Drum's recitation of Wilson's alleged lying doesn't hold much water.

Still, there is this one and only possible "lie" to consider...

Kevin Drum writes:
Wilson claimed that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

Ok, she was "involved" in that she offered up a recommendation about him.

And as has been made abundantly clear here by the apologists for the Bush administration, this is all that counts. See, he lies about his wife's involvement.

This is after his wife's covert career has been outed and ruined in the process. And why? Because the arrogant son of a bitches in the Bush administration were offended that some one did challenge them with truth.

Oh, never mind the damage done by this dirty deed to the national security and intelligence services that we hype as a prime reason the public can trust us. Please, realize it was an unintentional effect of this slime ball operation. Nope, pay no attention to this ugly fact. It's all about how Wilson lied about his wife.

Wilson's lone little gotcha white lie as a gut reaction while put on the spot to the gross and massive vendetta arrayed against him and his wife is nothing compared with the power corrupt deceit perpetrated upon the american public as a whole.

If only it were so simple, all about Wilson's lie, then this truly would be "a tempest in a teapot."

Tell that to special prosecutor Fitzgerald and his grand jury, as well as the evidence shown to judges overseeing this investigation who have concluded that it has damaged national security and is serious enough to warrant putting a journalist into jail over. This little tempest in a teapot isn't over yet.



As a post script:

Can some one tell Simey to stop citing the "9/11 Commission" in this affair. Their report does not address any of this.

[stupendousman]

I've never heard that. Evidence please?

I've read it several places. The fact that the stuff that was found wrong was so obvious, and easily checked, it would lead a reasonable person to believe that it was likely done on purpose. Until I can find a citation (no time right now), consider the claim retracted.

So they were seeking uranium? Even though the Senate report you like to cite says there wasn't any evidence of that? Where did you obtain this information, your own intelligence services?

The Senate report said that they were where not "reconstituting its nuclear program", likely because despite their attempts, they couldn't get any nuclear materials. It's pretty hard to have a nuclear program without nuclear materials. :lol Even Wilson's own report stated that nigerian officials had approached him telling him that Iraqis had been seeking what they believe was a uranium trade.

Conclusion 13 reports specifically on what we are debating: was the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium credible when Bush spoke his "sixteen words" that Wilson called a "lie". The British government, in it's inquiry found the same thing - that it was, which makes Wilson's claim that Bush's "sixteen words" in his State of the Union address was a "lie" false.

Wilson claimed that he reported to the CIA that all the info regarding yellow-cake uranium was based on forgeries, which wasn't true. Wilson hadn't even seen the documents in question, nor where they available for him to see at the time of his report.

You are simply wrong about this. At best, those reports say that although there wasn't a nuclear program, the intelligence was mixed and so it was understandable to think it may have been true. But it wasn't true.

The CIA and the British Government still believe it's a credible claim, at this point. Again...while they've not got the best track record, I'll take their word for it.

Again, read the Senate report that you always cite. It doesn't say what you claim it says. I don't know about the British report, I haven't read it.

Regarding the subject that's important to the Wilson matter, and whether he made false claims, it does state what I claim. Wilson claimed people knew, based on his report, that what Bush said in the SOTU was a "lie". Simply untrue.

[mojo2]

"Whether you do it [discuss the identity of CIA operatives] intentionally or unintentionally, you have not met the requirements of that security clearance,"

Yank Rove's security clearance.

[Y3a]

<< No, you mean to say "Too many liberal types interfering with what we want the intelligence to say" >>

No, as Wilson's story was a LIE!.. Refer to the "Turf Wars" discussion in previous posts.
The Lib's were the ones (CLINTON Era) who put the walls up between the various INTEL organizations that led to the slow movement of information which could have prevented 9/11. it was the lib's who put the idiotic restrictions on WHO we could use as informants. The list goes on and on. Nunn and Kennedy.

Explain how a KNOWN fake company that is a CIA cover is used by Plaime when she donated bucks to the Democrats during the Clinton Admin. This became a mater of public record as the party had to disclose doners lists? So the Democratic Party outted her, or SHE DID IT HERSELF???

[spacefreak]

If any of these weenie liberals here gave a crap about leaks, intelligence, and security clearance, they'd have been all over these much more devastating leaks.

Only in the liberal mind is the repeating the name of Joe Wilson's desk-bound wife a more significant national security infraction than the leakings of our bin Laden tracking method, and our development of stealth satellites.

It's been about two years since Sen. Richard Shelby blew one of our most important secrets -- that we were bugging Osama bin Laden's cell phone, a fact that could have led to the capture of America's most wanted terrorist -- by bragging about it to a reporter. Shelby's action (if it really was him) has never been prosecuted. Why not? Now, another huge leak comes in the form of the disclosure by members of the Senate of a highly-classified satellite program. Three members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have apparently committed a very serious crime by blabbing about a highly-classified satellite program to the press last week. If these men actually did what it appears they did, we ought to throw the book at 'em for divulging one of our most-protected secrets: stealthy reconnaissance satellites.

As a result of their revelations to the public and the press, three U.S. Senators -- Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who's also the ranking Dem on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) -- are the subject of a "criminal referral" made on Monday for speaking publicly about this satellite.

From here