Fat's in the Fire
Archived34 replies · 1,006 views
bLuE oRdEr wrote:
Counselor:
Here's what you must prove in order for the Architect to be guilty of anything. Happy hunting! :)
That Rove specifically named Valerie Plame.
That Valerie Plame was, in fact, working undercover for the CIA. Most people think she was flying a desk, not out in the field executing a brush pass.
That Rove knew Valerie Plame was working undercover for the CIA.
That the CIA was actively trying, and that Karl Rove knew that the CIA was actively trying to protect the identity of Valerie Plame at the time Rove made his statement to the reporter.
the man who bugs his own offices then blames it on the opposition candidate--isn't that enough proof of his 'conscience'?
Tex wrote:
bLuE oRdEr wrote:
Counselor:
Here's what you must prove in order for the Architect to be guilty of anything. Happy hunting! :)
That Rove specifically named Valerie Plame.
That Valerie Plame was, in fact, working undercover for the CIA. Most people think she was flying a desk, not out in the field executing a brush pass.
That Rove knew Valerie Plame was working undercover for the CIA.
That the CIA was actively trying, and that Karl Rove knew that the CIA was actively trying to protect the identity of Valerie Plame at the time Rove made his statement to the reporter.
You must be aware by now that the fine distinction of whether he "specifically named Valerie Plame" is being described in the press as "Clintonian hairsplitting." Interesting to see how frantically the right backpedals away from outrage over hairsplitting now, isn't it Tex? :)
But hey, here's an interesting dilemna:
And the backpedalers are off!
In Memory of Karl Rove...
...or Presidential integrity, whichever Bush decides to dispense with.
For the rest of the world, here's what happened...
Robert Scheer
July 12, 2005
If you can't shoot the messenger, take aim at his wife.
That clearly was the intent of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in leaking to a reporter that former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. To try to conceal the fact that the president had lied to the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, Rove attempted to destroy the credibility of two national security veterans and send an intimidating message to any other government officials preparing to publicly tell the truth.
Rove's lawyer now says that Rove didn't break the law against naming covert agents because he didn't know Plame's name and therefore couldn't have revealed it. Perhaps he can use such a technicality in court, but in the meantime he should resign immediately — or be fired by the president — for leaking classified information, trying to smear Wilson and possibly endangering Plame's life.
"The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."
The background on this story is crucial. Ambassador Wilson had been honored as a patriot by President George H.W. Bush for standing up to Saddam Hussein in a face-to-face confrontation in Baghdad on the eve of the Persian Gulf War. But in 2003, Wilson committed an unpardonable crime in the eyes of the second Bush White House. He exposed its lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
In 16 now infamous words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, the president — desperate to gain support for an invasion he was dead set on initiating — tried to scare Americans into believing Iraq was close to making nuclear weapons. "The British government," he told the nation, "has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But the key documents that the claim was based on had already been proved to be fakes, and other intelligence reports along these lines were extremely speculative.
In fact, it was a CIA-organized mission by Wilson to the African country of Niger (where he had served as ambassador) that determined the reports were false. Wilson was therefore shocked to hear the uranium claims in the president's speech. When he exposed the chicanery in a New York Times commentary, Wilson became a prime target for a White House smear job.
According to e-mails that Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper sent to his editor (which were revealed by Newsweek over the weekend), Rove told Cooper that Wilson's devastating expose should be discounted because the Niger fact-finding trip had been authorized by Wilson's wife, who worked at the CIA.
This was three days before Robert Novak, citing two White House sources, outed Plame as a CIA agent in his column and put forward the same notion: that Wilson's information was suspect because the CIA had hired him on the advice of his wife.
In the end, though, what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.
It's ironic that the expertise of this couple should be turned against them by a White House that has demonstrated nothing but incompetence in dealing with the WMD issue. But clearly truth and competence are virtues easily shed by the Bush administration in the pursuit of political advantage, even when this partisan game jeopardizes national security.
This is the most important issue raised by the Plame scandal. It has been unfortunately obscured by the secondary debate in the case: whether reporters should ever reveal their sources. Yet what the emerging Rove scandal demonstrates is the ease with which a wily top White House official can subvert the Bill of Rights' protection of the free press to serve the tawdriest of political ends.
Just to keep everyone's monitors from falling over to the left. ;)
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006955
Karl Rove, Whistleblower He told the truth about Joe Wilson.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.
For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.
On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.
"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.
The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address. Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.
But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.
The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.
About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.
If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue. As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.
aah, the WSJ's editorial page. known for fine gems such as this one, by paul gigot:
The Clinton Administration never grasped this point and spent its time devising new ways to keep average citizens from getting guns, while leaving bad guys on the street.... The results are a vindication for Mr. Ashcroft, who has been vilified for being soft on gun violence because he continues to defend the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners. In reality, gun violence has declined from 12% of violent crime in 1993 to 9% in the most recent Justice statistics. Any gun control advocates out there care to apologize? (WSJ, Feb. 3, 2003)
anyone see what's wrong with this logic? i'll give you a hint: the last year for 'recent justice statistics' when this piece came out was...2001.
Tex wrote: Just to keep everyone's monitors from falling over to the left. ;)
Karl Rove, Whistleblower He told the truth about Joe Wilson.
Hey, if Karl Rove is a whistleblower, why, that would make him a national hero instead of a national traitor, wouldn't it? And then, well, golly, President Bush wouldn't have to fire him like he promised, would he? Jeepers!
Karl Rove, American Hero
Umm, sorry everyone, it appears that I've made another error, much along the lines of my confusion over whether it's sheep or goats that Taboo prefers. The likeness above is apparentlyBenedict Arnold, not Karl Rove. Sorry for the confusion. 
bLuE oRdEr wrote: Umm, sorry everyone, it appears that I've made another error, much along the lines of my confusion over whether it's sheep or goats that Taboo prefers. The likeness above is apparentlyBenedict Arnold, not Karl Rove. Sorry for the confusion.
let's see, according to many right-wingers karl rove is a whistle-blower...but mark felt is a traitor? hmmmm.
Just to keep everyone's monitors on Planet Earth...
Karl Rove and His Malicious Politics July 14, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Let us remember the real reason that White House political enforcer Karl Rove was chatting with selected reporters in the summer of 2003.
It was not necessarily to blow the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame. It was not, entirely, to mete out vicious retribution against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for writing an op-ed article in The New York Times that discounted administration claims about an alleged Iraqi effort to acquire uranium from Niger.
The malevolence was more fundamental. Rove was trying to sustain the lies that led us into Iraq.
``He (Rove) implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro(m) Niger,' Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper wrote, describing his July 11, 2003, conversation with Rove in an e-mail to his superiors. The e-mail was obtained by Newsweek.
On that very day, CIA Director George Tenet issued a statement conceding the dubiousness of the Niger claim. Tenet said it ``was a mistake' to have included the allegation in President Bush's State of the Union speech in January. The previous October, Tenet called the White House to demand that a reference to the alleged Niger caper be deleted from a presidential speech. At that time, it was.
By the time Rove had his conversation with reporter Cooper, insisting that there was much to indicate an Iraqi-Niger nuclear connection, the White House knew this was untrue.
Indeed, by the time Wilson penned his account and Plame was later exposed, there was plenty to indicate that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program. And no weapons of mass destruction.
Early in January 2003, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix reported that after two months of resumed inspections in Iraq, ``we haven't found any smoking guns.' International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that aluminum tubes touted by various high-ranking administration officials as proof of a nuclear program were, in fact, intended for rocket engines.
Late in January -- a day before Bush's State of the Union address would warn of Iraq's nuclear ambitions -- ElBaradei reported to the Security Council that inspectors ``found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program since the elimination of the program in the 1990s.' The very next night, Bush's speech ignored ElBaradei's new findings. The president instead touted an outdated analysis of Iraq's nuclear program as it had existed after the first Gulf War.
By early March, a few weeks before the Iraq invasion began, ElBaradei had debunked the Niger allegation, saying the documents that led to the theory were forgeries. Blix had repeatedly reported that he'd found no weapons of mass destruction, despite searching suspect sites provided by U.S. intelligence and notwithstanding the effort of 250 inspectors from 60 countries.
Their honesty came at a price.
A cacophony of administration voices depicted Blix as an incompetent, bent on appeasement. His New York office, Blix believes, was bugged. ElBaradei was secretly wiretapped as part of an effort by State Department official John R. Bolton to force his removal as head of the atomic monitoring agency. The putsch failed when no other country would go along. No matter. Bush wants to promote Bolton to U.N. ambassador.
The president condones skullduggery against the leaders of international institutions who answer to the world, not to him. It should not now be so shocking that Rove is responsible for such treachery at home. What's a little destruction of a man's family -- what, indeed, is this trifle about outing a CIA employee and breaching national security? -- when the fate of such a grand project as Iraq is on the line?
The media psychodrama now turns on the trivia about the leak investigation and whether or not Rove broke a technical statute on exposing secret operatives. The familiar sounds of Washington scandal -- will the president stand by his man, or won't he? -- drown out the sordid, underlying theme.
The president took this nation to war on a false premise, one which already was unraveling before the first attack planes flew. When experts such as Blix and ElBaradei came up with information that undermined the assumption that Iraq possessed the world's most fearsome weapons, they weren't heeded. They, like Wilson, were assaulted by political hacks.
Karl Rove may or may not pay some price for his malicious politics. But make no mistake. This nation pays -- every day in Iraq -- with our blood and treasure.
Copyright 2005, Washington Post Writers Group
Tex wrote: But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.
yeah...i guess calling her 'mr. wilson's wife' means he's off the hook. he had no idea who she was. yep.
simple facts:
fact 1, from july 12, 2005 milwaukee journal-sentinel: In June 2004, Bush answered "yes" when asked if he would fire anyone who leaked the agent's name. In September 2003, McClellan said it was "ridiculous" to think Rove was involved in the outing and even declared that anyone at the White House who did it "would no longer be in this administration."
fact 2, july, 2005: karl rove is known to be the source of the leak. he still has his job and is defended by right-wingers. who cares whether he broke the law or just has dodgy morals? SEE FACT 1!
george bush: words are louder than actions.
September 30, 2003:
Reporter: Have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him …
President Bush: Listen, I know of nobody - I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.
June 10, 2004:
Reporter: And do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so? And …
President Bush: Yes.
July, 2005....
This Week in Review
Day 1—July 11, 2005: A Day of Silence.
Day 2—July 12, 2005: Another Day of Silence
Day 3—July 13, 2005: This Silence is Getting Awkward, Now
Day 4—July 14, 2005: Still no Word
Day 5—July 15, 2005: Mum’s the Word
Day 6—July 16, 2005: Gone fishin’?
July 15, 2005
By PAUL KRUGMAN
John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.
A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.
But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.
Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.
And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.
But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?
Day 7: Sunday, July 17, 2005-- George Bush seems to have lost his tongue, so just before the President begins his secocond week of stonewalling, some interesting trivia about the Rovian politics behind our invasion of Iraq...
bLuE oRdEr wrote:
AgentWood wrote:
You surprise me, blue....... ;) This particular form of footwear is known as a "flip-flop".
BTW, I'll supply more WSJ material to counteract all your NYT material.
A little light legal reading for you....
www.bakerlaw.com/files/tbl_s10News/FileUpload44/10159/Amici%20Brief%20032305%20(Final).PDF
You may find it interesting. ;)
Tex wrote:
bLuE oRdEr wrote:
AgentWood wrote:
You surprise me, blue....... ;) This particular form of footwear is known as a "flip-flop".
D'OH! 
BTW, I'll supply more WSJ material to counteract all your NYT material.
Why not just skip the middleman and go straight to the source?
Speaking of BREAKING NEWS...
Day 8: Bush breaks his silence to change his tune...
AgentWood wrote: aah, the WSJ's editorial page. known for fine gems such as this one, by paul gigot:
The Clinton Administration never grasped this point and spent its time devising new ways to keep average citizens from getting guns, while leaving bad guys on the street.... The results are a vindication for Mr. Ashcroft, who has been vilified for being soft on gun violence because he continues to defend the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners. In reality, gun violence has declined from 12% of violent crime in 1993 to 9% in the most recent Justice statistics. Any gun control advocates out there care to apologize? (WSJ, Feb. 3, 2003)
anyone see what's wrong with this logic? i'll give you a hint: the last year for 'recent justice statistics' when this piece came out was...2001.
mr. tex,
before you quote the WSJ, i'd still like you to respond to this paul gigot op-ed piece and explain why a newspaper that's supposed to be strong on economics can be so daft as to let this one slip by!
