Daniel Schorr
Posted on 07/14/2005 4:11:32 PM PDT by Arkie2
WASHINGTON – Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.
In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked detail."
Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come.
No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.
One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a supersecret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.
The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.
• Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.
I hope one is from Victoria Toensing (spelling) who helped write the law as we all know.
OMG, who drug out this old 60's radical hippie scumbag America hater?
Daniel Schorr, please ease up on your outflow of verbal diarrhea, the stench is really becoming unbearable!
I'd give you the name, but he might have once been an undercover CIA agent, and the dems want to make that illegal, even if done unknowingly. Sorry.
"We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a supersecret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment."
Whether Wilson's report was correct or not, I think the issue is really what the Times coorespondent is asserting in this statement. If Rove did 'alert' Mr. Cooper to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that is troubling. There may not be any criminal activity in doing so, but it smacks of Nixonian politics, you screw with us and we will retaliate. Does anybody know whether Mr. Coopers assertions about his coorespondence with Rove are correct?
Daniel Schorr has had rampant Alzheimer's disease for thirty years. He resembles an outhouse covered with snow in Vermont in January,and makes as much sense. Has anyone brought up to UpChuck Schumer that his buddy "Leaky" Leahy would have been convicted under the "Outings" that he did while he was on the Intelligence Committee had their proposed law been in effect. Many of the "spys" were murdered because of him,and he got kicked off the Committee for it. He should be in Federal Prison now.
How old is Daniel Schor? 115?
I've always thought Schorr is a Communist.
Daniel Schorr
Bless you, Arkie, for posting this. I heard it on the way home yesterday. I thought I was going to have a stroke. I headed directly to the computer to get the transcript. You have to pay. I have no credit cards, so I tried playing and transcribing it, but my daughter had to use the computer and then I had to leave for a loooong meeting. OXEN, I was going to try to bring this to FReepers attention. I think people should read this, but that is JMHO. By the way, Robert Segal (sp?) introduced this piece by saying Presidential advisor, Karl Rove, is under investigation, AND I QUOTE on that one. To the best of my knowledge, this is untrue. I would like to contact Segal, but I want to be sure I am right in saying that Rove is not. Also, I can now contact Schorr. I am sick to death of these people lying as they do. (Heh, I am still pretty angry about this. Can you tell?)
Let me make an observation here. I had to scroll way down the page to find this rove related story on FR. While it is important and warrants discussion on many levels, most FR people correctly realize that the world has many things going on that are equally as worthy of discussion. By way of comparison, I just came from a visit to DU. On page one I counted 21 Rove related topics for discussion. You would think that they would get very bored with themselves, but no. It is become a contest to determine which poster can Submit the most obscenity laced title and text. I saw little reason to inflict another page on myself beyond that. Anywho FRiends, after totaling up those numbers a old Paul Simon song came to mind. It is not a perfect link to DUmmies minset. But it will do:
He’s a one trick pony
He either fails or he succeeds
He gives his testimony
Then he relaxes in the weeds
He’s got one trick to last a lifetime
But that’s all a pony needs
I see the Carville cabal is in full gear lying and lying and lying.
I think Karl Rove and Valerie Wilson are having an affair.
It's a rare editorial from Dan where he doesn't try inserting at least one reference to Nixon no matter how tangential it might be.
Yeah, YaYa, back in the days of Eric the Red Severeid and Richard C. Hottelette and Charles Collingwood and of course Uncle Walter himself pompously presiding.
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