Posted on 07/18/2005 8:32:44 AM PDT by mathprof
hirty-three years after Bob Woodward first met Mark Felt in an Arlington parking garage, echoes of the Watergate era seem to be everywhere.
But the comparisons for the press are not all that flattering.
Liberal critics of the media, who believe journalists abysmally failed to challenge the president's WMD claims during the Iraq war buildup, feel vindicated by news that two reporters were granting Karl Rove anonymity as he tried to undermine a prominent debunker of those claims, Joe Wilson, by mentioning his wife's CIA role. Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail, saying the New York Times reporter is merely protecting Rove (though no one knows whether her source was the White House political adviser or someone else).
For those who see the secretive Bush administration as a reincarnation of the Nixon regime, the disclosure that Rove served as a source for Time's Matt Cooper and columnist Robert Novak looks like the slow unraveling of a scandal that has now reached the top level of the White House. Scott McClellan is cast in the Ron Ziegler role, refusing to answer a barrage of reporters' questions about Rove after his previous answers were rendered inoperative.
Even the media's preferred narrative -- built around the sanctity of anonymous sources -- comes up short. Unlike Deep Throat, who was risking his FBI career by telling Woodward about the Nixon spying operation and cover-upRove and whoever else leaked Valerie Plame's CIA connection to Novak and other journalists were doing partisan dirty work, and some may have been committing a crime. Cooper and others have argued that they can't make a distinction between "good guy" and "bad guy" sources...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
the only exception being that they idolized 'Deep Throat' while they want to jail Rove......
Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.
feel vindicated by news that two reporters were granting Karl Rove anonymity as he tried to undermine a prominent debunker of those claims, Joe Wilson, by mentioning his wife's CIA role. Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail, saying the New York Times reporter is merely protecting Rove
The MSM has sold it's credibility for convenience. Rambling self-serving excuses aside, it's still shameful.
Now I think he's stupid all the time.
How disappointing. Mark Felt leaked information about ongoing FBI investigations, and thus broke the law while retaining his position as the #2 man in the FBI. Whoever leaked the name of Valerie Plame and her role in Wilson's trip most likely broke no law, and was most likely a reporter. If the media had NOT reported about Plame, it would have been covering up a seriously important fact that the public had a right to know in order to properly weigh the trustworthiness of Joe Wilson. I think lots of reporters had this information for a long time, they knew Wilson lied in his NYT piece, they WERE covering it up because of their own agenda, and Bob Novak messed it all up when he wrote about it. Matt Cooper wrote a story that was clearly a fantasy based on nothing. There was no orchestrated campaign to "smear" Joe Wilson and his wife. A relevant fact about Joe Wilson and his trustworthiness was confirmed to reporters who already knew it. I really need somebody to tell me how this compares to Watergate!
Everyone know's he's a shill for the DNC... yet he acts like he's totally impartial to maintain his position.
“I don't think I'll let you bullsh_t me today... 'Kurtzie'!”
I'll post this again:
Let's see; Wilson writes an op-ed piece AFTER he goes to work for John Kerry, claiming that he was sent to Niger at the request of Dick Cheney and declares that the words Bush spoke in the SOTU were lies and were the false basis with which Bush led the country to war.
Are they insinuating that the White House was to do NOTHING? Say nothing? Not defend themselves? Not try to at least correct Wilson's claims -- which, we all know now, turned out to be, almost to a word, a pack of lies.
Just stop and think a minute about that: if the White House hadn't refuted the lies Wilson told, his "facts" would have been used to what end - why, to get John Kerry elected, right?
The media have forgotten Clinton's vicious attacks against HIS "enemies" - Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Kenneth Starr, etc. All of these people were viciously savaged in the press for months, Clinton did everything he could to impede and vilify Starr, and yet the press is now making a huge thing out of Rove making a factual statement that WASN'T EVEN INTENDED AS A SMEAR, because it ISN'T a smear.
Does Joe Wilson realize that he is a traitor to his country? The fact that is lost to these self serving hacks is that their lies put us at great risk. If a nuke device is used by terrorist here in America and because Wilson lied about procurement efforts to further political gains to the detriment of our country he should be executed as a traitor!
You know they haven't forgotten.
Who is Miller protecting? Not Rove or Libby. So who?
Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's cover?
It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press.
Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a year ago:
He certainly bragged about it per a famous and highly reliable source's (named below) account of his own face-to-face encounter with Amb. Joe Wilson prior to Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent/employee.
Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.
Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.
I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.
However, it is now easy to surmise that Joe Wilson is a crass, materialistic, self-promoting, vain, egotistical, bragaddocio-opportunist, so this account is perfectly consistent with Valerie Plame's TWO photo shoots in Vanity Fair.
A highly relevant corroborating account is David Corn's at the Nation, who wrote about Valerie Plame the day after he met with Joe Wilson.
Then you don't really understand Watergate.
This is its EXACT parallel. Thank God we dont have Democrat controlled Congress, or you would be having Impeachment hearings right now.
This is about a MSM Smear machine bent on destroying a President they Hate. Period.
Yes, indeed -- that's why they are hopping mad!
Don't forget that Wilson had been on with Bill Moyers one month after the "16 Words" were spoken in Bush's SOTU, and never said boo about them. Quite the contrary, in fact:
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