Posted on 11/03/2005 11:36:34 AM PST by shhrubbery!
[snip]...It is not surprising that your White House distrusts and/or despises the media, the CIA, the State Department's career officers, the United Nations and a host of other institutions that you could not control...People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you.
But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.
The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency...
Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their failures to yours. I know that George Tenet charmed you, and the rest of us. That's what spies and spymasters do, sir. You should have been taking that into account...
...After Wilson's slanted account of his mission to Niger provoked a small hubbub over your 16-word reference to Iraq's seeking uranium, Britain reiterated repeatedly to the United States that it stood by its reporting on that topic -- which was not based in any way on the much-ballyhooed forgeries from Italy...
...Telling the public that there was an independent stream of intelligence, with all the problems and counterattacks it would have triggered from the opposition leakers, would have been better for you than aides' taking it on themselves to plant stealthy suggestions of nepotism at the CIA...[excerpts -- all emphasis added by me -- shhrub]
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A lot of books I read put something out of order, especially if what is out of order is what's going to sell the book.
I'm pretty suspicious of everything Wilson related, but putting the Niger trip in the beginning of the book doesn't raise my suspicions.
It's very, very odd, Mo1. I can't quite make up my mind how to take this.
I am glad to see that I am not the only one that still isn't sure how to take this...
It sure reads like more of an expose than a satire...but, I have never read anything else by this guy to compare it to.
Any piece written by a columnist, whether by an employee or purchased through syndication, reflects the views and opinions of the columnist...not the paper itself.
In this particular instance, you titled the thread "WaPo admits..." as if the Washington Post is reporting as news that the Wilson business is a CIA set-up. This is absolutely inaccurate (for now), and like I said, does not make you look very bright.
I'm not saying the column isn't interesting, because it certainly is. But you need to recognize the difference between editorial musings and actual news.
Valerie is supposedly in France at the moment. I wonder -- did she take the kids? I hope not, since the situation over there right now is a little dicey.
The Dims and MSM always worship at the feet of WaPo and freely use their positions to bolster their own .. let's see who quotes this one. I'm not taking bets.
The Fitzgerald investigation is completely illegitimate. How long would it have taken to establish Plame's true status? I contend that a Federal Special Prosecutor should have been able to obtain that answer with a phone call of less than thirty minutes. Maybe a little longer if Plame had actually been a covert agent (time for passing the buck up the ladder and some quick consultation and strategerizing) but given her desk-jockey status I can't believe it would have taken two minutes for some CIA manager to spit out her file to a FSP.
And since we at FR know that is wasn't necessary to even ask the CIA what her status was it's clear that Fitzgerald did know and knew it right from the beginning. Thus, he exceeded his authority by continuing the investigation. There must be a criminal statute that covers that.
Why wasn't Fitzgerald investigation why a rogue CIA was trying to run foreign policy instead of the President? Their conduct stinks to high heaven and Porter Goss better start firing some people or the credibility of this worthless agency will plummet further.
I admitted it might be a reach, and I realize that many books begin with a flashback or preview of something that will follow in more depth, but in Wilson's book, I had the distinct impression that the original book did not include the Niger material. There was really NOTHING about it in the proper chronological spot, only at the beginning of the book. I'd be very curious if some earlier form of that book had been previously submitted to a publisher and rejected; the inserted Niger material would have given it marketability it didn't previously have.
Since the Niger story would probably be the main reason someone would buy the book, I can see the editors putting it up front.
Are they ice skating in hell today?
I think you have something there.
I think you have something there.
Actually, I think your conclusions may be right. If I recall, Wilson had a couple months to criticize Bush's SOTU and didn't do so. In fact, there are a number of public statements that Wilson made directly after the SOTU address and Wilson doesn't even comment on the 16 Words. One of those appearances is even documented here on FR with Bill Moyers (2/28/03).
From what I remember, not only does Wilson not seem to show any interest in the 16 words, he agreed with much of the speech and emphasized the danger that Saddam posed. I also remember a Nation piece he wrote in March, that while a little more critical, still mentioned nothing agout Niger and Uranium. It wasn't until May of 2003, just before he officially joins the Kerry campaign, that he has a change of heart.
Bump
Wilson did not begin leaking his Niger info until more than a year after his trip, right as he joined the Kerry campaign, and only after others had begun to raise a stink about the failure to find WMDs. So I still think it's plausible that the original version of Wilson's book was NOT inspired by the Niger trip and its aftermath, but was already a work in progress, or maybe even a completed work, in which the Niger uranium story was either not mentioned or was a very minor episode. If true, this would be further evidence that Wilson's later account of his Niger trip was a politically motivated fabrication.
It's fairly clear that Wilson started giving his Niger story to the press after he joined the Kerry campaign. It was done to help that campaign. Kerry probably knows that. The Dems keep trying to revive it, particularly the Cheney knew and lied part of it, but I don't see how it can go anywhere. It's based on falsehoods. Wilson didn't debunk the Niger story or the Niger documents, and Cheney never saw any report that Wilson did. There's simply no substance to it.
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