Posted on 11/05/2005 12:19:41 AM PST by Lecie
Then what's the point of this new American imperialism? The neoconservatives with a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party, a party that traditionally eschewed foreign military adventures, want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme. Arabs who complain about American-supported antidemocratic regimes today will find us in even more direct control tomorrow. The leader of the future in the Arab world will look a lot more like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf than Thomas Jefferson.
Thank you, again.
IOW wilson planed the outrage and the leak "shock" was a fake from the outset, and it was even a SET UP!
He outed his wife more than that--and Agee and the Agency did as well. This is the biggest bit of bull hockey I've seen.http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3586
France has realised - and instrumentalised - the key fact about modern Africa, which is that the nationalist elites have failed to build modern states, and mainly aspire to get money offshore and bring up their children in Paris, Geneva or New York. In the world of the dissolving African state, an arms shipment here or there, two hundred well-trained mercenaries or a million dollars for this or that politician can tip the balance in territories rich in gold, diamonds, oil or uranium. It's absurdly cheap.-------------------- "Disturbing article about Rwanda, France, UN, Belgium, Annan, and Clinton ," by RW Johnson, UCSB , Thursday June 24, 2001Everyone knows that Gaullist Presidential campaigns over the last thirty years have benefited greatly from donations from Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire and the two Congo states (Kinshasa and Brazzaville). It will doubtless be the same in 2002 - which is why Chirac receives Robert Mugabe in such splendour at the Elysee, conscious that Zimbabwe's 14,000 troops in the Congo make him a key player in such marchandise. Not that France has a monopoly on playing Machiavelli in Africa: Herman Cohen, Clinton's assistant secretary of state for Africa, who was so busy in Rwanda in 1994, today has a multi-million contract to tart up the image of Mugabe. Cohen has also had contracts to promote Zaire's Mobutu, Gabon's Omar Bongo (whose government the state department reports is guilty of a routine use of torture), and Liberia's Charles Taylor - an adept in the use of child soldiers and the lopping off of hands, legs, ears and lips.
That info in my last post can be found on this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/842957/posts
2001
African governments are paying millions of dollars to lobbyists in hopes of influencing Washington's policy, according to an examination of US government files.
Oil-producing nations -- especially, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea -- are paying the biggest fees by far, but others, especially those with which Washington has difficult relations, are not holding back the cash.
Favoured lobbyists include former high-ranking State Department and other government officials, such as Herman Cohen, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under former President George Bush and whose partner, James Woods, held the equivalent position at the Pentagon.
Gabon has also maintained a three-year-old relationship with Jacqueline Wilson, the ex-spouse of a senior US diplomat. According to her filings, Wilson receives tens of thousands of dollars for special projects and reports to President Omar Bongo's daughter, Pascaline Mferri Bongo.
In her latest filing, Wilson reported that she was paid 60,000 dollars between August and November 2000 to ''support action of president of Gabon to fight AIDS pandemic (and) develop a strategy.'' As to work performed, she reported sending ''letters to the office of National AIDS policy at the White House.''
http://tinyurl.com/creso
Susan Rice, who served as President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, had earlier been tapped by Gov. Howard Dean's anti-war campaign.
Rice emerged as a foreign policy advisor to the Kerry Edwards campaign, which is still reeling from revelations that another key advisor, former Clinton national security chief Sandy Berger, had stolen national security secrets.
Rice is also acting as the campaign's designated apologist for former ambassador Joe Wilson, the Kerry advisor whose claims that "Bush lied" about Iraq uranium were exposed as bogus by the Senate Intelligence Committee two weeks ago.
"As far as I know, we have no reason to believe that Mr. Wilson's words and deeds were not as he spoke them," Rice told reporters this week. "I have great respect for his integrity."
The same can't be said of Rice, however, at least according to several of her former colleagues, who say she deserves a hefty portion of blame for the fact that Osama bin Laden wasn't neutralized during the 1990s.
"The FBI, in 1996 and 1997, had their efforts to look at terrorism data and deal with the bin Laden issue overruled every single time by the State Department, by Susan Rice and her cronies, who were hell-bent on destroying the Sudan," one-time Clinton diplomatic troubleshooter Mansoor Ijaz told radio host Sean Hannity in 2002.
Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," concurred, saying Rice played a key role in scuttling the deal that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
In November 2003, Miniter told World Magazine that while Sudan was anxious to turn bin Laden over to the U.S., Rice - then a member of Clinton's National Security Council - questioned Khartoum's credibility.
In a 2002 Washington Post op-ed piece co-authored with Ijaz, former ambassador Carney described Sen. Kerry's new adviser as a major obstacle to accepting offers from Sudan to share intelligence on bin Laden's terrorist network.
NSC terrorism specialist Richard Clarke and NSC Africa specialist Susan Rice, who was about to become assistant secretary of State for African affairs."
Rice and Clarke persuaded Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to overrule Albright on the Sudanese terrorism overtures, said Ijaz and Carney.
http://tinyurl.com/dvrzg
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Four years after September 11, 2001, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid joined together today with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Director Rand Beers, former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice and former Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to call on President Bush to finally release a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy after months of delay over bureaucratic infighting. The leaders argued that together, America can do better and they unveiled a letter to the President outlining his failure to outline a counterterrorism strategy, and analysis that the Administration is not fully prepared to protect Americans from a terrorist strike here at home. Along with the letter, they released a new report from national security experts, led by Albright and Podesta, outlining the effects of Bush's failed strategy and new proposals to help guide the Administration in formulating their strategy.
July 18, 2005
CIA Tried to Discredit Secret Memo Through Washington Post
Much of the discussion this week about the latest disclosures in the alleged outing of a covert CIA agent will focus on an internal memo that detailed how former Ambassador Joe Wilson was chosen for a mission to Niger. The document indicated that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, “offered up his name” for the assignment to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein tried to acquire uranium from the African nation.
Officials at the CIA tried to discredit the “smoking gun” memo and the news service that confronted Wilson about it in October 2003 in order to keep the White House on the defensive. They relied on a sympathetic recipient of previous leaks that cast the administration in a negative light for the disinformation effort. In December 2003, the Washington Post quoted an agency source as “challenging the accuracy” of the document, claiming that the meeting described could not have taken place.
Sounds like a "deep throat" at CIA at best. At worst, we have agents who are subverting the policies of elected officials.
JOSEPH WILSON: Sure, a week after the article appeared, and before I had responded, I was not going to respond to Novak's article publicly. I was not going to comment and did not comment on my wife's employment, other than to say, hypothetically, if she was what Novak asserts, then he might be in violation of the law and refer all questions to the C.I.A., which was appropriate. So, I was laying low. But the communications office was calling around all these journalists, and over the course of the weekend, I was getting calls every day from people saying – the first call was ‘The White House is telling us so many off the wall things, we can’t even go with them, but we'd like you to come on so we can ask you some questions.’ I didn't rise to that bait. Andrea Mitchell called me and said, ‘The White House is saying that the real story here is Wilson and his wife.’ And then, finally, Chris Matthews called me and said, ‘I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says,’ and I quote, ‘Wilson's wife is fair game.’
snip
JOSEPH WILSON: I have not spoken to Pat Fitzgerald for almost a year-and-a-half. I was interviewed by him once early in his tenure. My wife was interviewed by him once early in his tenure in a separate interview from mine, and neither of us have spoken to him since. We have not been before the Grand Jury. We're not part of this case. And, of course, he has appropriately not shared with us any information he might have. So anything that I might know would be just pure speculation. And I'm sure that those of you who are out there sleuthing, as you have been, and you have been doing a terrific job, know far more about what's going on than I do. I get all my information from you. Let me also just say for the record, I have only laid eyes and met Judy Miller once in my life, laid eyes on and met her, and that was in November of 2004 at a birthday party on election night. That's the first and only time I have ever been introduced to her, and that we have ever spoken.
snip
JOSEPH WILSON: Sure. Well, several days before he wrote his article, Novak was walking down the streets of Washington, D.C., and somebody came up and said hello to him and engaged him in a conversation. Now, that happens to people who are sort of familiar figures who you see on television a lot. I'm sure, Amy, it happens to you. People come up and say, ‘Hey, you're Bob Novak. Can we have’ -- I suppose people don't call you Bob Novak, but people come up and say, hi, you're so and so, and let's – and strike up a conversation. That's what happened. And during the course of the conversation, this stranger raised, or the subject of Niger and the op-ed came up, and Novak said bluntly to him, ‘Wilson is an asshole,’ although I had never met Novak before, ‘and his wife works for the C.I.A.’ Well, it turns out the stranger to Novak was somebody that I knew. And he walked right over to my office. He said, I don't know what you wife does, I have never met your wife, but here is what Novak is saying on the streets. This was several days before his article appeared.
Now, needless to say, I was pretty unhappy that somebody would be walking around the streets blurting this stuff out about my wife to absolute strangers. The security implications are enormous. And I called Novak's nominal boss at CNN, Eason Jordan, and then subsequently called Novak himself, and he did apologize, but, of course, the damage by that time had already been done, and he went ahead and wrote the article anyway, despite the fact that the C.I.A. spokesman told him there was no truth to the article and not to use Valerie's name. Told him twice, in fact.
snip
JOSEPH WILSON: Yeah, it was the White House Iraq Group. It was known by its acronym, WHIG, the WHIG Group.
MURRAY WAAS: And Libby played a key role in that, and interestingly, the same people who were selling the war to the American people, who were part of that group, were the same people who then were central to trying to discredit Ambassador Wilson and his wife. And because the two were interrelated or interconnected, they mudded information out, which we have now learned so much of it was false and just not true, telling the American people there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities or huge efforts taking place by Saddam to develop those capacities. Those were not true.
snip
So I wrote that story in the Prospect, but not sure when, maybe a few months ago. The Los Angeles Times just had a front page story by a friend of mine, Tom Hamburger, which was a little bit -- which was even more precise and named Lewis Libby, Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, and Karl Rove, as the two key players in that.
snip
Joe Wilson: The fact that Mr. Rove, who is now documented to have been a liar and to have been the source of a treasonous leak is still on the payroll and Mr. Libby is still on the payroll and Mr. Bolton is up at the United Nations really, I think, is a breach of the President's bond to the American people that his -- he was good for his word and that he was honest and he was a straight shooter.
snip
MURRAY WAAS: That's correct. Our hands are tied. I just wanted to backtrack for a moment and say your competitor, National Public Radio, reported this morning that on his second day at the U.N., and this is an exact quote, John Bolton has been a “model of decorum.” That's their exact words. So it should be interesting if NPR reports on the third, fourth and tenth and twelfth day and how long into his tenure as U.N. ambassador that he has been a model of decorum. It's kind of extraordinary that they said without any kind of irony whatsoever, I think, reported that as news.
snip
MURRAY WAAS: That's correct. Our hands are tied. I just wanted to backtrack for a moment and say your competitor, National Public Radio, reported this morning that on his second day at the U.N., and this is an exact quote, John Bolton has been a “model of decorum.” That's their exact words. So it should be interesting if NPR reports on the third, fourth and tenth and twelfth day and how long into his tenure as U.N. ambassador that he has been a model of decorum. It's kind of extraordinary that they said without any kind of irony whatsoever, I think, reported that as news.
snip
So, all of this occurred because reporters were sloppy, because they didn't do their work. I mean, that, in effect is the cover story, or that's what Robert Novak is insisting. And I have interviewed Geneva Overholser, for example, the former editor at The Des Moines Register, and she said some strong words about Novak, but what's interesting is because he's really at the core of a elite group, a cocktail party crowd or kind of celebrity journalism at CNN, nobody will come out and -- the Washington press corps is pretty much silent. The big wheels and big guns are not saying anything. They're not policing themselves. And this could have really deleterious and damaging long-term effects on journalism.
And one other interesting aspect is The Washington Post in this. And maybe Ambassador Wilson can talk about that, but a reporter, Susan Schmidt, has done a lot of erroneous reporting, kind of taking information from the administration to further attack him and Valerie, but also Bob Woodward has been on all -- a bunch of TV shows saying that there's no story here, that this is a lot of hype, and we're seeing an iceberg with a tip of -- some reporter is just seeing an iceberg because they see a tip of an iceberg, but there might not be anything beyond that. And so, the Post has been extraordinarily quiet over the last several months or the year and has only began to recently re-report the story because the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, even the American Prospect, have begun to aggressively report the story.
snip
Joe Wilson: Now with respect to the Post, you know, I -- Susan Schmidt's article was a terrible article. It was full of falsehoods. It quoted a partisan letter as being the authoritative committee resolutions. It took out of context something out of my book. In my book, I had said my wife had nothing to do with this, other than to serve as a conduit. She dropped that really important phrase and said that I had written that my wife had nothing to do with it. It was a real -- just a fundamentally bad article.
Now, with respect to Woodward, the great irony in all of this is that, of course, Woodward was hanging around the White House and dealing with the most senior officials of our government for several years while he was writing his two books, the second of which was Plan of Attack, and you know, I think the question for Woodward once all is said and done is, ‘you were sniffing around there. You were talking to all of these people on a daily basis. You were basically taking their dictation, and you didn't sniff out a story? You didn't sniff out a story that might actually be rather important.’
snip
May 6, 2003 – A New York Times columnist writes the first account of Wilson' s trip, but not naming him: “I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger . In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong.” (" Missing In Action: Truth, ” New York Times, Op-ed, May 2003).
snip
June 12, 2003 – A Washington Post article quotes an “envoy” (Wilson ) as saying that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” on the Italian document determined to be forged by the IAEA. (" CIA Did Not Share Doubt…, ” Washington Post, June 2003). Wilson later tells the Senate Intelligence Committee that he may have “misspoken” to reporters, thinking he had seen the documents himself, rather than reading about them secondhand. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 44).
July 6, 2003 – Wilson publishes " What I didn’t find in Africa" in The New York Times, identifying himself for the first time as the unnamed “envoy.” He writes, “I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq 's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Wilson does not mention that he learned there was a possibility Iraq had sought uranium during a 1999 trade meeting with Niger ’s former Prime Minister.
July 30, 2003 – The CIA sends a letter to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department noting “a possible violation of criminal law concerning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” according to a letter from the CIA’s Director of Congressional Affairs. (CIA, Letter to John Conyers ).
September 16, 2003 – The CIA sends another letter to Justice requesting that the FBI undertake a criminal investigation. (Wilson, Politics 359).
******
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
"What now concerns me most, however, is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the president," Roberts said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.