If you want to walk out onto a plank stating that the Deputy Secretary of State is only associated with the administration “broadly speaking” that’s fine with me. My opinion is that position is far too important to be dismissed as inconsequential.
I think this Plame deal is blown way out of proportion, but trying to claim that the next in line to the Secretary of State is not closely aligned with the administration is reaching. And, for the record, Armitage’s tenure in that position outlasted Powell’s.
Look. This thing stinks to high heaven. I wouldn’t wallow in it if I were you.
I don’t dismiss the position Armitage held as inconsequential. I was rejecting your apparent sympathy for the Wilson-Plame line of attack, widely parroted in the MSM, that Plamegate was about a so-called ‘retaliation’ by the “White House” against Joe Wilson. That has always been a grotesque, dishonest distortion of what happened. The point about Armitage, Powell, Novak, et al is that they were in no way carrying water for Dick Cheney or Karl Rove in this matter; they were neither directed by nor influenced by the wishes of the “White House staff” in any way on this or related matters, contrary to the false image concocted by Joe Wilson and his allies in the media. The people who gave us Plamegate were pursuing their own agendas which had nothing to do with any fictitious ‘retaliation’ against Joe Wilson (although an all-out assault on Wilson’s worthless credibility was certainly justified, but HE, Joe Wilson, is the only one who ever made it personal or nasty).
You do not seem to have read much on this matter, at least not much that did not come out of the MSM cesspool. Yes, the whole thing stinks, but not for the reasons you seem to think. Don’t worry for me, for I am not out on any precarious ‘plank’ thank you very much. I have followed the case enough to know that (1) nearly everything that has ever been written or said about it in the MSM is garbage; (2) Joe and Valerie are both depraved partisan hacks who engaged in a vile, dishonest, and treasonous assault to undermine our elected government in time of war; (3) this Plamegate farce will go down as one of the most fraudulent episodes in the sordid history of media/Democrat collusion to push dishonest liberalism and viciously attack anyone who stands in the way.