[veronica]

FYI.

[M1Tanker]

"Conservatives have a long history in America of resorting to traitorous acts to further their own private agendas."

Really?!?!? I can't remember when conservatives used the FBI, ATF, and IRS to harrass and "investigate" opponents. I can't remember when conservatives sold secret technology to China for campaign contributions. I can't remember when conservatives ignored attack after attack on US citizens and interests. I can't remember when conservatives castrated our intelligence gathering capabilities for political gain.

I CAN, however, remember the NEO-liberals doing this under Bill Clinton.

*Neo-Liberal is my term for the current "progressive" leftists who worship socalism, power, and destruction of the People's rights and freedoms. A Classical Liberal, on the other hand, is represented by our Founding Fathers who believed in this radical concept of a Constitutional Republic (not a democracy) and shuned tyranny and massive, intrustive government. A Classical Liberal is a Libertarian or a Constitutionalist.

So, a Neo-Liberal is a term for socialist, communist, fascist(aka national socialist), democrat, lefist, left winger, green, ELF/ALF/PETA, etc in my lexicon.

[ex-Texan]

This smells like a put up job by a "Bush Hater." Believe that the facts justify a new complaint against Wilson for filing a false complaint against the White House resulting in an expensive investigation. He should be held liable for the costs of the investigation.

[egalois]

"In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. "

This statement is ambiguous, and could hold a clue. To whom does the phrase "when he told me" refer? Is it the senior administration official, or Ambassador Wilson?

[Falcon4.0]

Regardless of the facts, the democrats are trying to whip this up to a point to require Bush to testify under oath and that's where they want him.

UNDER OATH!

Then they can claim something, Anything, was a lie and it's off the Impeachment Hearings!

QUID PRO QUO!

[NonValueAdded]

As of the 4:30 PM EDT CBS news, Pelosi is now chiming in. They also played GWB saying leaks are bad, he urges full cooperation, yada, yada, yada.

It is time for some ju jitsu. The RATS and the media on a tear about this? Sound bites galore? Fine, embrace the investigation but widen the scale. Doesn't Congress leak like a sieve? Didn't GWB and Rummy withhold briefings except to the top 8 congresscritters because of major leaks about troop movements? Isn't that far worse? Wasn't a certain Senator from the Peoples Republic of Vermont kicked off a committee for leaks?

Use the RATs and the media's "strength" against themselves. Investigate the Administration AND Congress. Stop All Leaks! (great name for a web site). Throw it wide open.

Want to bet it all quiets down in a hurry after that? Besides, the leaks really do need to stop.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Don't be surprised, though, if this purported scandal ends up amounting to nothing."

But the Dems know that the controversy in itself - regardless of the outcome - will cause a sense of scandal to linger in the minds of many swing voters, and these swing voters will remember all the accusations, and those THOSE FALSE ACCUSATIONS WILL NEVER BE DENOUNCED AS "IRRESPONSIBLE" BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. The Dems know that lies will linger in the public's mind just as easily as truth, and the public's mind will eventually forget the difference.

[Revolting cat!]

Plame's to blame!

[marron]

The story here is that he says he was hired by the CIA to check out the story. But he wasn't paid by the CIA, he went at his wife's suggestion, and he didn't submit a written report. His only written account of his trip is the op-ed piece he wrote.

The op-ed piece he wrote is an extended falsehood on several levels. The first falsehood is that he says he investigated uranium sales in Niger. That he most assuredly did not do. He asked the Niger government for their answer, and he parroted their answer. He did not investigate anything, he did not monitor shipments, he did not tap communications, he did not interview plant workers, he did not break into company files. There was no investigation.

So when he attacks the president based on his "investigation", he is lying.

His attack on the president is itself a sleight of hand, in which he refutes a charge the president did not make. Iraq's trade mission to Niger is public information. There was no need for a trip to Niger to verify a trade mission that was not a secret. His op-ed claims the president lied, because there was no sale. But the president made no such charge. So Wilson's "denial" is a non-denial, it is a propagandist's bait-and-switch tactic that would never work if we didn't collectively agree not to notice it. The press, of course, has collectively agreed not to notice.

Another lie is the lie of omission, in which he fails even to mention the trade mission, because of course to even mention it would blow a hole right through the middle of his case. The president did not lie, his charge was based on public information that Wilson does not deny because he can't deny it. So he ignores it.

He lied again when he claimed that a sale couldn't have taken place because the IAEA monitors the mines so closely that it would be impossible. But the IAEA says that they don't have the personnel to monitor the mines, and furthermore they don't have the legal basis for monitoring them. So, in other words, they aren't monitoring them in any effective sense at all.

So Wilson lied again.

And he apparently engaged in this pantomime charade at his wife's instigation. If the CIA is going to lend itself to backing this charade, then they should have to answer some questions themselves.

1. First, since when did the CIA appoint itself to engaging publicly in policy debates?
2. Why did they have to send a non-employee to investigate something that should have been a high priority?
3. What happened to their African assets? Have they none?
4.Why did that non-employee sent to investigate, not investigate?
5. And finally, why are they lending their aid and support to this charade?

The trade mission is not a secret, which means that the president's statement is not even controversial. The CIA is engaging in partisan politics, and their tactics are openly dishonest.

[Redcoat LI]

Was this chick a covert agent or what?Novak seems to be saying she was a desk jockey in Langly,every thing I hear or read seems to say something differant.Anybody know?

[aristeides]

According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives."

That last sentence is the key: If Novak's source is telling the truth, then there's no crime, and the "scandal" is utterly phony.

If Novak's CIA informant spoke in the present tense -- and I suspect he or she did -- then the source could have spoken the truth, and whoever revealed her status would nevertheless have committed a felony and -- what is more important -- endangered lives. Because Plame could have been a former undercover operative running agents.

Which is precisely what Vincent Cannistraro said she was on this morning's Sam Donaldson radio show.

[NotQuiteCricket]

"Don't be surprised, though, if this purported scandal ends up amounting to nothing."
Yeah, when it turns out to be all democrats all the time, suddenly the media will lose interest and the story will go away. (enron, global crossing, worldcom)

[cyncooper]

Clifford May writes in National Review Online that Plame's CIA connection "wasn't news to me. I had been told that--but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

May went on to say today that it was a democrat who told him Plame's employer in order to convince him that Wilson isn't as far left as May thought. May said this democrat told him before Novak's column was written.

The Corner September 30, 2003

Scroll down for May's comments.

[Bubba_Leroy]

"CIA refers crimes report over about once a week to the Department of Justice whenever there's a leak or any other potential violation of law that they come across."

James Woolsey
Woolsey served from 1993 to 1995 as President Clinton's first CIA director (when the CIA was reporting leaks about once a week to the Justice Department)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/992522/posts

[driftless]

The simple truth is that there is a full-time squad of liberal scandal-mongers funded by the Larry Flynts and George Soroses of the left whose only occupation is to find dirt on Bush and Republicans. Since it is highly unlikely that Bush will be performing unnatural sex acts with mutant frogs or found selling state secrets to arch-enemies, any kind of dirt will do such as this "scandal". They are starved for bad news about the Bush administration, but they never give up. Once this dies down, they will dream up another.

[Gothmog]

Just FYI:

"But David Manners, a former CIA case agent in the Middle East, said such concerns [about revealing Plame's ID] were probably unnecessary. 'If the implication is she ran clandestine operations around the world using her true name, then the real story is: What kind of crazy operation was she running? Because if you're operating clandestinely under your true name, you're a fool.'" The Los Angeles Times, 10/1/03

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scandal1oct01,1,1890560.story?coll=la-home-leftrail

[shhrubbery!]

Time for some heads to roll at the CIA. They either purposely or stupidly allowed this pompous twit, Wilson, to be sent off on a "mission" to undermine our president -- for partisan reasons.

Somewhere I read that Bush has kept Tenet and other Clinton holdovers because of a sentiment of his father's.

George Herbert Walker Bush is said to have felt compassion for CIA staffers who were fired when a new chief executive took office, and vowed that he would not do the same.

Apparently his son GWB has been honoring his father's advice.

Times change, and national security demands change.

Clean out the Augean stable of the CIA (and the FBI)!

[Steve0113]

ping

[Timesink]

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[SunStar]

Let us not forget that the person in charge of the CIA is Clinton-Appointee George Tenent.