Free Republic

WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson:...

A movie that cost 22 million to produce has grossed a 9.3 million world wide after 4 weeks in theater.

*snip* Memory can be unreliable, and misstatements can happen despite pure intentions. It's only fair game to point this out. So say Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA case manager and Vanity Fair cover girl, and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, former ambassador to Gabon and extravagant self-promoter. Too bad the Wilsons, a power-mad federal prosecutor, an officious federal judge, a confused jury and a badly misled president wouldn't apply those same common-sense considerations to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, wrongly convicted of perjury in the case stemming from State Department official Richard Armitage's public identification of Mrs. Wilson as a...

Hollywood moguls continue their defamation of America, even though the presidency and both houses of Congress have been controlled by fellow leftists for the past two years. How many years of leftist control of the government would be needed before leftists feel that America’s “sins” are forgiven? Would 100 years be enough? One reason the movies are dying is that many movie makers are leftists. Like most leftists, including President Obama, they persist in trying to shove their ideas down people’s throats, rather than listening to what people actually want.

Minutes after Naomi Watts, movie star, arrived at the CIA’s secret Virginia training center called The Farm, she was thrown to the ground in a way that left bruises. When she cried out in pain, her instructor glared and informed her, “Don’t say 'ow’ again unless you need to go to the hospital.” During the days that followed, she was “stripped of everything that cloaked her in specialness,” said director Doug Liman. The actress chose the rough treatment, Liman said. He chose Watts to play Valerie Plame Wilson, the spy who was outed in one of the most controversial episodes...

When Hollywood decides a former White House aide is fair game for attack, facts don't come into play. History, however, cannot be so cavalier about the truth. The new movie "Fair Game" - based on the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson during political battles concerning the war in Iraq - is anything but fair or honest. In depicting former vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as a sinister point man in a broad effort to destroy Mrs. Wilson's career while concocting a fraudulent case for the war, the movie perpetuates myths that improperly damage U.S. credibility....

Valerie Plame says in her memoir that she read the report that the CIA wrote immediately after debriefing Wilson on his trip and also read his column before it was published. She added that she thought the column was accurate. She said the report was only a few pages long. No one, let alone a professional intelligence officer, could have missed the part about Iraq trying to buy yellowcake. She had to know the column was wrong, but evidently said nothing. So she was anything but an innocent bystander as her husband created a political firestorm. In a question and...

... the title is drawn from how Karl Rove told Matthews that the CIA agent Valerie Plame was fair game for critics of her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson, you’ll recall, was dispatched by the CIA in 2002 at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson came back with the answer no, and he was outraged when President Bush nevertheless stuck with the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address, which made the case for war with Iraq. Just three...

The only way we even know the name of Valerie Plame (and fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson) is that that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked her name as a CIA officer to columnist Robert Novak. That is what set in motion the long drawn out Plamegate affair in which only Scooter Libby was convicted of something other than leaking her name. So you would figure that the supposedly biographical movie scheduled for a November USA release about Plame, Fair Game, would feature Armitage front and center as the principal villain. Right? Wrong. The fact is that "Fair...

Democrats said that the outing of a CIA agent, personnel, whatever, was bad, and said that someone's head in the Bush Administration had to roll. Democrats wanted Cheney, but didn't get him. When the New York Times outs Karzai's brother as supposedly being paid by the CIA to do who knows what, Democrats act as if it is no big deal. What gives?

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he could not remember playing any role in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to FBI records released under court order Friday. In his May 8, 2004, interview with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Cheney said he could not recall when he learned that Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the CIA; could not recall telling his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, about Plame's employment; and could not recall telling Libby to disclose...

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents. In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. The judge said the prospect of such inquiries was...

This one: Not this one: Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) appears to be a decent and honorable man. Part of his background includes military service (with four sons currently serving). His impassioned outburst during President Obama's healthcare speech may seem out of step with his character and his military discipline, but he vented/channeled what many frustrated Americans were shouting into their tv sets, while provoking a million-mob strong march to turn out in D.C.: You LIE. Not only is former ambassador Joe Wilson a liar; but the current president of the United States is one, too. Congressman Wilson broke decorum and...

Well turnabout is fair play.The CIA has found a way to strike back at Eric Holder's decision to investigate the CIA's handling of enhanced interrogation techniques, or at least the progressive Democrats that demanded the investigation. In July congress had a major fit about a secret Bush-era program that was revealed to them by CIA Director Leon Panetta: Congress originally authorized the CIA to develop the secret counterterrorism program that is now drawing fierce criticism from House Democrats who say they were kept in the dark all along, a former senior intelligence official told FOX News on Monday. The program,...

Early in Saturday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor reported: "Tonight there are new allegations of torture by the CIA. Newsweek magazine is reporting that a secret 2004 report reveals that interrogators used mock executions to intimidate prisoners." Glor went on to talk to Newsweek reporter Mark Hosenball, who claimed: "And in the case of one detainee that we know about, somebody named Abdel-Rahman al Nashiri, who was an alleged architect of the USS Cole bombing, this report alleges that at some point CIA interrogators, whether contractors or CIA staff officers, brandished a gun in front of this guy in...

NEW YORK A lengthy Q and A with the ailing columnist Robert Novak-- who died today at age 78-- appeared last November in the Washingtonian. At the end, Barbara Matusow got around to asking about the CIA leak case and outed spy Valerie Plame Wilson. Novak replied: "From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I’d been told about Mrs. Wilson. "Now I’m much less ambivalent. I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make...

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations. The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial. *snip* He mentioned in...

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not give further consideration to a lawsuit brought by a fired CIA agent and her husband against high ranking Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney. The decision is a victory for Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. They and nine unnamed co-defendants were sued by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph after her CIA cover was leaked to reporters.

As the curtain closes on the presidency of George W. Bush, the one loose end dangling is the pardon of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In 2007 Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Let us be clear about the Bush legacy. After September 11, not a year into Mr. Bush's term, his became a war presidency. George Bush's place in history will turn on what becomes of Iraq and al Qaeda. If Iraq fails, history will mark down the Bush presidency. If by fits and starts Iraq grows into the...

MAYBE BUSH IS NOT SUCH A BAD GUY AFTERALL. TOO BAD THE NEWS PEOPLE DON'T TELL THE TRUTH. This has been flying under the radar. Read the MSNBC article and check the truthorfiction.com site. The TorF version is shown below. This event is factual. I have an increased respect for President Bush. He has taken the heat of being called a liar and a war monger for 5 years while he kept his silence to protect the people of the world. This is truly a display of selfless honor. On July 5, 2008, the Associated Press (AP) released a story...