Comments on: Is Joe Wilson a Martyr? Sure, In His Own Mind

By: lawrence odonell

lawrence odonell — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:11:49 +0000

To Joe Wilson:

LIAR!!!! LIES!!!! LIAR!!!!!!

By: DBrooks

DBrooks — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:40:25 +0000

Mark–This is a little late replying, but I just read this from Instapundit:

“Consider: Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative — something that’s not actually quite clear from the indictment — the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson’s oped appeared, Plame’s covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.

This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.

The other possibility is that they’re so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they’re so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual. If so, the popular theory that the CIA couldn’t find its own weenie with both hands and a flashlight would appear to have found some pretty strong support.”

That is very near how I see this, but I admit that I have my own set of filters/blinders.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:22:03 +0000

Well, DBrooks, I agree and disagree. I think Plame was covert, however weakly her identity was being protected, and I think some individuals did take their feud with the White House public, but not the CIA as an institution.

Having said that, Bob Woodward recently revealed that the CIA did an internal assessment as to what damage the outing of Plame did, and the answer was: negligible…Doesn’t excuse what Libby did in lying to a grand jury, but it does put it into perspective…

By: DBrooks

DBrooks — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:14:25 +0000

As far as “outing a covert agent,” it is arguable whether Plame was a covert agent, and what about the CIA’s role in revealing her identity? If she was an important asset, why would the CIA allow her husband to be sent to an area where she had an active history, and then allow her husband to write an Op-ed for The Washington Post? To me, that seems like a no-no in Introductory Spying 101–that is, unless some at the CIA knew Plame’s identity wasn’t critical or hidden, and they had an agenda that superceded any concerns about her identity. I would like someone to investigate whether individuals at the CIA made a concerted effort to undermine the direct policy of the elected government of the U.S.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 15:55:50 +0000

Actually, he was not right about the yellow-cake at all...see this typically brilliant piece by Christopher Hitchens: ...[T]urn to the front page of the June 28 Financial Times for a report from the paper's national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among European intelligence services that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. The bogus document produced by an Italian con man in October 2002, which has caused such embarrassment, was therefore more like a forgery than a fake: It was a fabricated version of a true bill. This case was about the outing of a CIA asset, not the truth of Joe Wilson's claims...

By: peter

peter — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 15:34:32 +0000

Well, I disagree. It’s not as though the White House was in a mission to find and express the truth. After all, Joe Wilson was right about the yellowcake, and the sixteen words in the State of the Union were wrong. Regardless, even if the White House was “trying to expose his varied and repeated lies,” the way to do it is not to expose his wife’s identity to reporters.

However, not much of this really matters. Trying to focus on Joe Wilson and his character is like concentrating on Daniel Ellsberg instead of Watergate, or deflecting serious consideration of the war by calling Cindy Sheehan anti-Semitic. Or, for that matter, looking into Monica Lewinsky’s character instead of Bill Clinton’s. The only thing worth asking is what those in government have done with the power which has been entrusted to them. Have they used it wisely or foolishly? Have they used it for the public interest or their own? Everything else is noise.

By: Eric Lindholm

Eric Lindholm — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 15:26:26 +0000

That guy gives new meaning to the word “unctuous.” Yes, truly a martyr to the cause has been created by a White House trying to expose his varied and repeated lies.