12 July 2005

Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass

Larry Johnson, CIA classmate of Valerie Plame, pens a scathing rebuttal of the absurd disinformation campaign being conducted by the Republicans, still intent on smearing Joseph Wilson, and obsfucating the truth.
The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey.  Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world.  When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.

The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that "no laws were broken".  I don't know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached.  For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publically identified a CIA NOC.  They have set a precendent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate.

They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson "lied".  Although Joe did not lie let's follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion.  Let's use the same standard for the Bush Administration.  Here are the facts.  Bush's lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000.  Joe Wilson has not killed anyone.  He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world.

But don't take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report.  Even though it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report:  According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe's visit in February 2002), "Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on."  Joe's findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford.

On a related note, regarding PlameGate, has Robert Novak already spilled the beans to special prosecutor Fitzgerald?

Comments

Richard Cohen writes in today's Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/

about the scandal. He argues correctly that even if there were evidence that White House officials named Valerie Plame and her occupation that there was no crime comiitted. In fact, the only crime committed has been by the reporters and their employers who have ironically refused to provide public prosecutors with information on the grounds that "the public has a right to know." (Despite the fact that the press itself is at the center of the controversy and not Rove, Cohen suggests calling it "Karlgate": "It encompasses so much -- the outing of Plame, the jailing of reporter Judith Miller, the moral collapse of the press, the preening of Wilson -- that it sorely needs a moniker," he writes.)

Cohen goes beyond the case itself, though, and argues that the real scandal is:

"The inspired exaggeration of the case against Iraq, the hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda's links to Hussein, (that) makes everything else pale in comparison. It was to protect those lies, those exaggerations, that incredible train wreck of incompetence, ideologically induced optimism and, of course, contempt for the quaint working of the democratic process, that everything else stems from. Wilson was both armed and dangerous. He claimed the truth."

Except his "truth" was a lie, and Cohen knows it. Wilson said in the New York Times that Iraq did not seek uranimum from Niger, but this was a lie. Not only did Iraq meet with Niger officials in an obvious attempt to buy uranium yellowcake, but Wilson's report on his trip said so. CNN reported this fact prior to Wilson's Times piece, and then promptly forgot its own reporting. "Bush lied!" picked up steam as a rallying cry, and even the Senate Intelligence Committee's determination that Wilson was in fact the liar didn't stop the momentum.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALL...

Nevermind the Clinton Administration's claims that Iraq had WMDs, or the same claims repeated by Democratic Senators into 2003. A more important issue is the Hussein regime's connections to terror -- which were very real.
Claudia Rosett wrote in yesterday's Wall Street Journal http://www.opinionjournal.c...
about the connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, which prompted Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, to note:

"I know it's an article of faith -- in the most literal sense -- of the antiwar crowd that no such connections exist, but assertions to that effect mostly serve as a time-saver, by making clear who doesn't know what they're talking about."
http://instapundit.com/arch...

http://www.weeklystandard.c...

http://www.rightwingnews.co...