Re: Valerie Plame sets the record straight on Bush Disinformation about the Iraq War

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:48:44 -0400, Horatio Fudruckerton
<nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:16:04 GMT, middle_class_warrior
<middle_class_warrior@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Valerie Plame who has a lot more than meets the eye. Undoubtedly some
lying liar conservatives will fall over themselves about this article.


The spy comes in from the cold

Valerie Plame Wilson has written a personal account of helplessly
observing her career being shattered, as in an out-of-body experience.
Sidney Blumenthal



MUJAHAHAHAHAH

What fucking career ????????? Fetching coffee and giving blowjobs
is a *career* now ?????????

Plame, as well as her husband, are lying phonies; nothing more.

Shut the *** up you America hating racist traitor.




October 23, 2007 12:00 PM | Printable version

None of Valerie Plame's elaborate training to become an elite covert
operative for the CIA prepared her for the byzantine, vicious and
dispiriting smear campaigns directed against her and her husband, former
ambassador Joseph Wilson, in George Bush's Washington.

When he felt compelled to tell the truth about President Bush's false
rationale for the invasion of Iraq - the infamous 16 words in his 2003
State of the Union address claiming Saddam Hussein was securing yellow
cake uranium for nuclear weapons - vice president *** Cheney ordered
the defamation of Wilson's reputation. When the White House apparatus
was instantly set in motion, with Cheney's chief of staff Lewis
"Scooter" Libby serving as the action officer on the op, and Karl Rove
and Ari Fleischer relentlessly pressing the "scoop" on reporters, Plame
still toiled away unknowing at her job at the CIA, seeking information
about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, not only in Iraq but
also Iran and other dangerous places.

In the blink of an eye, as quickly as Rove says to Chris Matthews, the
host of MSNBC's Hardball, "Wilson's wife is fair game," Plame's
carefully constructed secret identity, her worldwide network of
informants and the vital flow of intelligence on WMDs were blown apart.

Valerie Plame Wilson's book, Fair Game - My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal
by the White House, is her personal account of helplessly observing her
career being shattered, as in an out-of-body experience. Fair Game is
rife with long redacted passages that the CIA censors insisted upon,
though the information they blacked out was mostly on the public record.
The publisher, Simon & Schuster recruited investigative reporter Laura
Rozen to fill in these blanks in an indispensable afterword. The
omissions only heighten the intrigue.

In the beginning Plame appears as Jane Bond. She describes her schooling
in the arts of spycraft at the CIA's "farm," where she discovers among
other things that she is a crack shot, unafraid of diving out of planes
and crawling through enemy fire. The details of her training discredit
the long propagated falsehood by a host of conservative spinners, from
the columnist Robert Novak to the attorney Victoria Toensing, that Plame
was never a covert operative. Plame's account of her clandestine work
based at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, which also required
trips abroad, further demolishes the lie.

After years in the field, Plame is assigned to a new group called the
Counterproliferation Division within the Department of Operations,
dubbed as the "island of misfit toys" within the agency. The search for
WMDs becomes a concentrated goal. In the run up to the war in Iraq,
Plame is one of the key officers tasked to locate them. One of the most
knowledgeable operatives, she continues to believe that it is highly
likely that Saddam indeed has WMDs and is hiding them. Moreover, CIA
director George Tenet sends around a memo, which also is intended for
the Congress then voting on the authorization for the use of military
force, claiming that there are proven links between Saddam and al-Qaida
- false information that Plame (and Congress) has no way of knowing is
wrong. Plame works night and day to attempt to make the case, but fails
to unearth evidence.

On February 5 2003, secretary of state Colin Powell presents the "facts"
before the United Nations security council. Tenet sits behind Powell to
underscore the reliability of his speech. "When the program ended and we
all drifted back to our desks," writes Plame, "I was deeply upset, my
head spinning. I was experiencing what I can only call cognitive
dissonance ... I had been tracking Iraqi WMD efforts carefully for some
time [redacted] and the facts I knew simply did not match up with what
Powell had just presented." Later, of course, Powell's presentation was
revealed as utter disinformation.

At the time, Plame wondered: "Perhaps someone had managed to recruit a
source deep inside Saddam's innermost circle who was providing alarming
evidence of his plans." She has no knowledge that what Powell says is
true. "The idea that my government, which I had served loyally for
years, might be exaggerating a case for war was impossible to
comprehend. Nothing made sense."

After Bush's declaration of "mission accomplished," Wilson discloses in
a New York Times opinion piece, What I didn't find In Africa, that the
administration's justification for war was rooted in falsehood. Having
been sent to Niger to uncover Saddam's nefarious uranium buying scheme,
he reported to the CIA that he could find no such evidence. The supposed
documents used to prove it turned out to be forged. Who forged them
remains a mystery. Immediately upon publication of Wilson's op-ed,
Cheney swings his underlings into action. Plame becomes collateral damage.

The reason for destroying the cover of a CIA operative was purely
political. Cheney, et al showed absolutely no concern for protecting
national security. Rather, they were intent on defending the
administration and their policies from Wilson's truthful revelation.
Wilson had to be besmirched, and so they outed Plame. Systematically,
they told reporters that she was behind sending her husband on the
mission, a "junket," as Cheney calls it, in order to distract and
discredit. With her identity exposed, Plame's utility was at an end.
There can be no doubt that this breach seriously compromised national
security.

One abiding mystery unaddressed in Plame's book remains the role of
former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who corroborated
Novak's story (Rove being his main source) and leaked Plame's name to
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for potential use in a book to be
published later (not for a current newspaper article). The close friend
and number two to Powell, Armitage was not one of the neoconservatives
or part of Cheney's bureaucratic machinery. Why Armitage? Armitage
himself has yet to explain. Nor do we know the full contents of his
grand jury testimony, though it may be unlikely that his exact motives
were subject to interrogation by the special prosecutor. Sources in the
intelligence community tell me that Armitage wished to be appointed CIA
director in Bush's second term. Armitage also had a long relationship
with Rove.

Moreover, Armitage had never before deigned to speak with or even return
a phone call from Novak. Yet he called Novak himself to confirm Plame's
identity. It seems inconceivable that Armitage did this completely at
his own initiative. Pointing to Armitage as a leaker settles nothing.
Libby, Rove and Fleischer, meanwhile, were all leaking furiously. And
Armitage has yet to explain.

After her outing, Plame enters a bewildering world. The spymaster
becomes the prey. Her government degrades the valued agent. The lies
come so fast they are impossible to rebut. Detailed explanations
exploding the falsehoods are ignored by a complicit press.

The Republican-controlled Senate select committee on intelligence
summons Plame and her CIA colleagues, only to issue a false report,
given credence by the editorial page of the Washington Post and the Wall
Street Journal. The testimony of her fellow operative at the CIA who
actually recommended Wilson for his Niger mission is deliberately
omitted. Distressed, he tells Plame, "They twisted my testimony ... I
recommended Joe for the trip, don't you remember. I told the committee
this, but they didn't include it in the report." This officer writes a
memo asking for permission from the CIA "that he be allowed to testify
again to the committee to correct the record, but was told unequivocally
that that was not possible."

Her career is ruined, his business has dried up. The lies rain down. The
Washington Post editorial page, a stalwart ally of Libby throughout his
trial, publishes an editorial on September 1 2006, blaming Wilson for
the outing of his wife, and repeating lock, stock and barrel the
falsehood of the Republican propaganda from the Senate intelligence
committee. "I suddenly understood what it must have felt like to live in
the Soviet Union and have only the state propaganda entity, Pravda, as
the source of news about the world."

Even before the Libby guilty verdict, the CIA begins censoring her
manuscript. She is not permitted to write the birth dates of her
children: "It was the bureaucratic equivalent of Groundhog Day ... "

Wilson and Plame do not attend the trial, of course, but follow it on
the internet through the assiduous courtroom reporting of the team for
Firedoglake.com. The documentation introduced by the prosecutor, Patrick
Fitzgerald, demolishes Libby's defense - and the smear campaign - though
those publications that perpetrated it make no amends, including the
Post's editorial page.

Instead, on the weekend before the closing arguments, the Post's Outlook
section publishes Victoria Toensing's mendacious article accusing Wilson
of "misleading the public about how he was sent to Niger," insisting
that Fitzgerlad has no reason for an investigation and that Plame was
"not covert." The Post makes no effort to publish another piece in
Outlook containing the facts.

With the verdict finding Libby guilty of obstruction of justice and
perjury, the case is closed. But the truth remains to be known. Libby
has successfully covered up for Cheney. According to Fitzgerald, a
"cloud" remains over the vice president. Then Bush pardons Libby,
completing the obstruction. Cheney escapes.

Fair Game is one of the essential documents of the Bush era, a harrowing
personal account of betrayal. The betrayals of the Bush administration
have become so numerous that they seem almost casual by now. Yet for
Valerie Plame Wilson the personal was more than political. Betraying her
was not just another lie, another smear, another Swift-boating. It was a
breach of national security.

--
http://whitehouser.com/politics/impeach-president-bush-cheney-the-white-house-on-trial
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