Korean Job Discussion Forums

[The Bobster]

Some people have complained about Ted Rall in the past. Here's some more to make you angry :

Karl Rove : Worse Than Osama bib Laden

By Ted Rall
Mon Jul 4, 7:00 PM ET

NEW YORK--In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal.

If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators?

The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.

But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.

Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter's notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame's CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson's publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time's cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak.

One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush's 2000 coup d'état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom.

Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job.

If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson.

Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media.

"[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.

How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.

Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Treason is a very strong word, not to be used lightly. This guy makes a case for it being appropriate here. I'd like to hear more about this case. I know today one of the reporters was sent to jail. I haven't been paying enough attention to this particular issue because I thought it was about confidentiality of sources. Guess it's also about something else.

Time for me to do some homework.

[The Bobster]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[The Bobster]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Thanks for the summary. That is pretty much what I have found out.

In addition, Tucker Carlson says (I know, I know) there is an '82 law that defines the CIA's covert operations classification. According to him, a person is not covert unless the government actively tries to hide their role. He says in this case, the CIA did not try to hide Ms. Plame's job classification. He says she was the equivalent of a clerk.

At this point, it looks to me like he is spinning. I can't imagine the CIA being happy about having one of their employee's name published in an article, whether she was involved in deeply covert activities or not.

I too haven't found out why Novak isn't involved in this.

[Rteacher]

I haven't followed U.S. politics all that closely while in Korea, but to keep in touch with the politically hot issues on a weekly basis I used to read transcripts of CNN's Capital Gang on their website. I was disappointed when the show was recently terminated (and not by Gov. Schwartzenager). Bob Novak was not only a dominant right-wing Republican spokesman on the show, but he was also one of it's founders. Does anybody else suspect - or has it been noted - that Novak's role in the Wilson case is an underlying cause of Capital Gang's going off the air?

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[bucheon bum]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010949.php


July 06, 2005

The quality of the reporting on the Valerie Plame/Judith Miller matter has been abysmal. Here are two examples.

This Associated Press article is by Pete Yost. For the most part, it is a straightforward account of Judith Miller's appearance in court today. But note Yost's account of the Plame affair that forms the background of the subpoena on Miller:

Plame's name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, questioned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq.

Wilson was sent to Africa by the Bush administration to investigate an intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein may have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson said he could not verify the claim and accused the administration for manipulating the intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

This is just wrong, as we have pointed out repeatedly, most recently here. It isn't true that Wilson "said he could not verify the claim." What actually happened, according to the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was that Wilson returned from Niger and reported to the CIA that Niger's former Prime Minister had confirmed that in 1999, an emissary from Saddam Hussein made an overture that the Prime Minister interpreted as an attempt to buy uranium. (The claim that was made about Niger was that Iraq tried to buy uranium there, not that it succeeded.) Six months later, Wilson lied about his mission to Niger in an op-ed in the New York Times that attacked President Bush. Wilson misrepresented what he learned in Niger, and what he told the CIA.

None of this is hard to figure out; it was all widely reported when the Intelligence Committee's report was issued in July 2004. There is no excuse for an AP reporter not knowing these basic facts.

Even more egregious, though perhaps less surprising, is Robert Kuttner's column in today's Boston Globe. Kuttner, an editor of The American Prospect, is a lefty, so his anti-Bush prejudice is no secret. Kuttner not only gets the facts wrong, he offers a conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Kuttner retails the myth of the heroic Joe Wilson, adding some embellishments of his own:

Plame's husband is former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who had undertaken a secret mission at the request of the CIA to investigate what proved to be a fake story about the government of Niger providing nuclear material to Saddam Hussein. The Niger story figured prominently in Bush's justification for war and his disparagement of UN weapons inspectors, even though it had already been disproven by Wilson's mission. Wilson, now retired, was so appalled at the administration's misuse of a discredited story that he went public with his information.

Just about every word of this paragraph is false, as the Intelligence Committee's report shows. But liberals seldom let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Kuttner continues:

The administration's leak to Novak, ''outing" Wilson's wife, Plame, was part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson. The administration line was that Plame supposedly suggested Wilson for the Niger assignment, though that allegation has never been confirmed.

Wrong again. The Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed--contrary to Joe Wilson's denials--recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. The report quotes Plame's memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations dated February 12, 2002, which said that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Why do prominent newspapers like the Boston Globe print op-eds by writers who don't know any facts?

Kuttner says "the administration" leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak as "part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson." This is dumb. First of all, Novak has already explained the context of the "leak." Many people wondered why the CIA sent such an unsuitable person as Joe Wilson on the Niger mission; someone in the administration explained to Novak that Wilson was selected because his wife worked for the Agency. Which, of course, turned out to be true.

But, in any event, why would that "discredit and punish Wilson"? The fact that his wife is a CIA employee doesn't discredit Wilson in the least. And her employment status is anything but a deep dark secret, as her subsequent Vanity Fair photo shoot demonstrated.

Kuttner now makes the real point of his column, titled "Politics Taints Probe of CIA Leak." His purpose is to libel U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald:

After Novak's column was published, Democrats in Congress demanded and got the administration to name a special counsel to investigate the leak. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. His deputy named Chicago US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, supposedly a man of high principle and unblemished reputation.

"Supposedly," indeed. Read Kuttner's diatribe carefully and see if you can spot any actual evidence supporting his libels of Fitzgerald.

One leading suspect of having leaked Plame's identity is the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Given how utterly Machiavellian Rove is, readers who take press reports of Fitzgerald's pristine independence at face value are touchingly naïve.

"Leading suspect"? Really? Based on what? No evidence is forthcoming. Then note the non sequitur. Rove's supposed "Machiavellian" nature shows that Fitzgerald can't be independent. Huh?

Given the stakes, do you really think this administration would let a Justice Department official just pick some highly independent prosecutor to launch a wide ranging probe -- one that could net Novak, a reliable administration toady, and the chummy high officials Novak talks to, say, Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney?

More slander, still no evidence. And, by the way, Novak is a frequent critic of the administration. And how in the world did Dick Cheney come into the picture? Kuttner is just making this stuff up as he goes along.

Nor is it an accident that this investigation, rather than fingering whoever inside the administration broke the law by outing Valerie Plame, is instead putting the squeeze on two news organizations that just happen to have been critical of the Bush administration, Time magazine and The New York Times, and by extension the entire press corps.

If you're going to serve up a conspiracy theory--without any evidence, of course--shouldn't the theory at least make some kind of sense? Kuttner's theory makes none. It is almost certain that no crime was committed by whoever told Novak (and, apparently, other reporters) that Plame works for the CIA. (Kuttner misstates the law, too.) No administration official has been fingered for talking to reporters. Fitzgerald has said that he is ready to wrap up his investigation, but for getting evidence from the two reporters. Let's suppose that it really was Karl Rove who told Novak that Plame was a CIA employee. Why would the administration want Fitzgerald to send reporters to jail to force them to reveal that fact? If the administration were pursuing its political interests, it would want the whole affair to die, and it would side with the reporters who want to take their "secret" to the grave. If Fitzgerald were serving the administration's political interests, he would defer to the reporters' assertion of privilege and conclude his investigation without identifying their sources.

All of this seems so obvious that one can only wonder what standards of evidence, logic and common sense the Boston Globe applies to its columnists.

[Hater Depot]

Tucker Carlson is full of it. The CIA itself referred the matter to the Department of Justice for investigation--thus the CIA, who would be expected to know Plame's covert status, believes a crime was committed.

Anyone arguing that no crime was committed because she wasn't on covert status pretty much is just BSing. I dont have any idea who did it, but this seems a clear case of somebody putting their personal or political interests ahead of the national one (especially considering her detail was WMD).

[fiveeagles]

Those are some serious charges.

Time will show, eh?

[The Bobster]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]