Foster resignation/Uranium claim/Blair (ex-CIA guy's comment on Dem. Now)

[AP]

Democracy Now did a long segment today on Rove's potential serious felony if he outed Wislon's wife (the law he might have violated was passed by Bush, pere after Bush suggested Agee was responsible for an agent's death in Greece).

One of the things Democracy Now talked about was the significance of the resignation of a CIA guy named Foster in the last couple of days. Apparently, this guy was responsible for keeping the Niger uranium claim out of a bunch of Bush speeches because, on its face, it was cleary untrue (they thought, perhaps, Mossad had forged the documents, and made them intentionally sloppy so that they wouldn't take the
blame). One of the reasons they knew it was a lie was because Hussein already had tons of yellow cake uranium, which is under lock and key of some international atomic energy commission in Iraq. (I don't get that logic, because, if it was under lock and key and he wanted it for weapons, then SH might go to the black market, no?)

So this Foster guy kept objecting, and then his supervisor at the CIA said don't worry, we're going to put it into the SOU address, and if there's blow back, "we're going to blame the British." So Foster withdrew his objections. However, he was shocked by the presentation of this information by Bush. He expected Bush to say something like "the British have received reports that..." Instead, Bush said "the British have learned..." Foster thought that there was such a qualitative difference between these two characterizations -- the latter presumes the information is true -- that he quit the CIA. Presumably, he couldn't, in good conscience, keep working for an administration that would lie to him and to the public.

To me, this raises another issue that Democracy Now didn't address. It has been my feeling that Blair didn't have a choice about going into Iraq. To look after the interests of Europe and Britain, he had to. If he didn't, Britains economy would have been sabotaged by the US, and the media would have been relentless in its criticism of Blair (they would have said that he has diminished Britain's authority in the world). Blair would have been gone, and Labour destroyed for 15 years. That's what I think, anyway.

Now, I think it's very revealing that Foster was told that the British were going to be blamed. I think you can draw a straight line through that data point, and right on through Gilligan's crappy reporting, and David Kelly's phone calls to the NY Times reporter (what's her name/Maureen Dowd?) and through the spin on the Hutton investigation, and you see the same pattern. The US is trying to destroy Blair and the Labour Party with this Iraq stuff.

Furthermore, I would bet that the Niger document was intentionally sloppy so that it would be easier for Blair to take the fall. The forger would have known that either Blair was going to keep Britian out, and fall, or would go in, and they'd need to discredit him for going in.

One of the more interesting things that have happened in the last couple months since the invasion, in this respect, was that meeting the British (Jack Straw, specifically) had arranged to negotiate a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The British were going to convert some of the authority they leveraged by going into Iraq into negotiating a peace settlement. Israel denied visas for all the Palestinians invited at the last minute. Straw was pissed. Is this one of the reasons Mossad doesn't like Labor?

[xchrom]

1. blair's ego

is the only thing that got blair into trouble. bushco didn't have the time and probably not the energy to expend sabotaging britain's economy -- they had 9-11, enron, a bad economy all hankering for the rovian touch.
blair went along to get some good old fashioned glory -- and it didn't happen.

[AP]

2. The CIA told Foster, "don't worry, we're going to blame the British"

That doesn't sound like sabotage to you?

YOu don't think they were going to sabotage Blair either way Blair went?

[dfong63]

4. yeah, so Neville Chamberlain was right, too

remember him? the guy who made the deal with Hitler. Chamberlain knew that Germany was going to attack Britain anyway, so he "had to" go along with the Czechoslovakia deal. Chamberlain was right, and Churchill was all wet.

i'd love to see Blair use your excuse. man, how i would love that.

[AP]

8. Britain had a lot of problems which made that one of their

only options. I could be wrong about this, but I think the British had expanded their empire too far, and couldn't get their Navy back and really had no choice. I might have this totally wrong, but I believe I read something about how Chamberlain's problem wasn't so much that he appeased when he didn't have to, but that they had been so unstrategic, and caught up with idea of empire that they didn't take the threat seriously (compared to WWI, when Churchill was Sec of the Navy and instantly brought all the ships home to fight Germany).

I'm afraid I have this mixed up. I might have to check the books.

But you think Blair looks like Chamberlain because he went into Iraq and appeased Bush? Can you imagine if he didn't go into Iraq and the Murdoch and the BBC ran a campaign casting him as the isolationist willing to allow Britain's roll in global affairs diminish? Top that off with the kind of economic sabotage the US normally reserves for contries like Chile and Venezuela, and it'd be the end of labor.

Let me emphasize again what the CIA said. "Don't worry we're going to blame the British."

[MoonAndSun]

3. If the US had plans to sabotage the UK and Blair knew about it,

(and I do believe he knew up front about what bush* was up to) then he should have had the guts to stand up and say in front of the whole world what the bush* junta was trying to do. Instead he went along with all the lies, he is as much to blame as bush*. I do not give Blair a pass on this at all.

[AP]

6. Murdoch would have destroyed Blair if that happend. That's why Blair

has to do what he does.

People don't understand how institutionally and socially conservative the UK is. The rich run the whole country. The best Blair can do is shift wealth to the middle class and pray that soon, a middle class will form and stand as a bulwark against the fascism of the Tory Party and their cronies. (Most Tories, and their arms dealer friends think Pinochet was a great guy, by the way...those are the people who ran the country until 97.)

Not only that, the rest of Europe would have hated Blair forever.

Blair is the best politician among them and had the safest seat (his next election is in 96, and he had a huge margin over the tories). I don't doubt that he was called upon by less safe leaders (remember Schroeder's narrow margin of victory?) to be Europe's eyes and ears in Iraq, and to be America's conscience. I think it was courageous to do what he has done. Anything else would have been a disservice to the people of Britain and Europe.

It's ugly and hard this way, but at least he has a fighting chance of keeping the ship steady and guiding it into a more progessive, liberal port.

[Stephanie]

5. Did they NAME Rove?

I haven't seen any reporting that it was Rove except what we found from the Inslee forum. Did they say Rove?

[AP]

7. I can't remember if they named him as the source. His name

definitely came up, but I don't think they made the allegation point blank. They're very professional on Democracy, Now.

[Postman]

9. Wilson made a statement somewhat along the lines of....

"I hope I see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in hand cuffs"...Wilson thinks it was Rove who outed his wife.

The Democracy Now program today was a blockbuster....