I'm sorry - but I'm just having a laugh riot looking at the articles that are being posted on the freeper board about the Wilson Affair.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/992697/postsWe've been knocking our heads trying to figure out how a minor and well-known story about an alleged CIA "outing" has suddenly blossomed into a Beltway scandal-ette. The light bulb went off reading Monday's White House press briefing.
Right out of the box, Helen Thomas asked if "the President tried to find out who outed the CIA agent? And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?" OK, the point of this exercise is to get President Bush to fire someone. But whom? That answer became clear when the press corps quickly uttered, and kept uttering for nearly an hour, the name "Karl Rove."
Of course! The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the President's political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target.
....If they can take down Mr. Rove, the lead planner for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, they will have knocked the props out of his Presidency.
The political goals must be paramount here because the substance of the story is so flimsy. The law against revealing the names of covert CIA agents was passed in 1982 as a reaction against leaks by Philip Agee and other hard-left types whose goal was to undermine CIA operations around the world.
.....An avowed opponent of war with Iraq, Mr. Wilson was somehow hired as a consultant by the CIA to investigate a claim made by British intelligence about yellowcake uranium sought in Niger by Iraqi agents. Though we assume he signed the routine CIA confidentiality agreement, Mr. Wilson blew his own cover to denounce the war and attack the Bush Administration for lying. Never mind that the British still stand by their intelligence, and that the CIA's own October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, since partly declassified, lent some credence to the evidence.
This is the context in which Mr. Novak was told that Mr. Wilson had been hired at the recommendation of his wife, a CIA employee. This is hardly blowing a state secret but is something the public had a right to know.
.....In any event, Mrs. Wilson was not an agent in the field but is ensconced at Langley headquarters. It remains far from clear that any law was violated.
The real intelligence scandal is how an open opponent of the U.S. war on terror such as Mr. Wilson was allowed to become one of that policy's investigators. That egregious CIA decision echoes what has obviously been a long-running attempt by anonymous "intelligence sources" quoted in the media to undermine the Bush policy toward Iraq.
...At least we can be thankful that Democrats buried the independent counsel statute during the Clinton years. "Leak" investigations are notoriously fruitless in any case and typically a waste of Justice Department resources.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
