It isn't about outing Valerie Plame . . .

[flamin lib]

It’s not about Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson.

It’s about Brewster Jennings and Associates.

Somewhere in the soap opera that passes for news today the whole point of covert operations got lost amid the drama of a pretty blond girl lost in Aruba.

Brewster Jennings was a front company for the CIA. It was once a real company with a history and offices and employees and a listing on Dunn & Bradstreet. It went the way of many companies and almost died a natural death. Then the CIA stepped in and took over. BJ&A had offices world wide and had access to people the CIA needed in its mission to monitor the distribution and development of weapons of mass destruction.

Brewster Jennings became a CIA cover in the mid 1990’s. It was killed ten years later when the name of Valerie Plame and the front company she worked for was published by Robert Novak. On that day offices of Brewster Jennings and the people who worked in those offices around the world and in hostile countries were exposed as spies.

We will never know how many people were compromised beyond Valerie Plame-Wilson. Dozens? Hundreds? How many people does it take to operate a world wide network of offices? How many were deep cover CIA operatives? How many were simple, everyday citizens just going to work each day? How many died because they were employed by a company exposed as a CIA front working on weapons of mass destruction in countries like Iran and North Korea?

We will never know because the CIA can’t and won’t talk about it.

We do know that because the President had a fit of pique he selectively de-classified information that started a chain of events which lead to the destruction of Brewster Jennings & Associates, a world wide CIA covert operation.

Sorry, Valerie, it isn’t about you. It’s about hubris, arrogance and self centered adolescent indulgence that puts personal vengeance above the security of the United States and the world at large.

It’s about George Bush.

It’s about treason.

[alpizzy]

1. Mind if I email this to a few friends? n/t

[flamin lib]

3. Feel free. My goal in life is to have something I wrote emailed

back to me as part of someone's group list . . .

[alpizzy]

8. Thanks!!

Hope it makes it full circle!

[PurityOfEssence]

2. It's not just vengeance

Joe Wilson pointed this out: it's about warning others to keep their mouths shut.

More than just revenge against Wilson and an attempt to discredit him in a typical conservative way by saying that the only way he got a job was through his wife--thus making him a sissy and a laughingstock--the real reason was to send a shot across the bow of the entire intelligence community. These are careerists who would have their entire careers ruined if they were to speak out.

You're right, though: it's shocking how the petty recklessness of this little nobody can cause such huge and dangerous changes, and it's REALLY shocking how complicit the government and the media is in covering for him.

[Kagemusha]

4. I hate to keep putting it like this but

Bush *is* the decider when it comes to deciding if the cost of blowing, or potentially blowing, Brewster Jennings' operational cover was worth massaging the public's knowledge of the case for the Iraq war to maintain public support for it and the larger War on Terror. He decided that this was for the good of the nation, however misguided or mistaken others may believe that to be. It is not treason to exercise the powers granted you by the people who elected you in the course of your official duties in the honest belief that you are performing the greater good. Lend-Lease was not treason. Bay of Pigs was not treason. I could go on, but there's no point.

It's not treason, it's subordinating intelligence to politics because politics is deemed more vital to national security than intelligence. Bush made a trade-off, and certainly at the time, he got what he wanted: deniability that the case for war was founded on clinging to stories that were not credible to real experts and parading them to the nation as certain truth. That was more important to him than Brewster Jennings, Plame's cover, any of it. That is his decision as Commander in Chief, as the nation that elected him discovers to its sorrow. It's just not treason, however. That word has no place under these circumstances.

Edit: Not that Bush is owning up to having made such a decision. If he did, Libby might get off even without a pardon. What fuels the case against him and the investigation in general is the idea that Bush's officials abused their positions of power by using their authority in a rogue, unauthorized manner by virtue of Bush having not admitted granting them such authority. If Bush simply laid out before Fitzgerald and the public at large that Libby was operating at his direct behest in committing this leak, citing the inherent power of the presidency, a mere federal prosecutor or a mere federal court of law would be hard pressed to take the matter beyond that point, since only Congress can remove a President for acts he commits in his official capacity while in office. (Note the words "official capacity" - if the President orders a terrorist slain without charges laid, without evidence sworn, it is not at all considered murder under American law.) Only because Bush has not admitted to giving Cheney and Libby approval to shred the nation's intelligence assets in pursuit of political goals he deems more important to national security has this investigation gone on this long.

It may not be treason *per se*, just as the above example is not murder *per se*, but that in no way means it's a good thing.

I point this out because I agree with so much of the original poster's argument, esp. this being about George W. Bush, not Plame as an individual citizen or operative. But it's to do with Bush as President of the United States and the use and abuse of the power he is granted by that position.

[peacetalksforall]

6. No one has written about the deal behind the deal.

B-J tracked wmd, specifically nuclear, and with much to do about Iran.

Cheney and buddies traded with Iran - have sold essential parts and properties to build nuclear 'products'.

It appears Cheney makes money on the side trafficking in wmd if you can believe all the articles that are out there.

No, it's not just Plame-Wilson and an act of revenge.

Yes, it is politics.

Yes, it is Brewster-Jennings.

But, what lies below the water line?

The question is, the issue is - what was Brewster-Jennings involved in?

Does anyone disagree that perhaps Cheney gained by shutting Brewster-Jennings down. Does anyone hold open the possibility that while we are all focused on who informed Cheney about the identity of Plame, that he was also first learning about what the CIA cover-up firm was doing.

In other words, he had at least two agendas.

Create the justification (lies - truth if possible) for going into Iraq according to the PNAC plan.

Continue to make money on the side and deal with a known trader (Khan) and even sell to your next enemy (Iran).

And why is Iran buying from these people?

Ignore all these words if you believe there is nothing behing all the articles written about his involvement in nuclear 'items' and Khan and Iran.

[SeattleVet]

5. Brewster Jennings? Oh, the irony of it all!

BushCo is in trouble over a 'BJ'

[BoneDaddy]

7. lol

That made me spit a bit of water on the keyboard, thanks for the laugh, hehe. Bush has his own BJ now, lol.

[July]

9. BUSH'S BJ -- That would be a GREAT title to an article on this company.

Come on, DU writers, Will Pitt et al.?

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Complete speculation

You have no idea what Brewster jennings did, nor do you have any evidence that anyone was killed or even compromised. You're writing a spy novel here, but at least be decent enough to identify it as fiction. Otherwise, Oprah might get mad at you.

[flamin lib]

11. You're entitled to your opinion.

Everything I've mentioned has appeared in MSM outlets.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Yeah huh

Like I said, speculation.