Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

posted by David Corn on 10/22/2007 @ 11:45pm

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Four and a half years ago, after reading the Robert Novak column that outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative specializing in counter-proliferation work, I wrote an article in this space noting that this particular leak from Bush administration officials might have been a violation of a federal law prohibiting government officials from disclosing information about clandestine intelligence officers and (perhaps worse) might have harmed national security by exposing anti-WMD operations. That piece was the first to identify the leak as a possible White House crime and the first to characterize the leak as evidence that within the Bush administration political expedience trumped national security.

The column drew about 100,000 visitors to this website in a day or so. And--fairly or not--it's been cited by some as the event that triggered the Plame hullabaloo. I doubt that the column prompted the investigation eventually conducted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, for I assume that had my column not appeared the CIA still would have asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak as a possible crime. But now that Fitzgerald's investigation is long done, the Scooter Libby spin-off is over (thanks to George W. Bush's total commutation of Libby's sentence), and Valerie Wilson has finally published her account, it seems a good time to say, I was right. And to add, where's the apology?

From the start, neocons and conservative backers of the war dismissed the Plame leak and subsequent scandal as a big nothing. Some even claimed that somehow former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and I had cooked up the episode to ensnare the White House. (Oh, to be so devilishly clever--and to be so competent.) But these attempts to belittle the affair (and to belittle Valerie Wilson) were based on nothing but baseless spin. As was--no coincidence--the Iraq war. In fact, the Wilson imbroglio was something of a proxy war for the debate over the war itself. In the summer of 2003, when the Plame affair broke, those in and out of government who had misled the nation into the war saw the need to spin their way out of the Wilson controversy in order to protect the false sales pitch they had used to win public support for the invasion of Iraq.

First they attacked Joe Wilson when he disclosed that he had gone to Niger in February 2002 for the CIA and had reported back that the allegation Saddam Hussein had been uranium-shopping there was highly dubious. Then when Valerie Wilson's CIA identity was exposed during the get-Wilson campaign, they pooh-poohed the leak. They subsequently spent years doing so. Here's a brief list of Plame attacks I've published before:

* On September 29, 2003, former Republican Party spokesman Clifford May wrote that the July 14, 2003 Robert Novak column that disclosed Valerie Wilson's CIA connection "wasn't news to me. I had been told that--but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

* On September 30, 2003, National Review writer Jonah Goldberg huffed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."

* On October 1, 2003, Novak wrote, "How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA....[A]n unofficial source at the agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations."

* On July 17, 2005, Republican Representative Roy Blunt, then the House majority leader, said on Face the Nation, "This was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA, and she went to that office every day."

* On February 18, 2007, as the Libby trial was under way, Republican lawyer/operative Victoria Toensing asserted in The Washington Post, "Plame was not covert."

* In his recently published memoirs, Novak wrote of Valerie Wilson, "She was not involved in clandestine activities. Instead, each day she went to CIA headquarters in Langley where she worked on arms proliferation."

A year ago, in our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Michael Isikoff and I disclosed for the first time that Valerie Wilson was operations chief at the Joint Task Force on Iraq of the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA's clandestine operations directorate. She was no paper-pusher or analyst, as Novak and others had said. She was in charge of covert operations on a critical front. (Isikoff and I detailed some of her work in the book.) As part of her job, she traveled overseas under cover. CBS News recently reported that it had confirmed she had also worked on operations designed to prevent Iran from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons. Ironic? Ask Dick Cheney.

And Valerie Wilson was not known about Washington as a spy. Though Cliff May has made this argument, in the years since the Novak column appeared, no one in Washington has come forward to say, "Oh yes, I knew about her before Novak outed her." In fact, Valerie Wilson was a mid-level, career CIA officer--there must be hundreds, if not thousands--and such people are (to be frank) not usually on the radar screen of Washington insiders. They are not known regulars on the D.C. cocktail circuit, such as it is. Ask Sally Quinn.

For her part, Valerie Wilson, who left the CIA at the end of 2005, has only recently been able to challenge the purposefully misleading descriptions of her CIA tenure. Appearing before the House government oversight and reform committee in March, she testified the she was a "covert officer" who had helped to "manage and run operations." She said that prior to the Iraq invasion she had "raced to discover intelligence" on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions," she said under oath, "to find vital intelligence." She noted that she could "count on one hand" the number of people outside the CIA who knew of her spy work.

On Sunday, as she launched her new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, she appeared on 60 Minutes and repeated her case. Though the CIA has absurdly prevented her from acknowledging that she worked for the agency prior to 2002--she started there in 1985--Wilson told Katie Couric, "Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys basically did not get nuclear weapons." After her name appeared in the Novak column, she said, "I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, 'Did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Well, who did she see?'...It puts in danger, if not shuts down, the operations that I had worked on."

What damage was actually done by the leak remains a secret. On 60 Minutes, Valerie Wilson said a damage assessment was conducted by the CIA but that she never saw it. She added, "I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask them how they're doing, although I would have liked to have." That damage report has not been leaked. Nor has it been a subject of congressional interest--as far as one can publicly tell. in 2003, the Democrats in Congress who cared about the Plame leak were obsessed with calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor. That fixation proved to be a mistake. A special prosecutor could only focus on criminal matters and could only disclose information necessary for a prosecution--rules that Patrick Fitzgerald would stick by. The Democrats never pushed for a congressional investigation that could have examined (and perhaps made public, even if in a limited fashion) key issues in the case, such as the consequences of the leak. Valerie Wilson said to Couric that the damage was "serious." The public ought to know if this is so. (When I once asked Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, if he had any intention of probing the Plame leak, he said he no interest in doing so.)

In trying to spin their way out of the CIA leak mess, the neocon gang made much of the fact (again, first revealed by Isikoff and me) that Richard Armitage, who was the No. 2 at the State Department and a neocon-hating Iraq war skeptic, was the administration official who initially told Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. But the Plamegate deniers often ignore the inconvenient truth that White House aide Karl Rove--during the White House campaign to undermine Joe Wilson--confirmed this classified information for Novak and also passed the same leak to Matt Cooper, then of Time. (It was only because Cooper's editors at the newsmagazine did not care about Wilson's wife that Novak published the leak first.) Libby and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer also shared information about Wilson's wife and her CIA connection with reporters. This was all part of the White House effort to tarnish Wilson by making it seem as if his trip to Niger had been nothing but a nepotistic junket. And as testimony and documents presented at the Libby trial showed, Vice President Cheney had been driving the pushback effort and had early on learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA employment and then conveyed that information to Libby.

Yes, this was a case of putting politics (getting Joe Wilson) ahead of national security concerns (such as protecting the identity and operations of a CIA officer working the WMD beat).

It is true that at the end of the day, no one was charged with a crime for leaking information on Valerie Wilson. Patrick Fitzgerald decided that he could not prove in court--as he would have to under the law--that the leakers knew that Valerie Wilson was a covert officer. But Fitzgerald did pursue Libby and Rove for possibly lying to FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the leak. He nabbed Libby but, after much consideration, opted not to indict Rove.

Still, Rove was caught in a lie. Toward the start of the Plame affair, the White House declared that Rove was not involved in the leak, and Bush indicated that anyone who had leaked classified information would be dismissed. But the White House statement regarding Rove was false (probably because Rove had misled White House press secretary Scott McClellan). Bush's promise was false, too, for Rove remained Bush's master strategist even after Isikoff published an email showing that Rove had leaked classified information about Valerie Wilson to Cooper.

The bottom line: this episode demonstrated that the Bush White House was not honest (the vice president's chief of staff was even convicted of lying to law enforcement officials), that top Bush officials had risked national security for partisan gain, and that White House champions outside the government would eagerly hurl false accusations to defend the administration.

So is anyone apologizing? For ruining Valerie Wilson's career? For perhaps endangering operations and agents? For lying about the leak? For misleading the public about Rove's role? For placing spin above the truth? Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons. But no one else involved has. And no one--not Bush, not Cheney, not their aides, not their neocon confederates--has admitted any wrongdoing in this saga.

It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to.

******

A FAREWELL: This is my last "Capital Games" article for The Nation. After twenty years of representing The Nation in Washington--and five years of writing this web column--I am leaving the magazine to become chief of Mother Jones' new seven-person Washington bureau. It's been an honor to be part of America's oldest political weekly and to write for you. I hope you continue to read and support The Nation--and that you also check out the work I do for Mother Jones. You can read my farewell letter to The Nation here. And a reminder: I will continue to blog at www.davidcorn.com, which is about to become part of an expanded and redesigned CQ.com. Thank you for all the clicks.

Comments (234)

David,

I don't doubt you believe everything you penned here to be true to the best of your knowledge, with minimal spin!

From the other side, it's hard to imagine anyone involved, from Armitage on down, knew they were exposing a CIA operative who many (including me) still don't believe was a Covert Agent under the law as drafted & intended by Victoria T.; she is that convincing of a voice!

Looking back and going in full circle, as I said so long ago at your blog, Joe Wilson was just plain dumb to expect no fallout...which would certainly drag the CIA (that sent him to Niger) and his wife's role into this "hullabaloo"! Unless of course, he planned the whole thing (and you just happened to pick up on this story).

Where you spun wrong is here:

.....these attempts to belittle the affair (and to belittle Valerie Wilson) were based on nothing but baseless spin. As was--no coincidence--the Iraq war.

By comparing the Plame Hullabaloo to the Iraq War lead up. The entire Western world (+ Russia) was in on the Iraq War since all held similar intelligence and belief that Saddam had WMDs!

The one thing you seem to be totally correct, is that Rove stayed in the WH despite having been involved in the post-Armitage phase of the leak....OK, so Bush broke a promise to protect/keep a needed adviser!

Posted by Happy at 10/23/2007 @ 12:16am
Thank you, David Corn! This is sad news, but it sounds like a step up, in a capitalist I'll-Be-Managing-a-Bureau kind of way. Loved the part of your linked farewell about the need for fact-based reporting on political and policy developments. As for Springsteen, he's a swell guy, but you're better off being yourself.

Posted by RLawrence at 10/23/2007 @ 12:28am
"(including me) still don't believe was a Covert "

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Happless going out on the delusional note.

HA!

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/23/2007 @ 01:09am
The entire Western world (+ Russia) was in on the Iraq War since all held similar intelligence and belief that Saddam had WMDs!

Posted by HAPPY 10/23/2007 @ 12:16am

What does being "in on the Iraq war" mean? Of "the entire Western world", only the US of A and its pet poodle were major players in the war. Most of the other major nations of the Western world - and Russia - were staunchly opposed to the village idiot's misadventure and had misgivings on the evidence re WMDs. There has to be a limit to what spin Republicans will put on the war retrospectively.

Posted by oneworld at 10/23/2007 @ 01:20am
I can only imagine when Wilson's report came out, Mr. Cheney getting so irate that his carefully designed plan to get us into war was going to fail. It is not hard to deduct from then how the whole machinery of the Administration went on to get Wilson on "what it takes" on his 'authenticity', political bias, and of course nepotism.

If Valerie Wilson had been primarily an office employee I think that the CIA would had intervened to discredit Ms Wilson, specially when she declared in Congress. Ms. Wilson would also had been more free to comment on some of her reponsibilities, still it is a pity that there is so much classified information in this case but I am sure that 20 years from now (and for the judgment of history), all the nation will be sure as I am now) that this was only vile political persecution.

I wish you the best luck in your future endeavorments.

Posted by Frank42 at 10/23/2007 @ 03:06am
Mr Corn, end of the day and end of the paperback run of "Hubris", right or wrong, it still adds up to one thing--

"It is true that at the end of the day, no one was charged with a crime for leaking information on Valerie Wilson. Patrick Fitzgerald decided that he could not prove in court--as he would have to under the law--that the leakers knew that Valerie Wilson was a covert officer. But Fitzgerald did pursue Libby and Rove for possibly lying to FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the leak. He nabbed Libby but, after much consideration, opted not to indict Rove."

Libby only and he gets pardoned. End of story. Sorry, but I think a smart guy could have seen that coming a long time ago.

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 07:23am
So as it turns out, Valerie was also working on keeping nukes out of the hands of the Iranians, at whom Cheney wants to lob tactical nukes, over the issue of nukes.

Did Darth Dick just lash out at the Wilsons without considering the ramifications?

Or did he intentionally sabotage a program designed to neuter his best reason for attack?

We're gonna be a long time cleaning up after these assholes...

Posted by bwindrip at 10/23/2007 @ 07:33am
Plame was not covert and her husband was an idiot for outing her ..

And now they live the life of luxury in Sante Fa, home of all out agents...

A load of crapp, Korn, standing with shovel in his hands and shit bon his shoes.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 12:36am |

The delusions continue.

FACT: Plame WAS COVERT. JOMA, if you have ANY proof to the contrary I would love to see it. PONTIFICUS has made this claim for a year, and has been unable to produce a shred of evidence to back himself up. Her boss said she was covert, the DOJ said she was covert.

did you support the war JOMA? did you support the war because of wmd's and terrorism? If so, you SHOULD be outraged over this planned outing of a CIA operative for political reasons. If you are not, then you are a partisan hack, like Happy and POnti. So worked up over non-existent wmd's, then willing to ignore someone trying to keep real threats under control. You are a sheep, believing only what you are told to believe.

Just think, the propaganda arm of Chmpco has you believing falsehoods over facts. Are you proud of yourselves for allowing the ministry of misinformation to lead you? did you believe in the wmd's that were never there? did you believe in connections between Saddam and Al Qaida that were never there? Did you believe the war would be quick and the Iraqis would welcome a Christian army into their country? Do you think Plame was not covert?

these are all falsehoods, why do you continue to believe in falsehoods? Because Bush told you? Foolsall.

3800 soldiers are dead because of you. Hope you sleep well in your ignorance, I am sure you do.

Plame was doing her job protecting you fools from your feared wmd's. ChimpCO outed her for political gain. They helped degrade national security for political gain, period. To deny this is absolute nonsense.

MASK, it is not over, because people like me will continue to question our reps about why national security was put at risk and why did congress roll over and play dead. You really need to fix this attitude of "ooohh nothing will ever change". Things change, it may take time, but the world progresses if people don;t take your attitude and keep pushing. If we lived as you suggest we would still be sitting blacks in the back of the bus.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/23/2007 @ 08:04am
Mr. Corn, you will be missed.

Hope to still hear you on the Dianne Rehm show putting Tony Blankley in East St. Louis headlocks with the truth. Squeeze these neo-con fools till their heads pop.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/23/2007 @ 08:07am
Maybe today will be the day PONTIFLOGIC comes through with his secret list of dems involved in a witch hunt, and his secret proof that the CIA and DOJ missed that shows Plame was not covert. Then we can pass this info on the our guvt so they know all about it.

Is today your day, PONTI? Or is today the day you admit you were took by ChimpCo? The day you wake up and see that your beliefs are based on lies and falsehoods.

try reality , you might like it.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/23/2007 @ 08:12am
Plame: "President Bush is NOT a man of his word".

Crab: "Bush is a lying sack of crap." Cheney should be in chains with a waterboard close by. After all, it' just like a fraternity prank, no big deal.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/23/2007 @ 08:14am
Of course all that happened under a 12-year reptile controlled congress. Now that the DoJ has been rescued from its GOP Gestapo makeover, we'll see how far special prosecutors will take investigations into Frito/hsuB/cHeney's corruptions. (Er, and where was Frito when all this was hapening...)

Er, and what's the statute of limitations on obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit mass murder/lying us to war, treason, pilfering our treasury, ...

Posted by hsuBfools at 10/23/2007 @ 08:24am
Splendid work, CRABWALK, in dismantling JOMA's nonsensical spasms that are truly elephantine bowel movements -- even by JOMA's heinous standards. And also for performing the same cleansing against POL POT PONTI in his black pajama/Year Zero phase on the same topic.

Now, my turn: JOMA claims to have swung "million dollar deals". But with the non-existant intellect that he exhibits here, and with the anti-individualistic desire to be purely doctrinaire, he implicitly expresses a symbiotic wish to morph completely into a mewling mass of ditthohead clones. It is obvious that JOMA is hallucinating over the fryer as he mops his low-set brow of the copious sweat and grease that settles there.

His "million dollar deal" is just that -- if denominated in "metric dollars" that exchange for real USDs at the rate of "a dolar three-eighty" per million. Now, we see plainly that JOMA's "deal" is actually making change for a fiver for a large fries and medium coke.

Plame was not covert and her husband was an idiot for outing her ... A load of crapp, Korn, standing with shovel in his hands and shit bon his shoes.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 12:36am

Now for the authentic utterance right from JOMA's sphincter-like oral cavity:

baa-ahhhhhhhhh ba-aaahhhhhhhhh ba-aahhhhhhhhh ...

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/23/2007 @ 08:25am
MASK, it is not over, because people like me will continue to question our reps about why national security was put at risk and why did congress roll over and play dead.----Posted by CRABWALK 10/23/2007 @ 08:04am

Yeah...for the next 15 months. Then?...not so much if the Dem wins.

Sorry, CRAB. This story dies with the end of the Bush Admin., except as a "questions still remain" throwaway line until Dubya himself croaks of old age in the 2030s.

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 09:17am
Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 12:36am

that's ridiculous.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2007 @ 09:17am
Er, and what's the statute of limitations on obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit mass murder/lying us to war, treason, pilfering our treasury, ... ---Posted by HSUBFOOLS 10/23/2007 @ 08:24am

January 20th, 2009....when Madam President tells the nation that it's "time to leave the past behind, MOVE ON, and work on more important issues for our future" and even the saner elements of the Blogosphere say "Well, she's right. Atleast they're gone. Let's just make sure nobody LIKE them, ever gets power again!"

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 09:19am
Case Closed The truth about the Iraqi-Niger "yellowcake" nexus. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Tuesday, July 25, 2006, at 12:46 PM ET Slate.com

'Now that Joseph and Valerie Wilson's fantasies of having been persecuted by high officials in the administration have been so thoroughly dispelled by Robert Novak (and now that it seems the prosecutor has determined that there was no breach of the relevant laws to begin with), we may return to the more important original question. Was there good reason to suppose that Iraqi envoys visited Niger in search of "yellowcake" uranium ore?

In a series of columns, I have argued that the answer to this is "yes," and that British intelligence was right to inform Washington to that effect. Iraq--despite having yellowcake of its own--had bought the material from Niger as early as 1981 and had not at that time informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (weapons inspectors effectively stopped Iraq's domestic yellowcake production after 1991). On Oct. 31, 1998, Iraq announced the end of its cooperation with the U.N. inspectors, who were effectively barred from the country. A few days later, the U.N. Security Council condemned this move in Resolution 1205, dated Nov. 5, 1998. The following month, the Clinton administration ordered selective strikes in and around Baghdad. A few weeks after that--on Feb. 8, 1999, to be precise--an Iraqi delegation visited Niger. It was headed by the improbable figure of Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. But the improbability becomes more intelligible when it is understood that this diplomat, Wissam al-Zahawie by name, was a very experienced Iraqi envoy for nuclear-related matters.

I shall quote here, with his permission, from a letter I have received from Ambassador Rolf Ekeus. Ambassador Ekeus, currently high commissioner for national minority questions for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, is a founder of the renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, has been Sweden's envoy both to the United Nations and the United States, and won great acclaim for his effective defanging of Iraq when he was the first chairman of UNSCOM after the first Gulf War in 1992. (When it was proposed 10 years later that the U.N. inspectors be sent back to Iraq, Kofi Annan actually renominated Ekeus for the job but was overruled by France and Russia, who wanted the more conciliatory Hans Blix.) Ekeus writes to me as follows, having known Zahawie in a professional capacity and having read the posting, apparently from him, in Slate's "Fray":

"One of my colleagues remembers Zahawie as Iraq's delegate to the IAEA General Conference during the years 1982-84. One item on the agenda was the diplomatic and political fall-out of Israel's destruction of the Osirak reactor (a centerpiece of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions). Zahawie in his response [to Slate] appears to confirm that he was Iraq's delegate, though not the Permanent delegate, to the IAEA (the General Conference) and therefore clearly not foreign to the nuclear issues, especially as he was the under-secretary of the foreign ministry selected by Baghdad to represent Iraq on the most sensitive issue, the question of Iraq's nuclear weapons ambitions. His participation as leader of the Iraqi delegation to the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference merely confirms his standing as Iraq's top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues. [italics mine]" ...'

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 09:19am
Libby only and he gets pardoned. End of story. Sorry, but I think a smart guy could have seen that coming a long time ago.

Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 07:23am

people have got to try mask.

if you always say it'll never work, it'll never work.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2007 @ 09:20am
Why does Frita know that it's all over? Because she was right about her Frito not going down. Because Frita was right about Pelosi taking impeachment off the table for her Frito, just before Pelosi put it on the table for Frito. And now that Frito is looking at a special prosecutor, Frita looks all the more like she going on to a record of being... wrong.

Posted by hsuBfools at 10/23/2007 @ 09:23am
btw

thanks for the hard work, mr. corn

good luck

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2007 @ 09:28am
ah the fascist enablers love the denying...

great work, david. best of luck.

Posted by ibbleblibble at 10/23/2007 @ 10:06am
Corn was nothing but a Woodward and Bernstein wannabee---He is just upset that the President didn't resign or impeachment did not take place---this means his place in history is lost---no movie deals----just his book Hubris---by the way maybe that was the correct title for a book by David Corn---Sorry David---the big scandal that you thought would bring down a Presidency will be nothing more than a footnote in history and your name will probably never be mentioned.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/23/2007 @ 10:15am
Scooter Libby unlike Bill Clinton, actually convicted of lying in court - to cover up crimes committed by his boss.

Brewster Jennings, the CIA front company, got exposed. Republican Conservatives said, "Get Novak out there, we gotta get revenge on Joe Wilson's wife, because the man told the truth".

Here are Conservatives, punishing a man's wife for telling the truth. Perjuring themselves - and all Joe Wilson did was tell the truth. Joe Wilson was only telling the truth. George Bush was lying about the yellowcake from Niger, because George Bush was hell-bent to invade Iraq.

Of course Bush was ready to pardon anyone convicted in a cover-up. This was serious. Someone told the truth to the American people. George Bushs actions, through Robert Novak, exposing a CIA operator and a CIA front company - then pardoning those ensared in a cover-up investigation - were carried out to get even with a man's wife because he told the truth to Americans.

Democrats, this is who you're dealing with. QUIT with the fuccken bi-partisanship. Americans are tired of you guys "reaching across the aisle". Americans are tired of this Jesus-Christ attitude towards these Authoritarians who are starting wars and training their death squads, denying little kids the medical care they need, and they are building their concentration camps.

Pelosi, we want to see you get pissed off, and if you don't, nothing less is going to look authentic. When there is a crisis we expect you to act like it - not act like it's over your head - but act as though you have appropriate emotions, such as anger when it is appropriate. You Democrats are acting like a bunch of Jesus-Christs, and we don't want victory in the hereafter, after these Authoritarians turn their death squads and their waterboarding against Americans while you just stand there and shake their hand. GET TOUGH.

Posted by conshame at 10/23/2007 @ 10:19am
Sweet Jesus - the ability of these fools to overlook treason and lying. My God, what has this country become?

Facts are facts, Neo-Con Howling Monkey Dead-Enders.

Plame was covert.

Cheney is a lying piece of cowardly trash.

Rove is a scumbag, and his wife is now fair game.

Get over it guys, you got screwed by your hero's, and they damaged the security of this country with their traitorous acts.

Now be a good citizen, and denounce them for the scoundrels and cheats that they are.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 10:28am
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZthat Valerie Plame is hot..zzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by davebarlett at 10/23/2007 @ 10:48am
Cliff May was the appointed hitman on Wilson. But he started much earlier than you noted.

Here is the first hit on Wilson from May

He [Wilson] was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions -- and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.

[...]

In other words, Wilson is no disinterested career diplomat -- he's a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind. And too many in the media are helping him and allies grind it.

Cliff May 7/11/03 [nationalreview.com]

Posted by pollyusa at 10/23/2007 @ 11:03am
Posted by DAVEBARLETT 10/23/2007 @ 10:50am

As an avowedly disloyal un-American sack of shit you have just declared yourself to be, your words have no more meaning that a fart in a whirlwind.

Now sod off, bugger.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 11:11am
Dr. Dumbass, you're hurting my feelings...............Well, back to work....... some of us aren't still at home, living off mom and dad.....

Posted by davebarlett at 10/23/2007 @ 11:37am
That Valerie Plame is hot and she has been outed? I'd like to see her in lesbian magazine

Posted by abell12ct at 10/23/2007 @ 12:09pm
The same ol' song and dance from the right, exemplified by Happy and others: "I've got my mind made up - don't confuse me with the facts."

Or in this case, they have their beliefs made up. But belief and faith in a bunch of nonsense CAN NEVER CHANGE FACTS.

The FACTS are there - I prefer to develop an informed opinion using facts, and leave the belief to the self delusional....

Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 10/23/2007 @ 12:11pm
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS 10/23/2007 @ 12:11pm

It would be funny except these fools VOTE.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 12:13pm
Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 10/23/2007 @ 09:20am

For a year, it was endless blog speculation that Fitzgerald would indict not only Rove, but CHENEY. Remember "Fitz-mas"? Nothing.

Then it was "Rove will be forced to testify and Fitz will get to ask him how he stole Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004!". Nothing.

Then it was "Libby will rat out Cheney and we'll get impeachment!". Nothing.

"Plame-gate" was practically "over" when Fitzgerald failed to indict Rove...or ANYBODY for actually outing Plame. Then it was just killing time until Bush pardoned Libby.

And Mr Corn ends his tenure here at "TN" with the last of a couple dozen articles on it, the same as it started. Nothing.

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 12:23pm
Posted by HSUBFOOLS 10/23/2007 @ 09:23am

Gee, HSUB. I guess in ONE WEEK, I'll be totally disproven, huh?

When Halloween comes and Pelosi, "secretly" pushing impeachment, finally gets those bills out of Conyers (also "secretly" for it) Committee....and then, just to take it off the front pages....Gore announces his "secret" campaign is over and he announces for Prez.

BTW, remember back when YOU thought "Plame-gate" would lead to impeachment?

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 12:26pm
Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 12:23pm

And when the truth no longer matters, we are all harmed by that.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 12:32pm
Citypages.com Issue -- September 19, 2007 One Man's Story: Philip Agee, Cuba, and the CIA By Rhena Tantisunthorn

'Much to the U.S. government's displeasure, in 1975 former CIA agent Philip Agee published his memoir, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, a chronicle of the inner workings of CIA operations in Central and South America where Agee was posted. The book reveals the identity of numerous CIA agents. In response, the outraged onetime CIA director and then-VP Bush Senior campaigned to pass the Intelligence Identity Protection Act (also known as the Anti-Agee Act) in 1982. In 1994, Barbara Bush joined the fray when, in her memoir, she blamed Agee for the death of an agent whose identity Agee had revealed in his book. Agee sued Mother Bush and the former First Lady pulled the accusation from later editions. Ironically, in 2003, critics of the Bush Junior White House were invoking the Intelligence Identity Protection Act in the Valerie Plame case. As Agee's presence on the national intelligence scene shows no signs of dwindling, the new documentary is sure to comment on more than just this one man's life.'

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 12:37pm
The FACTS are there - I prefer to develop an informed opinion using facts, and leave the belief to the self delusional....

Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS 10/23/2007 @ 12:11pm

Interesting you'd ignore the biggest fact, as stated by David Corn:

It is true that at the end of the day, no one was charged with a crime for leaking information on Valerie Wilson.

I rest my case!

Posted by Happy at 10/23/2007 @ 1:01pm
Nothing.

Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 12:23pm

I'm with you on this call!

Posted by Happy at 10/23/2007 @ 1:02pm
Facts are facts, Neo-Con Howling Monkey Dead-Enders.

Plame was covert.

Cheney is a lying piece of cowardly trash.

Rove is a scumbag, and his wife is now fair game.

Get over it guys, you got screwed by your hero's, and they damaged the security of this country with their traitorous acts.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 1:16pm
DR. Dumbass,

I guess mommie and daddie didn't show you enough attention as a child...better hope your boss doesn't catch you playing on the internet on his dime......

Posted by davebarlett at 10/23/2007 @ 1:20pm
Posted by DAVEBARLETT 10/23/2007 @ 1:20pm

Keep snivelling. I'm allowed. We're adults around here, and as a well trained highly skilled professional, I'm trusted.

And you are still a truth-denying Neo-Con Howling Monkey Dead-Ender, as well as a traitor, and a traitor-enabler.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 1:31pm
BTW, remember back when YOU thought "Plame-gate" would lead to impeachment?

Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 12:26pm

Er, what's the statute of limitations on treason, mass murder,...? None!?!?!? Since no one but Libby was tried, none of the new con supporters, services of dic'tator philosophy, can use that tired old 'piece of paper' that says something about a double jeopardy clause, right?!?!?

Oh, geeze, Frita just means that she 'wants' it to be over... Do you win something Frita, if you can make it all just magically go away? But yoiu can't, can you...

Posted by hsuBfools at 10/23/2007 @ 1:42pm
And you are still a truth-denying Neo-Con Howling Monkey Dead-Ender, as well as a traitor, and a traitor-enabler.

Posted by DR DECIBELS 10/23/2007 @ 1:31pm

I guess that would also apply to Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of Congress then as well.

David...you might want to re-release your book under the fiction category now, and introduce your hypotheses to a more receptive readership.

Posted by Sliver at 10/23/2007 @ 1:44pm
Dr. Dumbass, If I'm a howling monkey, what does that make you?

A monkey spanker? A well trained, highly skilled, professional one, of course....(heh,heh)

Don't be ashamed, it's honest work.........

Posted by davebarlett at 10/23/2007 @ 1:58pm
Posted by DAVEBARLETT 10/23/2007 @ 1:58pm

It makes me a bitch-slapping patriot.

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 2:00pm
"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another." ~ Lichtenberg

You can see in this case, that blind belief is a stretch for Happy. The logic is weak and the conviction strong. What we have here is a flat-earth devotee.

David, I don't doubt you believe everything you penned here to be true to the best of your knowledge, with minimal spin! From the other side, it's hard to imagine anyone involved, from Armitage on down, knew they were exposing a CIA operative who many (including me) still don't believe was a Covert Agent under the law as drafted & intended by Victoria T.; she is that convincing of a voice!

Posted by HAPPY 10/23/2007 @ 12:16am | ignore this person

Translated: I'm not calling you a cynical and deceptive liar, I'm just saying you're wrong and I'm right. (Corn's job is to research and write, Happy trades investments for profit. We're supposed to believe Happy has a bead on the truth? Right.)

Translated: I can't imagine Cheney, Libby, Rove or Armitage would ever intentionally out a CIA agent. Not even as retribution for discrediting the office of the Vice President's evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons? Namely mass quantities of Niger Uranium, even though OVP and CIA admitted the story was untrue and that they knew it was untrue before the State of the Union address? No retribution no shot across the bow for attempting to discredit a key piece of fraudulent information that discredited BushCo's case for war? No, Happy can't imagine it.

The current head of the CIA testified Plame was covert at the time she was outed by Novak in a sworn affidavit produced for Congress. Fitzgerald asserted the fact, uncontested as a fact by defense counsel, in his sentencing agreement. Still, Happy chooses to believe (belief) Victoria Toensing thereby making the head of the CIA and a USA Attorney and the judge in the case, all liars.

Beliefs. Nincompoop.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/23/2007 @ 2:05pm
'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel' - Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1775

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 2:05pm
Corn was nothing but a Woodward and Bernstein wannabee---He is just upset that the President didn't resign or impeachment did not take place---this means his place in history is lost---no movie deals----just his book Hubris---by the way maybe that was the correct title for a book by David Corn---Sorry David---the big scandal that you thought would bring down a Presidency will be nothing more than a footnote in history and your name will probably never be mentioned.

Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/23/2007 @ 10:15am | ignore this person

LEN MOSSE is a nobody.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/23/2007 @ 2:07pm
Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 12:23pm

i've seen what has happened.

my message was to YOU.

your country doesn't need more pragmatists who are correct.

it needs intelligent "warriors" to correct it.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/23/2007 @ 2:09pm
Posted by HSUBFOOLS 10/23/2007 @ 1:42pm

No, HSUB. I don't "win" anything. Truly it's a shame that nothing came from "Plame-gate" that might have ended the war or the Administration

No, I'm just sick of YOU being BOTH stupidly naive and a jerk. One or the other, no problem. But not both.

BTW....how's this for a Best Of reel of HSUBFOOLS and "Plame-gate"?-

"Look Libby had lied to the FBI from the getgo and thus it was part of Fitzgeralds mandate to prosecute him. No suprize there. However congress' oversight can and will dig up the dirt on these liars. Impeachment won't be a problem.----Posted by HSUBFOOLS 03/19/2007 @ 8:35pm

My bolds. Three months later....

"hsuB pardons Libby and he's just a few days/weeks closer to getting impeached. hsuB has everything neccessary for being impeached and low poll numbers aren't helping him in any way not to be. I say he doesn't." ----Posted by HSUBFOOLS 06/05/2007 @ 8:33pm

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 2:13pm
Posted by HONESTLIBERAL 10/23/2007 @ 2:05pm

Yeah yeah. Got your little flag pin on your lapel?

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 2:13pm
To quote Corny:

Richard Armitage, who was the No. 2 at the State Department and a neocon-hating Iraq war skeptic, was the administration official who initially told Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. But the Plamegate deniers often ignore the inconvenient truth that White House aide Karl Rove--during the White House campaign to undermine Joe Wilson--confirmed this classified information for Novak and also passed the same leak to Matt Cooper, then of Time.

In a nutshell...it was one of the liberals' own that leaked the information...a little tidbit of news that again and again gets glossed over by and receives little more than lip service from the left...Just like the fact that once they found out that the leaker was not a Bush Admin. official, the uproar and outrage dried up. Poof! No more story. However, Corn still twists himself in knots trying to lay this at Rove's feet. Umm, once Plame's identity was revealed, she was no longer covert.

Posted by usc1 at 10/23/2007 @ 2:14pm
Corn,

Thanks for your posts here and at davidcorn.com. See you down the road.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/23/2007 @ 2:15pm
it needs intelligent "warriors" to correct it.----Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 10/23/2007 @ 2:09pm

And I agree. Unfortunately they are either totally cynical...or not that bright (no HSnameS needed).

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 2:17pm
Posted by USC1 10/23/2007 @ 2:14pm

Another traitor enabler speaks his "mind".

Posted by Dr Decibels at 10/23/2007 @ 2:22pm
The Wilsons are extremely talented and well connected Washington insiders. There is little doubt that they will pursue this business to the very end, hoping to finally gain satisfaction. Valerie's book is now available. She is now "touring" TV commentary shows, internet websites, writes a blog series appearing on salon.com, is being interviewed by newsmedia, and has presented her court case in detail in a new website: www.fairgameplame.com. Despite the fact that a Bush flunky fed. (?) judge has summarily dismissed all or part of their court case with the flimsiest of excuses, the Wilsons will fight this out as long as it takes. The Bush administration and its media howlers have strained themselves to the limit to bury the Wilsons, but remember that this struggle may likely go on for well more than a year - - by which time the Bushies will be out of office and, as Bill Clinton learned, they will be vulnerable to prosecution without the Executive Branch pressure they are accustomed to exerting on the media, the legislature, and the courts. Lets see what happens over the intervening year until the 2008 election, and then in 2009 Rove Cheney, Bush, and the rest of that criminal mob will be out in the open. No matter what happens, we may expect the Wilsons to push the envelope as far as it takes to expose the Bush mob to justice.

Posted by fscalzi at 10/23/2007 @ 2:22pm
your country doesn't need more pragmatists who are correct.

it needs intelligent "warriors" to correct it.

Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 10/23/2007 @ 2:09pm | ignore this

And your country needs fewer American wannabees----we don't take kindly to Canadians telling us what we should and should not be doing----you have your own problems --such as a health care system that doesn't work when your seriously ill--just ask all the Canadians in Detroit hospitals. So drink another Moulson, watch some Hockey, and ponder on your own problems hea---as to ours--we will deal with them---take a hike hea

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/23/2007 @ 3:06pm
I read a very insightful commentary on the Plame incident. It was nice to read an author who put politics on the backburner. Here is the link if you are interested. http://joeleonardi.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/valerie-plame-im-still-right -and-correct/

Posted by mia1 at 10/23/2007 @ 3:08pm
The Nation posted March 24, 2005 (April 11, 2005 issue) Patriotism Is Nonpartisan

by George McGovern

'...First and foremost, I have believed since childhood that my country is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Never once during my long years as a public servant did I drive down Pennsylvania Avenue to my office at the US Capitol--past the majestic memorials to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln--without experiencing the genuine thrill of knowing that I worked for the US government and its citizens. ...

Old-fashioned American liberals such as I are accused not only of being weak on defense but also weak on marriage and the family, the work ethic and reverence for religious faith. I resent such groundless political slurs. After all, I hold the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I have been happily married to the same woman for sixty-one years and am the father of five children and ten grandchildren--all of whom I love dearly, including dear, deceased Terry. As the son of a Wesleyan Methodist clergyman, I dare say that my life has always been enriched and guided by the Judeo-Christian ethic. Nothing has influenced my philosophy more than the Hebrew prophets and the Sermon on the Mount. Beyond this, I have worked hard at useful tasks throughout my life and thank God I still have the health and motivation to continue that work schedule at the age of 82. Of course, I share one of my father's oft-quoted biblical lines: "All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God." ...

In the Methodist parsonage where I was reared I was taught that we should be cautious about judging one another. Such judgments are more properly left to the Almighty rather than to the political hustings and the quest for partisan advantage.'

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 3:43pm
take a hike hea---Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/23/2007 @ 3:06pm

Two points...

1. The Canadian system isn't great, but it's not in the hole HALF A TRILLION dollars and it hasn't killed 3800+ Americans. So maybe their problems are slightly less than OURS.

2. It's not "hea" (which would be pronounced "he-ah")...it's "eh" (pron. "ehh")....and not sure they use "take a hike", maybe "take off"

heheh

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 3:57pm
Posted by HONESTLIBERAL 10/23/2007 @ 3:43pm

Senator McGovern is a good guy. Not that great a politician, but he was a helluva flier in his youth.

Those 24s were a bi-ach to fly, no hydraulics, and they'd fly as dangerous if not more dangerous missions than the 17s.

Posted by Mask at 10/23/2007 @ 3:59pm
Thank you Mr. Corn for all your work. I have been a great adimirer of yours since the '90s, watching you on TV quietly exposing lie after lie by the right-wing whores and fascists: the Toensings, that god-awful Mrs. Cheney, that piece of filth Ari Fleischer, and the rest.

Plus I think you'r hot. I wish you all the best.

Posted by tomshef at 10/23/2007 @ 4:10pm
CounterPunch -- November 14, 2002 -- American Journal -- The Anti-War Movement and Its Critics: by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

'Do we have an antiwar movement? We're getting there. We must be, because we're catching flak from the anti-anti war movement, Light Infantry division, staffed by Marc Cooper, Todd Gitlin, David Corn, and Christopher Hitchens. ...

David Corn's most substantial piece of work to date is The Blonde Ghost, which could described as a not unsympathetic account of Ted Shackley, a CIA supervisor of one bloodbath after another, most notably the Phoenix program. Corn has now taken to issuing cop-style intelligence reports reminiscent of FBI field advisories to Hoover, on the Workers World Party. stigmatizing the Workers World Party for its nefarious role in the DC and Bay Area antiwar demonstrations....'

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 4:27pm
No, HSUB. I don't "win" anything. Truly it's a shame that nothing came from "Plame-gate" that might have ended the war or the Administration

congress' oversight can and will dig up the dirt on these liars. Impeachment won't be a problem.----Posted by HSUBFOOLS 03/19/2007 @ 8:35pm

I say he doesn't." ----Posted by HSUBFOOLS 06/05/2007 @ 8:33pm

Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 2:13pm

Oh Frita, playing with that blond wig again-- you miss the real big point, as always-- is there a statute of limitations? (It's ok. Take some iron.)

Er, BTW, Frita, a commutation of sentence to paying 1/4 mil, no jail time, is a halfcy, not a pardon...

I'm still right and you're still wrong.

Again.

Posted by hsuBfools at 10/23/2007 @ 4:37pm
"Scooter Libby unlike Bill Clinton, actually convicted of lying in court - to cover up crimes committed by his boss. '

bill enter no contest, lost his license and paid a fine...couldn't affored to go on trial and have Monica talk in open court...it would have been a bigger circus and hurt Hillary ...for 08.

Conshame = blind liberal loon who hates America

Posted by JoMa at 10/23/2007 @ 4:39pm
The stubborn refusal of wingnuts to recognize the facts of the Valerie Plame CIA agent willful exposure by Dick Cheney is truly astonishing ignorance.

I wondered how long it has been since a similar case has existed and then I realized, it's concurrent, the wingnuts willfully refuse to believe man-made global warming is a serious risk to our peace and prosperity. Instead, they claim the remedy for global warming is the threat. Stupid wingnuts.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/23/2007 @ 4:51pm
This is for JohannesRolf, if he's around.

I wanted to get your take on this, it's a classic Bush administration incompetence storyline. From the NY Times:

Eric Schmitt and David Rohde write in the New York Times: "A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department's performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions.

"A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. . . .

"[I]n presenting its recommendations to Rice in a 45-minute briefing on Monday, the four-member panel found serious fault with virtually every aspect of the department's security practices, especially in and around Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility. . . .

"At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department's largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say 'specifically what it received' for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq."

Posted by Rapaport at 10/23/2007 @ 4:53pm
Ever wonder if Dick Cheney feels bad about throwing Libby to the wolves to save his own ass? Libby, formerly a manging partner for a national litigation firm, left the practice of law to serve his country in OVP. His criminal conviction, which is currently on appeal, will cause his disbarement. Well, there's another wingnut who will have to find gainful employment in wingnut welfare: AEI.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/23/2007 @ 4:54pm
No matter what happens, we may expect the Wilsons to push the envelope as far as it takes to expose the Bush mob to justice.

Posted by FSCALZI 10/23/2007

Actually, what we can expect is the Wilsons to collect every dollar they can for interviews, speeches, personal appearances and autograph signings for as long as they're in demand........

They're cashing in on their 15 minutes of fame, which is, after all, the american way......And, Valerie Plame plays the victim far better than Hillary ever did when Bill did her wrong.....

HONESTLIB, If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, perhaps victimhood is the first...LOL!

Posted by davebarlett at 10/23/2007 @ 5:02pm
"if Dick Cheney feels bad about throwing Libby to the wolves "

Never ANY honor among theives or crooks.

Libby actually has more cred for the criminal enterprise that runs the GOPhers these days.

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/23/2007 @ 5:20pm
Posted by DAVEBARLETT 10/23/2007 @ 5:02pm

Uhhmmmm, blaming victims, uuhhhmmm, why does that sound familiar...

Glenn Beck, told his listeners, "I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

Posted by hsuBfools at 10/23/2007 @ 5:23pm
"Valerie Plame plays the victim "

Um, trained paramilitary - she would hand you your ass on a platter.

But, of course you know that or you would not be such a pip. You see your insults are deeply seated in your abject insecurity. It always shows. You have to gain some character before you can become one and then only after some practice and a least some honest self examination. I am certain it will come to you some day in some way. Stay at it.

Good on ya then.

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/23/2007 @ 5:24pm
CounterPunch -- April 28 / 29, 2007 -- Is Global Warming a Sin? -- By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

'...Now imagine two lines on a piece of graph paper. The first rises to a crest, then slopes sharply down, then levels off and rises slowly once more. The other has no undulations. It rises in a smooth, slowly increasing arc. The first, wavy line is the worldwide CO2 tonnage produced by humans burning coal, oil and natural gas. On this graph it starts in 1928, at 1.1 gigatons (i.e. 1.1 billion metric tons). It peaks in 1929 at 1.17 gigatons. The world, led by its mightiest power, the USA, plummets into the Great Depression, and by 1932 human CO2 production has fallen to 0.88 gigatons a year, a 30 per cent drop. Hard times drove a tougher bargain than all the counsels of Al Gore or the jeremiads of the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change). Then, in 1933 it began to climb slowly again, up to 0.9 gigatons.

And the other line, the one ascending so evenly? That's the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, parts per million (ppm) by volume, moving in 1928 from just under 306, hitting 306 in 1929, to 307 in 1932 and on up. Boom and bust, the line heads up steadily. These days it's at 380.There are, to be sure, seasonal variations in CO2, as measured since 1958 by the instruments on Mauna Loa, Hawai'i. (Pre-1958 measurements are of air bubbles trapped in glacial ice.) Summer and winter vary steadily by about 5 ppm, reflecting photosynthesis cycles. The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 per cent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn't even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere's CO2. Thus it is impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from human burning of fossil fuels.

I met Dr. Martin Hertzberg, the man who drew that graph and those conclusions, on a Nation cruise back in 2001. He remarked that while he shared many of the Nation's editorial positions, he approved of my reservations on the issue of supposed human contributions to global warming, as outlined in columns I wrote at that time. Hertzberg was a meteorologist for three years in the U.S. Navy, an occupation which gave him a lifelong mistrust of climate modeling. Trained in chemistry and physics, a combustion research scientist for most of his career, he's retired now in Copper Mountain, Colorado, still consulting from time to time.

Not so long ago, Hertzberg sent me some of his recent papers on the global warming hypothesis, a construct now accepted by many progressives as infallible as Papal dogma on matters of faith or doctrine. Among them was the graph described above so devastating to the hypothesis.

As Hertzberg readily acknowledges, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased about 21 per cent in the past century. The world has also been getting just a little bit warmer. The not very reliable data on the world's average temperature (which omit most of the world's oceans and remote regions, while over-representing urban areas) show about a 0.5Co increase in average temperature between 1880 and 1980, and it's still rising, more sharply in the polar regions than elsewhere. But is CO2, at 380 parts per million in the atmosphere, playing a significant role in retaining the 94 per cent of solar radiation that's absorbed in the atmosphere, as against water vapor, also a powerful heat absorber, whose content in humid tropical atmosphere, can be as high as 2 per cent, the equivalent of 20,000 ppm. As Hertzberg says, water in the form of oceans, clouds, snow, ice cover and vapor "is overwhelming in the radiative and energy balance between the earth and the sun Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases are, by comparison, the equivalent of a few farts in a hurricane." And water is exactly that component of the earth's heat balance that the global warming computer models fail to account for....'

Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/23/2007 @ 5:26pm
The thing I find amusing is the smugness of those that point out no one was prosecuted for this cowardly act of treason. The answer of course is that the language of the law was written so narrowly by the oh so crafty Victoria T. that such a clear act of treason is found to be unprosecutable. Great Law! Way to Go!

Just becauase they couldn't charge them with anything other than Libby for trying to cover it up doesn't mean they didn't do anything wrong.

Treason is treason. We know the truth. I don't need a clever law to tell me that which is so evident.

Posted by Phobos1967 at 10/23/2007 @ 6:47pm
Posted by PHOBOS1967 10/23/2007 @ 6:47pm

Treason is treason. We know the truth. I don't need a clever law to tell me that which is so evident.

I think you may speak for the majority of lefties here. You know the truth: the people you hate are criminals, and you don't need no steeenking legal system to prove it.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 6:58pm
I also offer my thanks for your fine investigative work at The Nation, Mr. Corn.

I look forward to a continuation of the excellent investigative work of Mother Jones magazine as well with the creation of their DC bureau.

Best wishes in your new endeavor!

Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/23/2007 @ 6:58pm
From the start, neocons and conservative backers of the war dismissed the Plame leak and subsequent scandal as a big nothing.

I would think that the fact that the 'scandal' ended up as a big nothing would vindicate this view.

Some even claimed that somehow former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and I had cooked up the episode to ensnare the White House. (Oh, to be so devilishly clever--and to be so competent.)

I never would have accused you of competence, Mr. Corn.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:06pm
Posted by CRABWALK 10/23/2007 @ 08:04am

FACT: Plame WAS COVERT. JOMA, if you have ANY proof to the contrary I would love to see it. PONTIFICUS has made this claim for a year, and has been unable to produce a shred of evidence to back himself up. Her boss said she was covert, the DOJ said she was covert.

CRABBIE, as I have told you many times, you have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts. In this country, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The fact that you and some others you choose to believe consider Plame to be covert is not sufficient to establish that fact. There are many others who disagree. Since the issue was never proven in court, you are left farting in the wind.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:13pm
POSTED by MADLIB

If this is what my 40s have to offer, sitting at a computer screen through all my waking hours with no interests or real life, frothing at the mouth over petty idiocies and falsehoods, I may as well execute myself now.

Well, since you're already frothing over the petty idiocies and falsehoods purveyed here by the likes of Mr. Corn and his flock of sheep like CRABBIE, and presumably you're not in your 40's yet, I would say the writing is on the wall for you. When I read the raging incoherence and delusional output of liberals venting on this site, I admit that I giggle, I chuckle, I guffaw, but seldom do I froth.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:19pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:15pm

We should obviously leave it up to YOU to decide. Tell me, how long have you been running the CIA? I'd love to know.

Well, you don't have to take MY word for it. You could take the word of the person who WROTE the law, Ms. Toensing. Oh, yeah, I forgot, she's a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, so even though she wrote the law, her opinion doesn't count. Strangely enough, it doesn't appear that anyone who disagrees with you has an opinion that counts either. Why do you think that is?

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:22pm
Does anybody really expect that your average hamster would admit to themselves that they sold out their country with their mindless support for the chimp administrations leak of Valerie Wilson covert identity?

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 7:31pm
That kind of admission would require a fully functional cerebrum and.... a soul

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 7:33pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:32pm

This is about the law, like you stated, which was interpreted by the people it SHOULD be interpreted by. Not Karl Rove, and not Dick Cheney, and certainly not yourself. I'm speaking of the DoJ, and the CIA, ad nauseum. Lawyers and professionals of this trade.

Well, if it's about the law, then you don't have a leg to stand on, because the law has just determined that there is nothing prosecutable here. Right? Or are you saying that your opinions trump that?

And I'm just curious. Is it even possible for anyone who disagrees with your to be right? Are there only two possible sides to this issue: those who agree with you, and those who are stupid morons?

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:39pm
And don't confuse what I'm saying here. I extend the same sympathies to the "liberals" here and everywhere who continue to do the exact same thing Pontificus is doing.

Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:34pm

What's really funny is that scootificus thinks he's a stupid moron only because he disagrees with you

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 7:43pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:34pm

No not in the least. As long as they are reminded on a consistent basis of how insubstantial they are, and how downright stupid and morally inept they are.

Yeah, your constant stream of insults is what really shows me that you have thoroughly thought through your position, and thus wins me over completely.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:45pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:40pm

YOU however, are a stupid moron. A stupid fucking moron.

Excellent point. You really are quite an intelligent fellow.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:47pm
I think it was the italics that clinched it.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 7:48pm
Yeah, your constant stream of insults is what really shows me that you have thoroughly thought through your position, and thus wins me over completely.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 7:45pm

neato... all we have to do is insult you and you learn

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 7:48pm
Excellent point. You really are quite an intelligent fellow.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 7:47pm

wow! it really does work

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 7:49pm
decided it would give up its rights and values to a bunch of crazed religious zealots and fear mongers.

Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:43pm

Exactly what rights and values have you been forced to give up?? (I feel the answer is going to be VERY vague and general)

Posted by Sliver at 10/23/2007 @ 7:58pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 7:40pm

No no. People that disagree with me aren't stupid morons. They just disagree with me.

So, reasonable people can disagree with you on this issue? And how are such disagreements among reasonable people resolved in our legal system, do you think?

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 8:01pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 8:07pm

Oh, values of honesty and integrity? Not bullying the world into putting more money in our pockets? Although I wasn't alive 100 years ago. I understand we've been doing things that way for quite a while.

Uh huh. Is that what they taught you in the school your parents are paying for? Figures.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 8:10pm
Exactly what rights and values have you been forced to give up?? (I feel the answer is going to be VERY vague and general)

Posted by SLIVER 10/23/2007 @ 7:58pm

the right: being spied on without a warrant

The values: justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare... securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:14pm
So, reasonable people can disagree with you on this issue? And how are such disagreements among reasonable people resolved in our legal system, do you think?

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 8:01pm

you mean like... OJ?

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:15pm
Uh huh. Is that what they taught you in the school your parents are paying for? Figures.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 8:10pm

ah, the hamster who decries insults implies madlib is a child. How hamsterish

Ha Ha Ha Ha

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:17pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 8:16pm

Like I said before, we shall not go into whether the law is wrong or not. I honestly think that is too advanced a topic, with this website as a microcosm of the rest of the country. This country is seemingly too immature to discuss grey areas. Everything is hyperbole.

Well, previously you said that this issue is simply a matter of following the law. Now, you're saying it's the law that might me wrong, so I guess we're not following the law anymore, at least not the way it exists. One of us sure is confused.

Not that it will matter in 20 years, when all the telecommunications companies make it so this situation isn't even available, while we sit on our hands and give up the last bastion for saying whatever the hell it is you want to say.

Okay, see ya later. Good luck with that paranoia thing you got going on there.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 8:22pm
Or like...any failing by the justice system EVER?

Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 8:21pm

Scootificus reserves for himself the right to declare others guilty even after a jury declares them not guity.

we think it's part of that whole strict constructionist bedtime story the hamsters like to tell themselves

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:24pm
Okay, see ya later. Good luck with that paranoia thing you got going on there.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 8:22pm

I see you still have that whole scampering thing going for you scootificus.

It suits you.

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:26pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 8:26pm

Oh I agree, it's quite confusing. Because the woman was clearly covert, as described by the law used in prosecuting these fucks.

Clearly covert IN YOUR OPINION, but as you've said, reasonable people can disagree with that opinion. So it's possible you might be wrong? Isn't that something that should be determined in court?

Tell me this, if it had been Dick Armitage with his feet over the fire (as he should have had) would you still feel the exact same way?

Frankly, Armitage means nothing to me. Why should I care either way? If he broke the law, let him suffer for it.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 8:33pm
Clearly covert IN YOUR OPINION, but as you've said, reasonable people can disagree with that opinion. So it's possible you might be wrong? Isn't that something that should be determined in court?

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/23/2007 @ 8:33pm

but it was determined by the CIA scootificus. Boy you're dumb

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:38pm
I'd like to continue this but I've got some stuff to do. See ya later.

Posted by pontificus at 10/23/2007 @ 8:39pm
....like scampering, stuffing a few alfalfa pellets between your cheek and gum...

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:42pm
... and let's not forget the wheel.

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:42pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 8:48pm

scootificus cracks me up. It's not everyday you find stupidity coupled with a snotty aristocratic personality… in the same person.

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 8:53pm
"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Happless going out on the delusional note.

HA!

Posted by CAPTAINKIRK 10/23/2007 @ 01:09am |"

True enough...like blind belief that govt can give you health care...or that liberalism is the truth incarnate...or that Plame was covert.

Posted by JoMa at 10/23/2007 @ 9:03pm
"It's not everyday you find stupidity coupled with a snotty aristocratic personality… in the same person."

Well, not anywhere but on this blog.

HA!

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/23/2007 @ 9:06pm
True enough...like blind belief that govt can give you health care...or that liberalism is the truth incarnate...or that Plame was covert.

Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 9:03pm

government would insist on payroll deduction, liberalism like truth is an inanimate concept and Wilson was covert.

(but then you guys can't even get her name right)

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 9:12pm
if you hang with scootificus long enough you still might be able to perfect that snotty, aristocratic thing though

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 9:12pm
Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons.

Yeah, 'Ol Richard is a real gentleman. Nothing says "I'm sorry" like a media interview. (The true ass cake guilty of the crime).

Posted by Person at 10/23/2007 @ 9:35pm
Crab,

We just disagree on everything..

1. I don't have to prove anything one way or another about Plame to any one..I can't and neither can you...we are not privy to any of the nuances of the case and then it became cause celeb for the libs, which in turn became a side show...and what do we get? Libby..BFD. Outraged is what O wouild be if an agent is outted..I don't think this fits the model...I think Leheay is a bigger threat with leaks that Plame case...

...so I accept the woman who wrote the law defining covert as I watched her testimony before the committee..

2. Do I favor the war? No, but I also didn't believe I was lied to, since it is my opinion that Iraq was a good place as any to gain a foot hold against Islamic extremism. Saddam could have prevented any invasion and is responsible for his own downfall as he flipped off the UN so many times his finger was sore...

I also believe we have been fighting an invisible running war with the Islamo nuts since before Carter, and no I never thought we went there for WMDs...IMO, he had them, used them, and maybe had them again...strike 2 for me...it will continue on for years...I would like to never be in this position as a country...but we are here and must look forward...and I have news for you...we ain't leaving any time soon..even if Franks hero with balls wins the WH.

Look, this is all rehash of events that can not be turned back...

...looking forward I don't see a fast departure from Iraq...regardless of how we got there...

I do want to remind you, that you and the left want to turn over your health care to be run by the same group...and if you think the Dems and Repubs are all corprorate lackeys, then why reward them with more power and your money...?

Sorry, Crab...we just disagree.

Posted by JoMa at 10/23/2007 @ 9:42pm
1. I don't have to prove anything one way or another about Plame to any one..I can't and neither can you...we are not privy to any of the nuances of the case

Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 9:42pm

as though the CIA classifying Wilson's covert status could be considered a nuance

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 9:45pm
unless we're talking about the double kinda secret until we leak it classification developed by the bush administration.

though not really a nuance, it's more of a wishy washy flip floppy have at all ways kind of thing

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 9:47pm
Everyone choses the narrative they believe. Somewhere, there was real life with real people who did real things to real people who got really hurt. Complex? Sometimes. Self-serving? Usually. Illegal? Maybe. Political? Are you kidding! It's the only game that town. But, there is a truth. Good journalists try to find and report that truth for the public good. The narrative I want to believe is the one Mr Corn presents: that two good career government employees trying to do their job and serve the best interests of their agency and country as they saw it lost their jobs and got smeared because the current gang of politicos who were serving their interests and those of their family and cronies knew they had been not just been embarrassed by acting on faulty information but had been caught in a lie. No human, not even the President and Vice-President, likes to be caught in a lie. We all get red-faced. Those of us with integrity admit the falsehood. Others lash out. David, thank you and good luck.

Posted by Moderatus at 10/23/2007 @ 10:02pm
This was written some time ago. Unfortuntely it still applies:

WHO ELSE WILL HAVE THE COURAGE?

The news media can write articles and voice opinions about how President George W. Bush and his cronies have lied about this and that. (In fact, what took them so long to realize that.) But, this still means nothing. Such revelations of Truth have become the back and forth cackle of gossiping spin masters signifying nothing, as nothing has changed.

But no, the real deal is when one reporter, that first one, upon being chosen by President Bush to ask a question at one of his press opportunities, stands up and summons the Strength and Courage to ask, " Mr. President, when you lied about...!" Or, at the very least,... "Mr. President, were you lying when you said...?"

That's what it will take --- before the rest of them will do the same. It's time for someone to say that the Emperor has no clothes to his face.

That's also when the evidence for impeachment will be brought forth before the American Public, and that's when it will mean something. Now we only hear the Truth as it is, "...twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." (Kipling)

Just as Republicans constantly accused Clinton of lying, together with Clinton's defense of his "private life" lie brought the Public into play, so can the Press bring out the Truth. And let's put Bush and Cheney under oath as well. Only then, will the Wisdom of Truth find its place in our great land.

Until then, lying continues to be our government's national pastime. We have come to expect it. We take it for granted. We kill and die for it. And the shadows of sadness remain our constant companions..

Ray McGovern had Courage when he questioned Donald Rumsfield

--- WHO ELSE WILL HAVE THE COURAGE TO ASK FOR THE TRUTH?

the end

Posted by bohdan yuri at 10/23/2007 @ 10:06pm
What the hell does the CIA know about being covert?

Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 10:08pm

I guess that depends on how you define reasonable people

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 10:11pm
"At least when it's the government you can vote.

Posted by MADLIB 10/23/2007 @ 10:07pm

You can with corporate lackeys, too, with your dollars...you vote not to spend them at a shitty place that produces shitty service and it woill go away of its own incompetence..not with govt, it gets more money...with the govt...you get the shitty service and the worker looks at you and shrugs..can you vote out a bad govtdepartment? Nope...

Posted by JoMa at 10/23/2007 @ 11:21pm
not with govt, it gets more money...with the govt...you get the shitty service and the worker looks at you and shrugs..can you vote out a bad govtdepartment? Nope...

Posted by JOMA 10/23/2007 @ 11:21pm

Isn't it interesting how the public mirrors the private. In both if you what great service, you generally have to pay more.

which I guess leaves you hamsters perpetually bitching about poor service

Posted by Will C. at 10/23/2007 @ 11:30pm
the usual traitors are here celebrating their idol and his administration getting away with treason. some are stupid; like joma. but some are intellectually dishonest like pontificus, and that makes it worse. what's the difference between the act of treason and people who help to cover it up?

Posted by pretzel at 10/23/2007 @ 11:55pm
just out of curiosity, have any of the blind knee jerk republican supporters admitted they were wrong about plame?

Posted by pretzel at 10/23/2007 @ 11:57pm
GOODBYE, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE TRUTH!...

We'll be looking for you at MJ and elsewhere. Best of luck to you, David!

Posted by w_m_bear at 10/24/2007 @ 12:11am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/23/2007 @ 3:06pm

sorry i if i've squished your toes.

my country has many problems, too.

i love americans because they are just more people.

and people are cool.

and nichols is not a whore.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 12:16am
Sorry, CRAB. This story dies with the end of the Bush Admin., except as a "questions still remain" throwaway line until Dubya himself croaks of old age in the 2030s.

Posted by MASK 10/23/2007 @ 09:17am

THE VALERIE PLAME SCANDAL COULD HAVE BEEN BUSH'S "WATERGATE"...

Unfortunately, it turned out not to be. But I don't think that was at all obvious at the start and during the scandal itself and certainly not as obvious as you make it out to be. Plus, it wasn't from lack of trying on the part of people like Fitzgerald and David Corn....

Posted by w_m_bear at 10/24/2007 @ 12:18am
AND MAY BUSH'S 4th DECADE BE SPENT IN SLAM...

Although I seriously doubt that it will be. Also, Fitzgerald's efforts with Libby did at least help wedge Karl Rove outta there (finally), I'm convinced. So the whole effort did not go entirely for nothing, I don't think....

Posted by w_m_bear at 10/24/2007 @ 12:24am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/23/2007 @ 3:06pm

on second thought,

what i said was rather pompous.

and i apologize.

thanks,

fz

btw if you check some of my past posts you'll see that i've also spent a lot of time defending many aspects of american culture from americans.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 12:26am
Frosty Apology accepted---please accept mine if I offended you in anyway--after all, I did not spell eh correctly.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 07:43am
rab,

We just disagree on everything..

1. I don't have to prove anything one way or another about Plame to any one..I can't and neither can you...we are not privy to any of the nuances of the case JOMA

Yes we are, JOMA. the CIA says she was covert. Papers filed in a US court, accepted by a republican judge and NEVER disputed by any attorney in the case state that PLAME was a COVERT agent working for the US guvt on wmd's proliferation. That program was scrapped and untold harm done to this country and any assets Plame may have acquired over a 2 decade career .

Hows, that war on Islamic fundies going? Last I checked Islamic terrorism has increased since Chimpy invaded Iraq.

no, I do not want to turn over my healthcare to Chimpy. I want to turn over the billing procedures to one entity, instead of 500. My healthcare would stay the same, only the whole country could save about 18% o overhead costs. What a terrible thought!!!

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 07:59am
LEN, how does it feel to support a president that is a traitor to those that serve him? A president that is willing to put you in harms way to defend a claim even he admitted should not have been i the SOTU speech?

does that make you proud?

PONTIFLOGIC, still waiting for that list of democrats involved in the democratic witch hunt of Libby. Still waiting for ANY proof of your claim that Plame was not covert. Toesening is NOT privy to her status. according to Plames boss, Plame met the criteria. I would say Plames boss might have more info than some one that has not been in guvt service for years and has zero official connection to the CIA.

If you have anything, bring it on. So far, after a year, all you have is the conviction for lying by the Vice President Chief of Staff. Lies that kept him out of jail. Laws are for little people.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 08:05am
Posted by MADLIB 10/24/2007 @ 12:47am

jazz is alive and well.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 08:12am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/24/2007 @ 07:43am

no problem, lenny.

now, let's get back to arguing.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 08:13am
Posted by CRABWALK 10/24/2007 @ 08:05am

Still waiting for ANY proof of your claim that Plame was not covert. Toesening is NOT privy to her status. according to Plames boss, Plame met the criteria. I would say Plames boss might have more info than some one that has not been in guvt service for years and has zero official connection to the CIA.

All I can say CRABBIE, is that you should educate yourself as to how our legal system works. Education does wonders for ignorance, which leads to faulty logic and false conclusions. You should try it some time.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 08:54am
Crabby----

It feels just fine to support Republicans for public office. Anything I can do to keep people with your political leanings out of office I am all for. This sometimes means supporting someone who may not be perfect--I may disagree with them on many things---but the alternative is to allow the country to march down the road of international socialism---so we do what we can do.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 09:21am
All I can say CRABBIE, is that you should educate yourself as to how our legal system works.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 08:54am

you mean the one where rich murderers go free and two-bit crack dealers go up the river for 10 years.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 09:26am
Frosty

A musical interlude for when you tire of talking to trolls.

How Does A Patriot Act? [youtube.com]

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 10:14am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/24/2007 @ 09:21am | ignore this person

Oh God - another doltish simp belching out some inconceivably stupid slogan he's been brained with since admittance to citizenship in Eden. It's amazing people actually achieve any flavor of intelligible communication up there when you all go around clapping one another with prefab pabulum like the rot Mr. Moss coughed up. You and your ilk are all a hord of prehensile cads, nothing more. And I'm not defending the Democrats, for anyone with half a mind knows that you have a one party system masquerading as two. Nevermind the politicos, you're all enslaved by the bankers. LEN DROSS makes enough of an ass of himself with his melodramatic catchphrases and third-hand balderdash, but to see his kind ignore the merging of Canada, the US and México into the NAU and still sing hosannas to the Tories only points out his willingness to do just as his masters - adopt any idea, no matter how moronic so long as it is what the Repubs dose out as patriotic propriety, while eschewing all concepts, no matter how logical, if the wirepullers deem them dangerous or anti-American. So yes, healthcare is an insidious cause that will make hospitals and doctors agents of global socialism, while making a sequel to the bankrupting bedlam in Iraq is a brilliant idea. It is people like LEN DROSS who prove el americano to be a supremely singular species of idiot

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 10:22am
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 10:21am

Sorry, Frank. I couldn't agree more that the Wilson's have served their country in a most honorable fashion, and deserve to have that honor publicly restored.

But the Bush administration has completely devalued the medal-awarding thing.

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 10:32am
Chimmy Where have you been? Too busy working and planning for world socialism? I know you live in Colombia but have you visited your friend Chavez lately? You are still invited to lunch in D.C. anytime you can make it north---of course with some of your statements in the past concerning the need for Americans to die before they see what you consider the light you might be on a watch list when entering the country---so bend over my friend--I am sure you will enjoy the cavity search.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 10:36am
"Could it be that the Bushies feared that none would be found and that that info would hamper their efforts to start the war in Iraq? They had to end Plame's operation asap? Hmmmmm."

Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 10:25am

There's still more deja to vu, Frank. As it turns out, Ms. Wilson was also working with the Iran desk on trying to keep Tehran from acquiring nukes. Once again, the guy who outed her would not be well served by her efforts to negate his biggest selling point for bombing Iran.

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 10:40am
I think that when Hillary takes office, one of her first acts as President sould be to bestow the Medal of Freedom on Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson. Then she should condemn all those who acted as traitors in the coverup.----Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 10:21am

How much would anybody here bet that that happens?

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 10:48am
COMMUNISM, America's premier bogeyman word of the latter half of the 20th century, has morphed into SOCIALISM, the 21st century conversation-ending buzzword for the wingnut wanker set.

Do yourselves a favor. Take a few minutes to acquaint yourselves with the definition of "socialism".

After that info has had a chance to digest, look up the word "fascism".

Now, which one do you think you should be concerned about?

Don't let assholes tell you what to fear, and don't let them frame the debate.

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 10:55am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/24/2007 @ 10:36am

LEN, you did in fact turned down Chimi's very gracious invite to eat in Bogota. Whyzat? Don't speak "Columbo"?

As for the "the alternative is to allow the country to march down the road of international socialism": You are paaaainfully slow in getting out on this limb, so slow as to suggest that you may have been in a coma since 1989. Perhaps by the time we're in the golden era of the Chelsea Clinton administration in 2025, you will have had time to absorb the "new" buzz words like (Saudi-Pakistani style) IslamoFacism.

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 11:02am
All I can say CRABBIE, is that you should educate yourself as to how our legal system works. Education does wonders for ignorance, which leads to faulty logic and false conclusions. You should try it some time.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 08:54am

that's good advice scootificus. For instance, let's discuss this fun filled fact. It is the executive branch, not the judicial branch, which determines the classification of covert agents.

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:02am
Isn't this game fun

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:02am
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/24/2007 @ 10:36am | ignore this person

Well, Americans continue to die for monumental lies and yet the rabble hasn't learned a thing. Cheers to state propaganda and the fear-mongers who keep you all more busy with your eye on chaff instead of the grain. I'm a socialist? That's news to me. I believe I'm someone who sees your nation for what it is - a glorification of decay and monument to depravity. That lies are truth, war is peace and slavery is freedom is too obvious to point out, for we have regular contributers here heaving accolades upon their lying enslavers who shove them into corporate combat in the name of saving their vanishing way of life.

You're a waste of sperm and egg, plain and simple. Recollecting your cheesparing anthology of swill here (along with that of LL, RIO, CPT and other choice ganefs) it is clear the switch on the American dynamo of idiocy has no off position. You're a hateful fascist spitting the lines written by prostitute historians and bought-off politicians. You are a chattel who has welcomed Big Brother into his living room. Does anyone else see the pigs beginning to walk on two legs?

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 11:06am
Does anyone else see the pigs beginning to walk on two legs?

Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 11:06am

I'm more concerned about what the pigs might do as the end of their farce approaches. I'm not so sure the hamsterlnad has the emotional stability to just walk away from the fantasy after having lived it for so many years.

But I do hope I'm wrong

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:11am
SHAFT,

Great memory. The offer still stands, LEN, though Medellín is a much nicer city to visit. I'd also suggest Cartagena, as it is on the coast and by far one of the greatest colonial cities in the hemisphere. As I said earlier, we can dine wherever you like. You can try the burundanga (scopolamine). You'll never know what hit you. Bush endured only six hours when he was here earlier in the year. How long can you tolerate outside your cushy little cage in the bowels of the real world?

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 11:13am
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 10:25am

You are ridiculous human beings, cowards and traitors.

Hey FRANKIE, if Hillary gets elected, maybe you can censor us like you want to do with Rush. Another thing for you to look forward to!

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 12:38pm
Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 10:22am

It is people like LEN DROSS who prove el americano to be a supremely singular species of idiot

And yet we are the most advanced, most powerful, and most generous country in the world. Pretty good for a nation of idiots.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 12:49pm
Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 12:38pm

But PONTI, President Hillary will need those exectuive powers to help fight the War on Global Terrorism?

What?...you want the terrorists to win?!?!?!

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 12:55pm
and most generous country in the world. Pretty good for a nation of idiots.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 12:49pm

POL POT PONTI, the moral weathervane who was FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN before he spun AGAINST SADDAM HUSSEIN, is as always ill-informed and living in the dream world bubble that makes him vulnerable to being the Khmer Rouge cheerleader that he is.

While US power is still evident, the Maximum Cheerleader and the Repulsive Party are doing their best to cut it off at the knees, with the full support of POl POT PONTI, resolute in his black pajamas.

On the question of giving: Despite tremendous generosity evidenced by the US' individuals, official stinginess is the government policy. According the the US Senate, Denmark's "Foriegn Aid Contribution as Percentage of GNP" stands at 1.06 percent and tops the chart; the US is 22nd at 0.1 percent, about 1/10th of the Danes.

More below ...

Friday, December 31, 2004 by the Boston Globe Global Analysts Dispute Perceived US Generosity by Charles M. Sennott

LONDON -- The US government is contributing $35 million of the half-billion dollars that the world's developed nations are donating to the tsunami relief effort, and many Americans believe -- as President Bush put it earlier this week -- that their country is being its typical ''generous, kindhearted" self.

But both on a per capita basis and as a percentage of the nation's wealth, America's emergency relief in Asia and development aid to poor countries actually ranks at the bottom of the list of developed nations, some of the world's top economists and analysts of international development aid said yesterday.

The world's Asian relief effort -- the largest in history -- and the enormity of the disaster have put into sharp focus an intensifying debate over what it means for a country to be generous: how much should wealthy nations pledge for relief from natural disasters, and how much should those governments donate for development in poorer nations?

As of yesterday, the amount the United States has pledged is eclipsed by the $96 million promised by Britain, a country with one-fifth the population, and by the $75 million vowed by Sweden, which amounts to $8.40 for each of its 9 million people. Denmark's pledge of $15.6 million amounts to roughly $2.90 per capita.

The US donation is 12 cents per capita.

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 1:03pm
Posted by MASK 10/24/2007 @ 12:55pm

But PONTI, President Hillary will need those exectuive powers to help fight the War on Global Terrorism?

What?...you want the terrorists to win?!?!?!

You're a little confused, MASK. I don't believe the 'Fairness Doctrine' that FRANK intends to use to 'correct problems' with talk radio is part of the measures that Bush is using to fight terrorism.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 1:08pm
But PONTI, President Hillary will need those exectuive powers to help fight the War on Global Terrorism?

Posted by MASK 10/24/2007 @ 12:55pm

so cumbuckets, is it in real life that the president has the power to censure free speech or just in the legend in your own mind.

(hint: channel kreskin.... channel kreskin....)

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 1:09pm
Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 12:38pm | ignore this person

PONTI,

You drivelling heel. Anyone who supports Rush is just as much a greedy, garish scoundrel and racist - with a mentality amounting to crazy. That his (and your) words are worthy of sanitization is evident even to the blindest bat in Congress. That you are a mangy fascist with allergies to liberty, morality, truth decency and salubrious society is even clearer. I choke on your cheapjack babble every time you feel an urge to disgorge the renovated deleriums of your hollow heroes whose pangs you set upon on and devour without the slightest thought of their taste, only to burp them up here in your own snooty style. Let's hear some more of your scripted, ready-made rhetoric as you go on scoffing the few good things your nation still stands for and claims to protect and guarantee as unbreakable laws sanctioned by God above. You (and your mangy fellowship of morons) are an ignoble traitor and should hold your head in disesteem for your failure as an American. You are just another re-tread loser helping to sink the ship you claim to be saving...

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 1:11pm
And yet we are the most advanced ...

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 12:49pm

This is the kind of complacency, ignorance "settling for eigth best" that the Repulsive Party preys on like bloodsuckers -- and the patently inferior, self-loathing POL POT PONTI is the willing apologist for being eight best and calling it victory; rather like GW Bush settling for being a (cough, ahem) a male cheerleader, just so long as no one pointed out his lack of accomplishment, his manifest inferiority and lack of masculinity, and thereby bruised his (sniff sniff) fragile self-esteem.

From Ontario's webpage:

Index of Living Conditions

The United Nations ranked Canada sixth on its Human Development Index for 2006. The country's standard of living, health care system, educational attainment, housing, cultural and recreational facilities, level of public safety and tourist opportunities are all of an exceptionally high quality.

Rank Country

1 Norway

2 Iceland

3 Australia

4 Ireland

5 Sweden

6 Canada

7 Japan

8 United States

9 Switzerland

10 Netherlands

11 Finland

12 Luxembourg

13 Belgium

14 Austria

15 Denmark

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 1:15pm
Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 1:08pm

Well, you got no problem with what the Bush FCC does on media ownership, PONTI....so why worry about what the Hillary FCC does with the Fairness Doctrine?

And if Congress approves it, even better, because as you always say that proves that the "majority of the American people" approve of it because Reid and Pelosi follow their lead!

Uh.....right?

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 1:35pm
Posted by WILL C. 10/24/2007 @ 1:09pm

Wow, some day, WILL....

you and PONTIFICUS in agreement?!??!!??

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 1:36pm
Wow, some day, WILL....

you and PONTIFICUS in agreement?!??!!??

Posted by MASK 10/24/2007 @ 1:36pm

now cumbuckets, before you blow your tampon through your girdle, stop for a minute and make your case that pontificus and I are in agreement.

and I'm asking you to do this outside of your head for a change

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 1:39pm
Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 1:11pm

You drivelling heel. Anyone who supports Rush is just as much a greedy, garish scoundrel and racist - with a mentality amounting to crazy. That his (and your) words are worthy of sanitization is evident even to the blindest bat in Congress.

I think you've been smoking ganja in the jungle a little too long, CHIMI. In the States, we idiots don't believe in 'sanitizing' the speech of people we don't agree with. Something about freedom of speech, you probably wouldn't understand.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 1:43pm
In the States, we idiots

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 1:43pm

scootificus, there might actually be hope for you yet son

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 1:45pm
In the States, we idiots

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 1:43pm

scootificus, there might actually be hope for you yet son

Posted by WILL C. 10/24/2007 @ 1:45pm

tell me, gentlemen,

"how do you generalize 300,000,000 million people?"

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 1:47pm
What the hell does the United Nations know?! LOONY LIBERALS ALL OF THEM!

Posted by MADLIB 10/24/2007 @ 1:20pm

That must be why G H W Bush (the one without the pom-poms and FlopGun costumes) worked there for several years, back when we ostensibley had the "Kick Me!" sign on our collective back!!! That would be before John Bolton restored "order" to the world through his brave rantings and ravings ...

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 1:47pm
Posted by MASK 10/24/2007 @ 1:35pm

Well, you got no problem with what the Bush FCC does on media ownership, PONTI....so why worry about what the Hillary FCC does with the Fairness Doctrine?

'Allowing' people to own various media outlets is a little different than telling them what they can say, and who is allowed to say it. Is the distinction lost on you?

And if Congress approves it, even better, because as you always say that proves that the "majority of the American people" approve of it because Reid and Pelosi follow their lead!

Not that it's going to happen, but Hillary is elected, and if the Congress approves it, we will deserve what we get.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 1:49pm
tell me, gentlemen,

"how do you generalize 300,000,000 million people?"

Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 10/24/2007 @ 1:47pm

the hamsters don't include Americans in their usage of the pronoun "we".

so for arguments sake a more accurate number would be the population of hamsterland, which I believe makes up a little less then a third of the electorate...

and is also home sweet home to scootificus

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 1:52pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/24/2007 @ 1:20pm

LOONY LIBERALS ALL OF THEM!

If you're lucky. Over 90 percent of the UN represents dictatorships, and the worst of those are in charge of Human Rights.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 1:54pm
He meant to say:

Something about DON'T TASE' ME, BRO', you probably wouldn't understand.

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 1:43pm

Now watch POL POT PONTI begin his Year Zero rantings about ... speech is "free", yes, provided that it zeros in on agreed upon truths from the MaximumCheerLeader. Thus by doctrine it applies not to, say, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, a duo that would be his cause celebre had they been dis-invited to address audiences in Caracas.

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 1:54pm
Dear WMD Liars, Please get your facts straight. The French were right! They were not convinced about the existance of WMD's. Have you read anything that Scott Ritter wrote before and since the invasion. Wake up!

Posted by wisanidiot at 10/24/2007 @ 1:54pm
PONTI

Free speech is a term so bent and warped it holds no meaning close to the one it was born with. In any society where the rabble is presumably free to say what they think there will invariably be an agency dedicated to controling the thoughts they have so that when they speak they say the "right" things. You believe assertions become truth by mere dint of repetition and therefore are a good dog. You question nothing and go about your business, hurling epithets at those who actually use their brains and ask questions or at those who don't spit the same rubbish you've been smacked over the head with so many times it's as much a part of you as your native desire to be pleasured by glory holes.

Say what you want, I'm just reminding you what a jackass you are and how narrow-minded your thinking is despite your beliefs to the contrary. Nowhere on earth has clownishness conspired with gullibility to such an amazing extent, and you are an heir of this matrimony of moronism. People like you sit before pundits and talking heads just like any bumpkin attending the freakshow of a carnival, leaving the production agape and in awe, eager to tell the world of the spectacle. Whereas the rustic retails his story of the three-legged woman or the werewolf child to his boorish brethren, you and those you rub elbows with go on mouthing words and soundbytes from the snouts of Rush, O'Reilly, Coulter and Hannity as if possessing some recondite and irreproachable knowledge. What is worse, you insist on baptizing the uninitiated with your shopworn slop read from a teleprompter by some millionaire who could care less about you and your condition. In the end, the pundits and the politicians they patronize are the ringleaders of the razzle-dazzle and the yokelry the bleacher creatures. So while you may boast your bread, it pales in comparison to your circus… And while you have every right to enjoy the show, you also have the right to enjoy starvation if you don't behave...

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 2:23pm
Just a reminder to everyone on this board about our friend Chimmy---this is the same guy who said more Americans need to die before the U.S. sees the light---whatever light that might be according to Chimmy---my guess is that the light he is refering to- is International Socialism--Chavez style.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 2:33pm
I'm off in hunter/gatherer mode, but this is a vintage CHIMI wordsmithing Rembrandt that whacks its target con muchisimo fuerza:

Whereas the rustic retails his story of the three-legged woman or the werewolf child to his boorish brethren, you and those you rub elbows with go on mouthing words and soundbytes from the snouts of Rush, O'Reilly, Coulter and Hannity as if possessing some recondite and irreproachable knowledge. What is worse, you insist on baptizing the uninitiated with your shopworn slop read from a teleprompter by some millionaire who could care less about you and your condition.

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/24/2007 @ 2:34pm
Posted by LEN MOSSE 10/24/2007 @ 2:33pm | ignore this person

You really need to see a doctor about that little brain in your knee...

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 2:38pm
Posted by MADLIB 10/24/2007 @ 2:34pm

Are you expecting us to be in charge of human rights then? With our lovely stance on torture, poverty, health care, and education?

Whatever your view on the US with regard to those issues, even you must admit that we have little to learn from the UN, the vast majority of which members are dictatorships.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 2:38pm
Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 2:38pm | ignore this person

And of course the US does NOT and has NEVER supported dictatorships. We have nothing to learn from you, that's for sure.

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 2:44pm
Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 2:44pm

And of course the US does NOT and has NEVER supported dictatorships. We have nothing to learn from you, that's for sure.

Sometimes the US has to support bad regimes over worse. Just one of the unsavory things you find that are necessary in the real world.

Posted by pontificus at 10/24/2007 @ 2:54pm
Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 2:54pm | ignore this person

You know nothing of the real world save what you've gleaned from the idiot box, which as you know is a curtain posturing as a window. The job of the US isn't to lead the world, rather to amuse it. There is no other explanation for such an aversion to truth and inversion of reality. Sadly, the show is quite bad... and getting worse. The laughter has stopped, which is why PONTI and gang insist on supplying the canned cheers and clanging pots and pans to smother the booing and hissing incessantly ejected by the horrified masses. But that's typical PONTI - talking of bridges where no roads exist...

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 3:00pm
CHIMI

Good to hear from you again.

I've always been a fan of your well-crafted vitriole.

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 3:01pm
DRHAMMER,

Gracias. ¡I got your back, hermano!

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 3:04pm
David, Thank you for yor brillant work. You will be sorely missed! To Happy and the other naysayers, I can tell you from my personal experience as an intelligence analyst post-Desert Storm that it was very clear Saddam Hussein did not have WMD's, nor was he likely to have them in the future. Joe Wilson was doing his job, and a good one, and didn't want his correct information twisted to fit the Cheney program. I still can't get over how many people still think it was OK to out Ms Plame, but as most of those who think this have never done covert work or intelligence work of any kind, I write them off as simpletons who would rather be lied to than use their brains. Once you have worked (or whored) for the government, it takes little imagination to realize that anyone's cover, job and life might be sacrificed on the altar of Cheney and Bush's lie. Thank God for people like the Wilsons and David Corn, for outing the truth no matter how difficult. Oh and by the way Santa Fe IS the "in" retirement spot for all us intel types, covert or not!

Posted by libmi at 10/24/2007 @ 3:18pm
As this is DC's last column and his new blog is not up yet - anybody can post comments at:

http://alternatereality456.blogspot.com/

AR456 is an ad hoc comments section as a stop-gap until DC's personal blog comments section is re-activated.

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/24/2007 @ 4:23pm
Chimmy fancies himself a wordsmith of sorts--he picks his words quite carefully with the intention of impressing folks with his vocabulary. However, sometimes when you give someone enough rope they will hang themselves---a few months ago Chimmy was explaining his world view and said the more Americans need to die before they see the light---he was not talking about our soldiers in Iraq---he was talking about Americans being killed by terrorist attack here in the United States. Now if all of you on the left want to allign yourself with Senior Chimmy go for it---You are alligning yourself with the perfect example of the "looney left" but in this case not a tree hugging harmless old hippie, you are standing with a hate mongering, blood thirsty,revolutionary---now I got no problem with all of you lefties standing with him---in fact I hope you do----that way you can rail against the wind all you want,hopefully causing little or no damage to this country while the rest of us win elections and move further and further away from anything CHIMMYCHUNGA stands for.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 4:32pm
Frank I think you have a Rush Limbaugh fetish--in every post you refer to him---does this stimulate you sexually or something? I haven't heard Rush on the radio or television for years. The conservative world does not spin around Rush Limbaugh--but apparently your world does.

Chimmy being such a wordsmith could have easily inserted the word "unfortunately" or "will have to" die in front of what he said. He did not. Frank are you saying that Chimmy could actually type something that was unclear and not to the point????? Never---Chimmy strikes me as the type of guy who is always clear even poetic, especially when he is calling for Death to Americans.

Posted by Len Mosse at 10/24/2007 @ 5:03pm
What law am I missing out on here, PONTIFLOGIC? I did not ask you for a lecture on law, I asked you fro the proof for the basis of the argument you have been claiming for a year, that Ms. Plame was not a covert CIA agent. Like your silly "witch hunt", you have yet to offer a single shred of proof. Zilch, nada, nothing. But it is you that insist I am holding my ears closed, after I offer my proof, which you have NEVER countered.

So, once again, do you have ANY proof that Plame was not a covert agent? Any proof that would contradict what the head of the CIA and court papers say? Anything substantial?

Do you have a list of the democrats that were involved in the "democratic witch hunt" to get Libby? You made this claim for a year, so I supposed that you had some facts to base this charge on? Do you?

And for he neo-cons in general, I sure would like to see what evidence you base the "Armitage is a liberal" claim on.

here is a bio from the state dept:

Richard L. Armitage's nomination as Deputy Secretary of State was confirmed by the Senate on March 23, 2001. He was sworn in on March 26, 2001.

Since May 1993, Richard L. Armitage was President of Armitage Associates L.C. He had been engaged in a range of worldwide business and public policy endeavors as well as frequent public speaking and writing. Previously, he held senior troubleshooting and negotiating positions in the Departments of State and Defense, and the Congress.

From March 1992 until his departure from public service in May 1993, Mr. Armitage (with the personal rank of Ambassador) directed U.S. assistance to the new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. In January 1992, the Bush Administration's desire to jump-start international assistance to the NIS resulted in his appointment as Coordinator for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance. During his tenure in these positions Mr. Armitage completed extensive international coordination projects with the European Community, Japan, and other donor countries.

From 1989 through 1992, Mr. Armitage filled key diplomatic positions as Presidential Special Negotiator for the Philippines Military Bases Agreement and Special Mediator for Water in the Middle East. President Bush sent him as a Special Emissary to Jordan's King Hussein during the 1991 Gulf war.

In the Pentagon from June 1983 to May 1989, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. (Which liberal was in the WH from 83-89?)He represented the Department of Defense in developing politico-military relationships and initiatives throughout the world, spearheaded U.S.-Pacific security policy including the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-China security relationships, managed all DoD security assistance programs, and provided oversight of policies related to the law of the sea, U.S. special operations, and counter-terrorism. He played a leading role in Middle East Security Policies.

In May 1975 Mr. Armitage came to Washington as a Pentagon consultant and was posted in Tehran, Iran, until November 1976. Following two years in the private sector, he took the position as Administrative Assistant to Senator Robert Dole of Kansas in 1978. In the 1980 Reagan campaign, Mr. Armitage was senior advisor to the Interim Foreign Policy Advisory board, which prepared the President-Elect for major international policy issues confronting the new administration. From 1981 until June 1983 Mr. Armitage was Deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. (who did he work for from 1981-83, which liberal was in the WH then?)

So, where do his liberal leaning come from? Or is it just his dissent from Chimpy McFlighsuit that makes him a liberal or "one of ours"? Or, is this just more nonsense from the neo-cons because EVERYONE involved in the Plame debacle was a republican, including the Wilson/Plames (till Chimpy drove them out of his party)?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 5:53pm
LENMOSSE, which president instituted "Free Speech Zones"?

Which party has plans in place to drown out dissent at it's meetings?

Which party has people dragged from it's events for wearing T-shirts with slogans on them when the party does not like those slogans?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 5:55pm
Here is what I base my "opinion" on PONTI-FLOGIC-ICUS and friends, what do you have?

NBC News

Updated: 1:24 p.m. PT May 29, 2007

WASHINGTON - An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

...Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."

...Libby was convicted in March of four of five felony counts against him I include that last part because it is so much fun to read.

The court filing also says this: At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilsons employment relationship with the CIA on July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States

so, what do you have to contradict these papers filed by an appointee of the republican attorney general?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 6:10pm
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 4:43pm

Very cogent, Frank.

You may be surprised to read, however, that I wish there were a hundred like Lennie.

(Because there are thousands...)

Posted by drhammer at 10/24/2007 @ 7:16pm
I resent the fact that prunes like MOSSE continue to avoid the realities that confront them and instead focus on trivial matters such as the tenor of an anonymous blogger. It's clear that the US has an amazing dexterity and fluency in the art of violence. It is a culture that the masses wave flags to as the bombs burst in the air. But there is no denying the fact that the devotion to and mastery of this art (to the detriment of so many good works that are not only possible but might actually inspire a better tomorrow) has begat a growing gang of angry people across the globe who see this language of war as the only way to communicate with those who insist on depriving them of their freedoms. Whether this is Colombia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, Morocco, Russia or England there is no refuting the attention that violence commands in today's world - it is the sledge hammer that awakens the people from their slumber and reminds the distant ruling class of just how bad some people view their existence at the bottom of the totem pole.

Do I advocate violence? Not at all, however I certainly understand it, especially the resistance to it. Unfortunately, that resistance often finds the need to respond in coin which often creates a destructive cycle that only fits too well with the plans of the fearmongers sitting at the head of the table. Regardless of who you believe the author of 9-11 is, look what it has done for bin Laden. Now any random rebel with a Quran and AK-47 who sees the US as evil can simply attach bin Laden or al-Qaeda to his name an voila - instant notoriety on the world stage. What would Giuliani be without 9-11? Is there anything more ghastly than a man running for office by constantly exploiting the most horrific and infamous day of his nation's dawning century?

I'd hope people like MOSSE are more concerned with young kids blasting their way through the halls of their high schools and universities instead of some distant expat who simply doesn't agree with what he sees. The government has taught violence as a legitimate and successful problemsolving method that is so entrenched in the culture it can be considered a form of popular instruction. TV, movies, news, magazines - they all glorify the wermacht and the power of purveying death and destruction. How long until Giuliani hops into a tank or lands a plane on an aircraft carrier so as to prove he has cojones? Being prepared to drop the big one is a major selling point for candidates seeking to become the most powerful man in the world. Violence is power. Power is violent. It should be no surprise when the guns are pointed the other way, whether aimed by natives or by outlanders...

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 8:05pm
Do I advocate violence? Not at all, however I certainly understand it, especially the resistance to it. ----Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 8:05pm

Sure you do....remember???

"I DON'T SUPPORT FIDEL CASTRO OR CUBA. What is more, I WOULD SUPPORT A US INVASION OF CUBA IN ORDER TO TAKE OUT FIDEL AND TRULY LIBERATE THE 11 MILLION PEOPLE SUFFERING UNDER HIS REGIME."----Posted by CHIMICHENGA 12/20/2006 @ 2:07pm

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 9:25pm
Over 90 percent of the UN represents dictatorships

Posted by PONTIFICUS 10/24/2007 @ 1:54pm

huh?

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 9:50pm
There's a lot to read there but it should open some eyes. Take the time and then comment.

Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/24/2007 @ 3:37pm

Frank is a loon and competeing with the Plunger/Reese award by posting others works..

My dogs water dish is deeper than Frank.

Len Mosse...

Remember what your mother told you about arguing with a fool..IE Frank...

He doesn't understand anything..his world is built around Hillarys balls and Rush Limbaugh, where he may be the only person alive who doesn't "get Rush or Rush's" schtick..

Frank is an idiot..

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 9:55pm
And like most idiots, he fancys himself an itellect..a wit..when in fact he is just short of a jester. Poor thing...

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 10:01pm
MASK,

Just when I start to stomach you a bit out you come with that pother you insist on wearing around your neck for any chance you might have of dropping it here like a sack of dung. You're only proving yourself to be even more of a flake by actually accumulating and hiving quotes from some post now ten months old in hopes of pulling them out desultorily before the peanut gallery. This is why I call you Little Shot.

If you want to judge me based on one post go ahead, but I don't think it's fair. I mean, how would you like me to call you an incorrigible pervert just because you experimented with a Billy Ocean blow-up doll once in college?

Posted by chimichenga at 10/24/2007 @ 10:11pm
he fancys himself an itellect.

Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 10:01pm

well, well, MR. KETTLE.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 10:17pm
Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/24/2007 @ 10:11pm

CHIMI, happy to hear you recant and say you didn't mean it on 12/20/2006 @ 2:07pm.

Right? (Oh, and flower it up with a lot of rhetoric, without actually answering the question, Ezra!)

Posted by Mask at 10/24/2007 @ 10:27pm
"...Billy Ocean blow-up doll once in college?.."

Carribean dream?

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 10:37pm
well, well, MR. KETTLE.

Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 10/24/2007 @ 10:17pm

eee gads he certainly has gone to pot.

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 10:37pm
Frosty,

Spare me...tell me you think Frank is a wit? or a Twit?

If you really "can get behind" Franks twisted view of free speech, logic, the Constitution, Hillary..and his conveluted(sp) conclusions.... then we have a problem...

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 10:39pm
JOMA, where is your proof of Plames status? Do you have anything to back up your claim that she was not covert?

Shall we go through a short list of what the neo-cons have been wrong about?

1: It was common knowledge that she was an agent. Not true.

2: It was known from cocktail parties that she was an agent. No one has come forth to claim they were at a party where Plame told someone she was an agent. One person originally claimed it was "several parties", later recanted to "maybe one" but could not recall where and when the alleged party took place.

3: Plame was a desk jockey, no more important than a janitor. Not true. She was in charge of a group whose job it was to save people like Happy and Pontiflogic from wmd's, and help prevent the axis of evil from acquiring nukes. That group can no longer call on assets developed by Ms. Plame.

4. President Chimpy was right to put in his infamous 16 words The WH has admitted they should not have included that in the speech. The claim was based on forged documents that did not even have the correct Prime Ministers name. Chimpy was not referring to attempts Hussein made years earlier, that is a not so clever ruse to cover Chimpies butt.

Why should anybody believe the cons when they say they know what they are talking about when it comes to this monumental breech of national security?

Plame was covert, the republican head of the CIA appointed by George W. Bush has said so. After a democratic witch hunt involving only republicans exposed the lies and obfuscations of ChimpCo.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 10:45pm
After a great time and back today from West Palm, Miami and South Beach from a few days with my son in the sun...and tomorrow we are on the way to Seattle...

...and then there it is...

...the unmistakeably, pungent as yesterdays fish guts,borne on the wind from the Western Shores of Puget Sound..the oder of economic horseshit mixed in with sawdust...

..along with a rush of negative energy known as Hammer Blow Back ....vibrates from the screen...what,pray tell, oh what ever could that be...?

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 10:47pm
What are we to think of a person that makes claims for a year, but is completely unable to come up with one name of a democrat involved in a grand democratic conspiracy? What should we think of people that claim republicans are our saviors and only hope, but pooh pooh republican appointed prosecutors, judges and heads of spy agencies?

Should we trust their judgement?

history says " Oh, no. No. Truly, don't do that, wouldn't be prudent."

Where re the Iraqi wmd's? where is the decrease in Islamic terrorism? Where is the stable, peaceful Iraq? Where is our money?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 10:52pm
Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 10:39pm

i was teasing you because of the irony of spelling "intellectual" as "itellect".

i neither agree nor disagree with a "person".

some ideas are good, some are bad.

Posted by frosty zoom at 10/24/2007 @ 10:53pm
"JOMA, where is your proof of Plames status? Do you have anything to back up your claim that she was not covert? '

I answered that before, yesterday I think...I am satisfied with the author of the law, the one who crafted the intention, the reasoning she used to define who the covert status would apply, fit, measure and intended to define..before the committee..

I accept her testimony as to the nature, spirit and INTENTION of the situation...add to the fact no one was ever close to being prosecuted for "outing"anyone,except her own husband, perhaps...therefore, the whole thing was a political end game designed to hurt Bush and nothing else..I am not defending Bush by any means, but the Wilsons needed a little more "inspections" by Fitz.....anyway, they lost me all the way to Sante Fe and back, for the Wislons,er, Plames, er whatever..

case closed for me... I believe Corn is the water boy for you on this one...

Save your "what we were wrong about" list for Frank...he will need it..

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 10:57pm
Plame was not covert and her husband was an idiot for outing he JOMA

And, pray tell, how did Wilson convince Novak to publish his wife's name an occupation? Was this part of the democratic Plan? Did Wilson (a republican) approach Armitage (a republican) first?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 10:58pm
Crab, my friend...I couldn't care less any more and haven't given any more time to them or the subject..I just don't care at this point..it is over and they and their millions(good for them) are having fun in NM..if I see them on one of my trips down there I will send over a drink, with a smile and a nod..for "Good One", well done,you survived it all, enjoy...and maybe she will smile at me...

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 11:02pm
Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 10:57pm

so, Ms. Toesening, ONE OF, not THE, authors of the statute in question, has more knowledge of an agents status than her boss? Do you have any documents from the Libby defense team showing where they disputed Fitz filings showing that she was covert?

The fact that no one was charged with the specific crime has no bearing on her status, or vice versa. It is a non-sequitor. In order to be charged, the parties would also have to have had knowledge and intent. Fitz was clear he could not prove those two things beyond a reasonable doubt. It is more thanlikely that is why Libby lied, to keep the republican appointed prosecutor from being able to prove Libby's knowledge of her covert status.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:03pm
Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 11:02pm

funny, you are happy to make claims, but unwilling to back them up? I am willing to bet it is not over for the Wilsons, the libbys or the CIA.

Bury your head, it's your country too.Your kids are just as much at risk from nukes as me. It would be pretty darn rich irony were an Iranian nuke found it's way to your doorstep.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:06pm
I wonder if it is over for those people in Iran that helped Ms. Plame protect you from wmd's. Do you think the Iranians have forgotten about her?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:08pm
Sorry about the continuing bad english.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:09pm
Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 11:02pm

IF you have the cojones, take a stroll over to the table and have them explain it to you. Tell Joe how you think he outed his wife. See if he buys you the next round.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:14pm
Crab, my friend...I couldn't care less any more

translation: "I have nothing except my ideology. No facts, no court records, no opinions from relevant agencies, no opinions from people that actually were current in ongoing intel operations. Nothing. So I quit."

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:17pm
"Bury your head, it's your country too.Your kids are just as much at risk from nukes as me. It would be pretty darn rich irony were an Iranian nuke found it's way to your doorstep.

Posted by CRABWALK 10/24/2007 @ 11:06pm

I believe one is headed for our door step..it is a matter of time....and has nothing to do with Plames or Wilsons..

...but thats another thread and we have an early flight....gonna visit great grandma for her 90th Birthday...she says she helps "old people" all day for work..mind boggling..I thought she WAS old...anyway, many of us will converge in Washington State and celebrate her life...

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 11:18pm
translation: "I have moved on"

Posted by CRABWALK 10/24/2007 @ 11:17pm

I just moved on, like the organization..Movedon.something...

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 11:19pm
In case anybody missed the memo, the following is for general distribution:

From MotherJones.com:

Posted by Clara Jeffrey on 09/30/07

David Corn To Become Mother Jones' Washington Bureau Chief

Everybody here at Mother Jones is very pleased to announce that David Corn, long-time Washington Editor for The Nation, best-selling author, blogger, and TV commentator has agreed to take the reins of our greatly expanded Washington bureau....which will now have a staff of seven reporters and editors. The longtime Washington editor of The Nation, Corn has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Harper's, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, and many other publications.

"I welcome the chance to work with a team of reporters whose mission is to investigate Washington," says Corn. "And the timing couldn't be better. Conventional media outfits are cutting back, opinion frequently drowns out reporting, and the blogosphere is too often loaded with rants. There's a real appetite for the kind of facts-based journalism Mother Jones is known for. This squad of D.C.-based reporters will turbocharge the magazine's investigative capabilities and help MotherJones.com become even more of a daily go-to source for vital news and analysis."

............

Hey, how many folks recognize themselves in this "the blogosphere is too often loaded with rants" part of David's comments on joining MoJo?

Posted by Happy at 10/24/2007 @ 11:20pm
Posted by HAPPY 10/24/2007 @ 11:20pm

Any conservatives on your list? Where is Frank...we need his help to moniter these authors and publications to ensure "Fairness"....ah, don't we?

Posted by JoMa at 10/24/2007 @ 11:23pm
might Teobsing have a motive to cover for Novak?

According to an October 17, 2001, "Reliable Source" column in The Washington Post, Novak was among "70 friends" hosted by diGenova to celebrate Toensing's 60th birthday at the Palm restaurant.

A February 27, 1998, profile of Toensing and diGenova in The Washington Post reported that "[t]he couple retreat on weekends to their Fenwick Island, Del., beach house, hanging with such pals as Robert Novak and Bill Regardie.-media matters.com

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:24pm
and has nothing to do with Plames or Wilsons..

Funny, she was in charge of a unit whose job it was to track wmd proliferation. Not any more.

Maybe we should go to war to stop wmd proliferation. Much more efficient than having spies do it.

Really, do you have ANYTHING to back up your claims, other than the opinion of someone who had no current knowledge of Plames work?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:27pm
Ms Toesning left guvt service in 1988, I think. How could she know Plames status in 2003?

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:30pm
just moved on, like the organization..Movedon.something...

translation: "I have nothing except my ideology. No facts, no court records, no opinions from relevant agencies, no opinions from people that actually were current in ongoing intel operations. Nothing. So I quit."

Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 11:19pm

Posted by crabwalk at 10/24/2007 @ 11:31pm
Ms Toesning left guvt service in 1988, I think. How could she know Plames status in 2003?

Posted by CRABWALK 10/24/2007 @ 11:30pm

well you see, when she cups the camels testicles and moves them to slightly to the right...

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:36pm
all matter of things become apparent.

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:37pm
Any conservatives on your list?

Posted by JOMA 10/24/2007 @ 11:23pm

No fly-by-nighters....us regulars aren't good ranters, well, at least not consistently enough to be classified as "ranters"...besides, can't be considered "ranting" when we are standing up for the American way, Capitalism & Personal/Family Responsibility, right?

OK, class, let's play a game! Those of you don't have an extensive ignore list, any Nominee for the best Lib Ranter! I admit I've got a lengthy i-list and I'm sure one of them is THE Best! Copy-N-Paste artists need not apply! LOL!

Posted by Happy at 10/24/2007 @ 11:43pm
I admit I've got a lengthy i-list

Posted by HAPPY 10/24/2007 @ 11:43pm

and you get so emotional right before you hit the ignore button

Ha Ha Ha Ha

Posted by Will C. at 10/24/2007 @ 11:46pm
MASK,

Castro is a bad dude. I've been to Cuba and spoken with the people who suffer on the island. Have you? Is Castro an evildoer? No. Is he a bad guy? Yes. He is no danger to anyone but the people of Cuba. I believe Cubans deserve better and I'd support any native insurrection. I don't think the US should invade or "take him out", however I feel very strongly about what I saw during my time on the island and believe my quote was a product of my emotions shoving my thoughts out of my head before they were adequately dressed and shod for the runway here that you so adamantly (and obnoxiously) police and chronicle.

Add this one to your tome of quotable quotes - you know, that mountain of rubbish you keep next to your Playgirl library.

Posted by chimichenga at 10/25/2007 @ 12:04am
Guess nobody cares that the world's supply of oil will probably be depleted in our lifetime.

Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/25/2007 @ 12:51am

Think of all the money we'll save on gas

Posted by Will C. at 10/25/2007 @ 12:55am
Valerie Plame Wilson had an honorable 20 year career with the CIA. She risked her life many times. Eventually, she met and married a man who was as brave, patriotic and savvy as herslf. Joe Wilson was vastly experienced in sub-Saharan African nations and was lauded as a hero in Iraq in 1991 by George H.W. Bush when he stood up to a threat of execution by Saddam Hussein in order to protect over 800 diplomats and their families including our Americans embassy. Wilson faced off with Saddam Hussein bringing along a noose to the meeting with that known serial killer in which he persuaded Hussein to allow evacuation of the embassies' personnel. How have we reached the place where our most honorable, bravest, most patriotic citizens are the ones to be abused and, if possible, ruined? There are those in prison for treason for giving away the kind of information that the White House officials provided to a number of reporters. Everyone privy to secret information in the White House is vetted about it. There is no way that any of them can say they didn't know. The most curious aspect is the blatantly sexist outing itself. It makes no sense whatsoever in any context except the one proffered in another comment, that Cheney was interested in disrupting this successful CIA operation to bring about justification for bombing Iran.

Posted by urthsong at 10/25/2007 @ 03:20am
Chenye was also interested in squelching dissent and sending a message to those that are willing to call out his lies in public:

"We will go after your family".

Note how they went after a family member of the dissenter, and how the neo-clowns squeal with delight about it, but then squawk with indignation when we bring up his lesbian daughter and her out of wedlock love child.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/25/2007 @ 08:19am
CIA Director Hayden: Valerie Plame Was Covert Agent, Mar 16th 2007 by David Knowles, AOL News

"This will be a bitter pill for some conservatives to swallow. CIA Director Michael Hayden personally reviewed and okayed Henry Waxman's opening statement for Valerie Plame's testimony today. Furthermore, Hayden took pains to set the record straight: Plame was indeed a covert agent up until the day Robert Novak revealed as much to the public.

You see, many on the right (including some here at The Stump) have spent a lot of time trying to convince us otherwise. They never fail to use quotation marks when referring to the administration's "outing" of Plame so as to suggest that no such undercover status ever existed. While Patrick Fitzgerald may not have believed he had enough evidence to prove that a crime was committed, there was really never much doubt that Plame had covert status. "

Who are you going to believe, the CIA Director or Victoria Toensing a white collar criminal defense attorney who left government after the Reagan Administration?

Victoria Toensing: Well, if I had evidence that she was covert I certainly would respect that, but she did not have a foreign assignment within five years of publication. Wilson stated that in his book -- he states that they returned to the United States sometime in 1997, so six years. The definition of "covert agent," a person whose identity is to be protected, is someone who has been overseas in the past five years. The five years were added to protect sources the person would have worked with.

If Plame did have a foreign CIA assignment within five years of Novak's treasonous leak of Plame's CIA affiliation as a covert agent, how would Toensing know one way or the other? The CIA would certainly keep a covert agent's travel abroad secret.

Wilson accuratly claims they returned to the USA in 1997 but makes no claims about Valerie's status as a covert agent, either to deny or affirm, and makes no claims about Valerie's subsequent travel as a covert CIA agent.

Toensing would have you believe that because Wilson said they returned in 1997 that Toensing has evidence Plame did not travel abroad on CIA business covertly since then. Toensing is a sophist of the highest order.

It's too bad willing dupes continue to argue Libby and Cheney's innocence, as well as argue Plame's status as a covert CIA agent working on nuclear non-proliferation in the Iraq and Iran.

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/25/2007 @ 08:43am
NEIL, in my best Montgomery Burns ..."Excccellent".

What do the cons have? Ideology and prayers. No facts. None, zippo, zilch.

Posted by crabwalk at 10/25/2007 @ 09:07am
Theory vs reality

Posted by crabwalk at 10/25/2007 @ 09:08am
Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/25/2007 @ 12:04am

Yeah, kind of thought you'd back away from it, CHIMI.

Too embarassing to sound like a "neo-con" about Cuba on THIS site!

Posted by Mask at 10/25/2007 @ 10:15am
BTW...

"you know, that mountain of rubbish you keep next to your Playgirl library."----Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/25/2007 @ 12:04am

Why do you think I have a "Playgirl" library?

Posted by Mask at 10/25/2007 @ 10:24am
Posted by MASK 10/25/2007 @ 10:24am | ignore this person

I was just making a funny.

Posted by chimichenga at 10/25/2007 @ 11:07am
I was just making a funny.

Posted by CHIMICHENGA 10/25/2007 @ 11:07am

Hmmm....what's "funny" about a "Playgirl" library? What kind of person collects said periodical, CHIMI?

Posted by Mask at 10/25/2007 @ 12:25pm
CORN and PINKERTON latest video blog [bloggingheads.tv] posted Wed, Oct 24.

Is Turkey starting the next Middle Eastern war? (07:25)

Will one of these Republican losers win in '08? (09:46)

Spitzer's immigration problem (13:17)

Does Christendom need defending against Islam? (16:21)

Who does Christendom exclude? (05:37)

God doesn't play dice. She plays baseball (12:50)

Happy really is a douchebag (64:09)

Posted by NeilSagan at 10/25/2007 @ 12:52pm
GOD HAS SPOKEN

RedSox Nation - 13

Rocky Mountain AssClowns - 1

Posted by John_Shaft at 10/25/2007 @ 1:28pm
The bottom line when you have any level of security clearance is this:

1. You do NOT discuss anything you even THINK might be classified. 2. You do NOT discuss anything with any one who DOES NOT have the appropriate security clearance, or a security clearance period.

I was a military intelligence analyst in the US Army. These are two of the most basic rules that you learn from the git-go.

The idea that people who have been working for the federal government for as long as people such as Cheney, Libby, Armitage, Rove wouldn't have the slightest inkling that they should keep their mouths shut about the status of anyone who was even REMOTELY connected with the CIA is just plain idiotic.

If you take a few minutes to review Novak's column of July 2003, you will note he specifically uses terminology that indicates that whoever his source was KNEW Plame as more than "just a secretary." I don't recall the specific wording Novak used now, but it was along the lines of a "CIA operative." That point aside, Novak acknowledges he received a phone call from CIA asking him to NOT use Plame's name. As Bill Engvall would say "Here's your sign."

I believe now, as I did then, that this was a deliberate betrayal of a CIA agent who was doing important and classified work. It is, IMHO, nothing short of treason and traitorous behavior and all of those even remotely connected to it -- meaning Cheney, Rove, Libby and Bush -- should be tried in federal court on charges of treason.

What they did was simply unforgiveable.

Posted by Helen Rainier at 10/25/2007 @ 1:31pm
...a deliberate betrayal of a CIA agent who was doing important and classified work. It is, IMHO, nothing short of treason and traitorous behavior and all of those even remotely connected to it -- meaning Cheney, Rove, Libby and Bush -- should be tried in federal court on charges of treason.

Posted by HELEN RAINIER 10/25/2007 @ 1:31pm

Excuse me, HELEN, how REMOTE is being the FIRST to mention Ms. Plame's CIA ties to the press? How familiar are you with the name Richard Armitage and how long he had been in various Gov't positions? Lastly, what do you suppose was Armitage's reason to "betray" Ms. Plame?

Posted by Happy at 10/25/2007 @ 5:54pm
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/27/2007 @ 9:20pm

David Corn

Washington--a city of denials, spin, and political calculations. They may speak English there, but most citizens still need an interpreter to understand its ways and meanings. DAVID CORN, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine, has spent years analyzing the policies and pursuing the lies that spew out of the nation's capital. He is a novelist, biographer, and television and radio commentator who is able to both decipher and scrutinize Washington.

In his dispatches, he takes on the day-by-day political and policy battles under way in the Capitol, the White House, the think tanks, and the television studios. With an informed, unconventional perspective, he holds the politicians, policymakers and pundits accountable and reports the important facts and views that go uncovered elsewhere.

Check out David Corn's latest book, (co-written with Michael Isikoff and now available in paperback), Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (Crown Publishers). For information, visit his personal blog at davidcorn.com.

Photo Credit: Michael Lorenzini

Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

posted by David Corn on 10/22/2007 @ 11:45pm

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Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

posted by David Corn on 10/22/2007 @ 11:45pm

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