Updates on For The Dream...

[johnpalmer]

I have an update on For The Dream... it's long (over 3000 words) about Joseph Wilson.

Interesting fact: in all of the articles in which he's alleged to have lied about debunking the documents, he's never quoted directly on the matter. It's always someone else claiming that he did so. The one time he speaks about the documents in his own words, he insists he never saw them.

(So why did he suggest he may have misspoke to the Senate investigation? He hadn't seen the specific articles in a long time; he had no idea what they'd attributed to him at the time. The articles themselves are confusing, because they attribute unnamed officials speaking about an unnamed ex-ambassador... I'm not surprised he had a hard time remembering what he was supposed to have said, and who claimed he said it!)

It's really pretty scary how clean the story of Joseph Wilson once you do some real digging.

Comments

[pagawne.livejournal.com]

John, if you will email me (pgawneatcablespeeddotcom) I will send you the names of those teas.

And from the red dot in your sea of blue (*smile*)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Have you read Victoria Toensing's take on the Wilson/Plame kerfuffle from the Wall Street Journal? I understand that there's free access to this one, but if you can't get it I'll send you a copy.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007508

Re: And from the red dot in your sea of blue (*smile*)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I have now, and maybe have earlier... let me dissect (some of) the parts I find troubling.

"Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy."

What was the administration's Iraq policy in February of 2002, when Joseph Wilson was sent?

See, this column, in the first few paragraphs, displays sloppy thinking. It's assuming facts that hadn't been established at the time he was sent.

Later, it claims that the VP's office hadn't been appraised of the trip, "as claimed by Mr. Wilson". Wilson never made that claim; he said that SOP would have been a report was delivered, perhaps orally.

Later, there's this:

More important than the inaccuracies (NB: *what* inaccuracies? He said there were tight controls that he didn't think someone could sneak a major purchase through; there are. Everything else he said was loaded with caveats) is that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise?


*This* assumes that his wife played a major role in his being sent. But all she did was mention that she knew someone who could do the job. Why would subsequent investigation lead to her?

See, it's assuming that she someone forced the CIA into giving him the job, that she was a key player, rather than someone who threw his hat into the ring. Well, we know that she *did*, in fact, just throw his hat into the ring.

If there was nothing bad about his wife throwing his hat into the ring, there's no reason to suspect her name will ever come up.

That the CIA and Joseph Wilson were angry that her name came up is evidence that they are either *really* sneaky (and yet, awfully stupid - her name was valuable!) *or* that Wilson's claim is true: she had no real, important part in sending him, past saying he could do the job, that the decision to send him was based on his ability to do the job, not her introduction.

See, this is the key mistake that the Wilson critics keep making. They keep making assumptions that didn't exist prior to Wilson's article.

If his wife had sent him... but she didn't. The only reason people speculated about that was Novak's column.

He was opposed to the administration's plans for war... but the war wasn't going to be fought for another 13 months. And who knew that fourteen months later, in May of 2003, they'd be trying to find the promised stocks of WMDs after the invasion?

Novak asks "why would a member of Clinton's national security council be sent?" Well... if it was a partisan mission, for partisan purposes, yes, Joseph Wilson would have been a terrible choice, if he'd served the Clinton administration. But if it was an investigative mission, if they were just trying to discern the truth... well, it's a pretty stupid question, isn't it? Clinton might not have been the best President ever, but he was competent, and if he picked Wilson, it was probably because Wilson was competent.

Re: And from the red dot in your sea of blue (*smile*)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Let's remember that the author was also one of the authors of the anti-"outing" legislation that was the focus of this entire investigation.

She is hardly a sloppy thinker. Please note her credentials. Unlike many folks who are armchair-quarterbacking this affair (including thee and me), she has first hand knowledge of how the CIA works.

Re: And from the red dot in your sea of blue (*smile*)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Obviously, Ms. Toensing isn't a sloppy thinker in general... but this article *is* sloppy, for the reasons I mentioned.

Even the bit about the CIA having to review his article... his trip was (his words) discreet, but not secret.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

What's scary to me is that we don't (yet) know why the administration decided to go balls-out on this one. I mean, sure, Wilson's report discredited one of the reasons for waging this war. It seems like a long way to go to try to silence someone who - until the White House made a huge deal out of it - was a relatively unknown critic. This makes me wonder what has been done behind the scenes to trash the reputations of other, more prominent critics of the war.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Well, from my side of the aisle, it doesn't look like they tried to go balls out on this one. From my side of the aisle it looks as though they were hoping to quietly warn the press to do a little fact-checking.

Moral: never trust the press (*ducks and runs*).

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

See, this just doesn't hold up. So, his wife said he could do the job... is this something slimey, that the press should be aware of?

The trip was not conducted as a political attack; there was no political attack to *make* in Febrary, 2002.

All of these speculation that there was something wrong with his wife throwing his hat into the ring is based upon knowledge that he wrote an article that raised some ugly questions.

But he hadn't written the article when he'd been sent. So why does she fall under suspicion? What motivation could she have had, other than offering someone who had the ability to do the job?

Can't you see? By saying she's guilty of something, or tainted by the situation, you're assuming that it's a political issue... back when it wasn't yet political.

The *only* way that we can say that she did something terrible by suggesting her husband is if everyone in Washington already knew that we were going to invade (no questions asked!) in February 2002, over a year before the invasion took place.

If the CIA knew in February of 2002 that we would invade, come hell or high water, well, Joseph Wilson's little piece about "did they overplay the uranium card?" isn't even the tip of the iceberg, it's an unrelated icicle.

And I'm sorry, I feel passionately about this, so if I'm coming across badly, I apologize. I just can't quite see how people can't *see* this.

What *was* going on in 2/2002 that would make Valerie about to engage in some kind of meaningful subterfuge? What made her role important, using the information we had available from 2/2002?

If the answer is "nothing", then the whole leak case falls apart, doesn't it? They were just trying to discredit a critic ("He's no one important, not anyone that is respected by the agency; he just got sent because his wife thought he could do it."), and did so in a horribly reckless way, and then covered it up.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

We will have to agree to disagree. You are wedded to your narrative of the Bush administration manufacturing claims and engaging in dirty tricks. I am wedded to my narrative of the CIA as a cesspool of anti-administration feeling. And I have as visceral a reaction to that smarmy "Bond, James Bond" wannabee in the top-down convertible photo as some folks on the other side have to Chimpy McBush's smirk.

I'm as surprised that you can't see what's perfectly clear to me as you are surprised that I can't see what's perfectly clear to you. A fault of our isms, most likely, with the truth somewhere in between.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the military continues to roll up the insurgents' nests up the Euphrates and up to the Syran border, and the Iraq army is increasingly taking the lead with us increasingly falling back to a supporting role. I wish I could get a good look at the campaign news from the national media instead of having to trawl the warblogs.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Laura... as all that I hold holy is my witness, I'm not wedded to anything in particular in this one instance.

The war is one thing; I can deal with people supporting the war. I think they're wrong, they think I'm wrong, hey, life is like that.

The rest... well, we'll just be repeating ourselves, and the best we can do there is annoy each other I imagine.

Can I offer to buy you a virtual drink, with a promise of a real one, if/when we're next together?

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Sure. I'd even buy the second round.