There's a lot we don't know yet about the CIA flap
Grist for Dumpling's mill.
There's a lot we don't know yet about the CIA flap: "The bottom line is, some of the most critical facts in the whole Wilson/Plame/CIA matter are just not known, at least not known by anyone outside of the Fitzgerald investigation."
posted by Victor Laszlo @ 7/14/2005
6 comments
6 Comments:
Allright, I gotta go to work now, but one last shot. Fitzgerald said that outside of the Cooper e-mail, his case was pretty much wrapped up. Now we've seen the e-mail. Rove's criminality is ambiguous. Case, essentially, over
Party pooper!
sadly, gauging the public's ire-rate is tough business. Morality, it appears is best defined as anything related to sex and not to ethics. But I really think that the issue is more about simplicity of the image. Sex is something people visualize. Lying, putting undercover agents at risk, impacting the global balance of power, all of those things are abstract and a bit of work for many people. So, making this an issue will have to be the job of the media, to go step by step through the outrageous dominoes. The reporter or news network that does this will have a coup. I think it calls for a USA Today chart. When you see that, we've won.
Thanks for getting my back Meta, but I'm not sure you're addressing the point in this article that there's still a lot that's very confusing about this case.
Why did Rove give the waiver to Cooper? How did outing Wilson's wife smear him?
If there's still a lot unanswered questions, the Dems can't boil it down into a message or talking point to hammer home and the right can either fire up their noise machine and claim stuff like Rove is actually a whistelblower or just ignore the whole thing.
On the other hand, just the air of scandal seems to be hurting this administration in a general way (lack of clear causality to public opinion nonwithstanding.
Maybe Cheney is the other leaker?
Look, may god strike me down if I am ever seen in any way as defending Rove, but... I guess I'm not convinced that Rove was intentially outing Plame (certainly creating a legally-tight argument that he was would be extremely problematic). Not that I would put it beyond him to do so; certainly he's clearly done far worse according to my moral standards.... But I don't get where you're so convinced that was the case. Arthur's theory that Rove was calling Wilson a "wuss" is certainly a viable theory, and possibly he did think that her identity wasn't a big issue, or that he didn't think through the potential consequences as Meta has done.
That aside, Meta, I don't quite get your outrage on this issue. I just don't care that much about the potential damage to a CIA agent, or the other agents she works with, certainly as compared to other crimes of the Bush administration that Rove was a part of. When did you get so patriotic and pro-American? (I know you hate Europeans, but I gather that you like Chinese people.)
Making this such a big issue might be a good idea, if it sticks, because it could be a way to use "patriotic" sentiments agains the Bushies, but there's an element of "he who lies down with dogs..." here. Do you really want to hold high the banner of bogus "national security" issues here? Should we take the low-road as a path to reach our goals?
Say Rove really did out Plame as payback, but was it "impacting the balance of global power." That sounds like Bushspeak. Let's keep talking about real threats to world security interests, and not hide behind "national security" fear-mongering as a way to fight.
I agree however, that the foul odor eminating from the White House press room might hurt the admininstration "in a general way" And if Chaney is the "other leaker," things could get considerably more interesting.
I thought I posted a response to this yesterday, but it seems to have gotten lost, so....
First of all, I need to apologize to Meta-D for attacking him for Impy's comments -- somehow I seem to have confused the blognames (what can I say, I'm getting old). To Impy-- since I don't know you, I wouldn't word my attacks on your ideas the same was as I did when I thought they were attributable to Meta-D, but, the contents of my attacks still stands. There's a lot of reasoning in your comments I just don't get.
Meta-D. Well, I guess that until we live in Utopia, some intelligence would be a good thing. My stance on this issue depends a bit on what you mean by "intelligence," but If you mean having Americans go out and involve themselves in activities in other countries, so we can learn more about other people and create informed opinions as a result, yeah, i guess that's fine.
But "partially responsible," while technically true, is kind of evasive. Partially responsible could mean anything between 1% responsible and 99% responsible. The fact remains that the CIA, and the covert intelligence programs of the American government, in fact, are LARGELY responsible for a huge amount of the problems we are currently dealing with. Our attempts to interfere in the business of other nations in order to manipulate geo-politics for economic gain of a select few in this country (and ignore countries when involvement doesn't bring profit) is perhaps the single most powerful factor in creating the "blowback" that we're facing now.
Certainly, you would have to agree that at least the perception that the US uses its "intelligence" power unfairly to influence geo-politics to its own political advantage (read, supporting Israel at the expense of the Palestinians), is probably the single biggest reason that we're even talking about terrorist attacks against the US. Iraq was attacked on the name of our "intelligence." So, sorry, I'm just not putting the poor CIA as one of my rallying cries to stir the American public.
Also, I never said that the Europeans aren't hypocrites. However, at least the European governments at least have enough balls to occasionally espouse liberal ideals. And at least the European public, as a whole, is liberal enough to support liberal ideas.
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