Abu Wabu

We Knew It All Along Dept.:
The last wheel fell off the sputtering Plame-Wilson bandwagon yesterday when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by the treacherous pair against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration officials.

The judge ruled as this blog has maintained all along: that White House efforts to rebut the pack of lies Wilson levelled against the Bush Administration were well within the duties of the Executive branch, and not an illegal attempt to destroy the lying pair's reputations, such as they were and are now. Those efforts may have been unsavory to leftist idiots, but they were well within the law.

Ouch.

How they could have expected any other result is beyond me; if Valerie Plame suffered damage from the revelation of her employment at the CIA (she has never even come close to proving she was ever "outed" as a covert op, regardless of what Puffy Fat Larry says) it was via her husband, who drew attention to Plame when he couldn't resist lying in the NYT about his finding that Saddam actually had been seeking uranium in Niger. Quoting the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it.

Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

As for Plame, no-one in the White House leaked anything about her to anyone; it was Richard Armitage who confirmed Plame's CIA employment to Robert Novak, who simply looked her up in Who's Who, a fact known far and wide for months and all along by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Who else knew all along? Joe Wilson, who knowingly falsely accused Karl Rove of having "outed" his super-secret double-knot wife.

So what else did Wilson lie about?

Here's more from the SSIC report:

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

Wilson and Plame have both repeatedly lied about the fact that she lobbied her CPD superiors to send him to Niger. Again from the SSIC report:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Happily, the lying pair's lawyers announced that they will appeal the decision, so we can Keep Hope Alive that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame will under oath face real questions from opposing counsel rather than fluffballs lobbed by Henry Waxman or Chris Matthews.

Today, however, in light of the court's inevitable finding, it's worth reviewing what are in my opinion the two overarching facts of the case:
1. Joe Wilson is a treacherous liar;
2. Valerie Plame is also a treacherous liar.