Abu Wabu

UPDATED APRIL 11

I guess it's just their time to implode. The Washington Post almost gets the whole Plame/Wilson story right in today's editorial, A Good Leak.

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

I disagree with the editors' implication that the White House's poor handling of the situation gives the Democrats permission to make "hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy"; an illegitimate claim is an illegitimate claim. But that really is the only problem with their take on the whole Wilson/Plame fiasco.

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it's worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge. In last week's court filings, he stated that Mr. Bush did not authorize the leak of Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Libby's motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney. In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife. Mr. Libby is charged with perjury, for having lied about his discussions with two reporters. Yet neither the columnist who published Ms. Plame's name, Robert D. Novak, nor Mr. Novak's two sources have been charged with any wrongdoing.

May as well say it again, in case the idiot left still can't figure it out: Plame, Wilson Still Traitorous Liars.

UPDATE
Three Years Later: how the NYT Page One story of July 19, 2003, "Bush releases excerpts of top-secret Iraq report" has somehow become a recently-uncovered "leak" from the Oval Office.

The NYT has a front-page debacle of a story under a headline shouting to the world, "At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak." The article breathlessly states that "the White House on Monday refused to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter." And what new evidence is that? The watering down begins right away: "new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a reporter from Time magazine in July 2003 without identifying her by name."

After pointing out that White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to answer certain questions because a criminal investigation is under way, NYT writer Richard Stevenson doubles back on himself, saying McClellan "did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter."

Continuing on the theme of slagging the White House for following political convention during the conduct of a criminal investigation, the Times states, "Asked for comment on Monday, several Republican senators said they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion," a refreshingly honorable adaptation of the Democratic tradition of clamming en masse when one of their idiots (a crowded field, to be sure) utters the daily inanity, slags the military, steals and destroys classified government documents, or compares someone to Hitler. The Times goes on to cleverly assert that "a syndicated column written by Robert Novak, effectively end[ed] [Valerie Plame's] career as a covert operative" conveniently omitting for the moment the fact that Plame's supposed career as a c.o., if it ever existed, had already long been over and done with.

In keeping with their usual practice of flipping the informational sequence of the story so as to mislead its readers, the Times finishes this dog's breakfast (apologies to dogs' breakfasts everywhere) with the following:
"The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her."

"Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

"'It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category' of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. 'That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close.'"

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was."'She had a desk job in Langley,' said Ms. [Victoria] Toensing[former chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee], who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. 'When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley.'"

So it now apparently takes a misleading headline and full front-page coverage for the New York Times to confirm that there is absolutely nothing new about anything on the left today, Tuesday July 12 2005. In the process of saddling what's left of their readership with a monumental time-waster of a non-story, the Old Grey Mare has confirmed that it wants Karl Rove's head just as much as, if not more than, the Democrats and the rest of the Islamofan left, and they're willing to do just about anything to get it.

Wouldn't it be interesting to discover that it is in fact NYT reporter Judith Miller herself who is the source for Secret Agent Plame's outing?

Captain Ed revisits the Wilson/Plame fiasco:

Let's take a look at this case from its beginning. The media (specifically Robert Novak) revealed that Valerie Plame worked as an undercover agent for the CIA at some point in her career, even though she worked at Langley for the past few years. Plame is married to Ambassador Joe Wilson, who got sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African nation. Wilson claimed that the White House sent him on that trip and that his wife had nothing to do with his selection, and that her outing as a CIA agent came as retribution for his report that the Niger intelligence was flat-out wrong and possibly faked.

However, almost everything Wilson told us was wrong. Niger's government acknowledged that Iraq sent a delegation during the sanctions period to open secret trade talks -- and since the only export of Niger's that could hold any interest in secret trade was uranium, the Niger government assumed that the Iraqis had an interest in the banned material and told Wilson exactly that. Wilson finally acknowledged that to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it investigated Wilson's allegations. The SSCI also found that Plame indeed selected Wilson personally for this mission, calling her motivations (and Wilson's) into question.

When Matt Cooper went on deep background with Karl Rove, before all of this came out, he asked Rove about Wilson's credibility. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson. The White House knew Wilson lied about both the report and the nature of his assignment, and gave Cooper the information to back that up. Plame's status as CIA agent hardly qualified as a secret; NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell concedes that most of Washington's media elite already knew it. Novak simply printed it, although no one knows who gave it to Novak. At any rate, on the evidence given so far, Rove never broke the law as even the Times article makes clear in its final paragraphs.

And here's Lorie Byrd talking about the news briefings during which the usual crop of leftwing bingo-callers, er, reporters, got to foaming at the mouth about the Rovian One:
"I don’t even know how to describe the journalists’ questions in the briefing. I guess I could say they were disrespectful and disgraceful, but that does not quite do it justice. When I was watching, I just could not even get terribly angry about it because I was laughing too hard. Here are these blow-dried reporters who have spent years focusing their reports on whatever points the Democrat leaders tell them are important, rather than correctly framing and reporting the stories they cover, getting all nasty and going off on Scott McClellan over Karl Rove.
I can think of so many other times and other issues that they should have gotten excited about, but obviously Karl Rove is just too juicy a Democrat target for these partisans to resist. They sounded a bit like playground bullies, but ones with too meticulously styled hair and a little too much whine in their voices and prissy shoulder and hand motions to come across as exactly tough guys."

Michelle Malkin asks, Who Let The Dogs Out?
"I actually have no problem with McClellan getting justifiably barked at during his daily briefings (if only we had more Les Kinsolvings to press the White House from the right, especially on illegal immigration). But isn't it funny how Beltway reporters who get all prissy and whiny about one Fox News Channel reporter asking the DNC chairman one mildly aggressive question have no problem turning pack-rabid on McClellan?"

Come on, Michelle, that's just mean and nasty. And relevant.

UPDATE: Apparently the Times isn't happy with just one version of the Rove screamer; here is another almost identical version from their website: White House Silence on Rove's Role in Leak Enters 2nd Day . Perhaps they'll just recycle the same story day after day under a new headline ("After Three Weeks, Still No Admission From Rove") until they decide to stop the charade and reveal the source of the leak themselves.

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.

Now that Patrick Fitzgerald has handed down his indictments against Scooter Libby, several things remain clear:

-Scooter Libby has not been charged with outing a covert CIA operative, which issue was the point of the investigation;

-Valerie Plame and a small group of her antiwar CIA co-workers conspired to discredit the President and thereby delegitimize the removal of Saddam Hussein from power;

-Joe Wilson provided anonymous and false allegations to Nicholas Kristof and Walter Pincus and others that Dick Cheney had sent him to Niger, in order to cover up the fact that he went to Niger on behalf of the aforementioned small group of CIA employees, led by his wife Valerie Plame, bent on discrediting the White House and President Bush on the invasion of Iraq;

-There was no great conspiracy by the White House to punish Joe Wilson by exposing his wife as a covert agent. First, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, and had not been one for at least six years prior. Second, any ‘punishment’ flowing to Joe Wilson derived from his exposure as a liar after the White House set out to discover why Wilson was falsely claiming to have been assigned to Niger by Dick Cheney;

-Wilson’s claims through Kristof and Pincus that Iraq had made no attempts to buy Nigerian yellowcake were shown by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to be lies. In fact, Wilson’s report to SSCI proved that Iraq had attempted exactly that. Wilson also leaked the then-classified matter of the Niger report to SSCI to the Washington Post;

-Had she been an undercover CIA operative, neither the agency nor Valerie Plame would ever have allowed her husband’s public campaign of lies and embellishments against the White House, conducted as it was on the airwaves and in the major newspapers and magazines.

There's more, of course, but that should be enough to show these two for the vainglorious assholes they are.

Just when I thought the Joe and Valerie Plame-Wilson saga was over and done with, the story continues to twitch. Now the Washington Post dumps all over notorious liar Wilson and blames him for his wife's so-called "outing":

[I]t now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Unfortunate? Are they kidding? Here's Captain's Quarters:

It's more than unfortunate -- it was deliberate. Wilson and Plame set up this trip for the purpose of discrediting the elected officials of the American government in an attempt to keep them from exercising their policies on intelligence and foreign affairs. Wilson lied and deceived people, first by leaking his disinformation anonymously to the Post and the New York Times, and then in an editorial that relied on his diplomatic reputation to bolster the credibility of his false accusations.
This set off a political witch hunt the likes of which should embarrass the media and Democrats for years, but probably won't. They demanded an investigation into the leak, especially the editorial board of the New York Times, then wailed as the prosecutor started jailing reporters for non-cooperation. The whole time the media and the mainstream Democratic leadership -- including their presidential nominee John Kerry, who made Wilson a part of his campaign -- insisted that Wilson spoke truth to power, even while Kerry's own Senate intelligence panel reached a very different conclusion.

Now the Left and the media want to continue talking about Scooter Libby rather than the three-year travesty they have foisted on this nation during a time of war. At least the Washington Post knows when to stop.

Which puts the WaPo only about two and a half years behind the adults in concluding that Wilson, Plame, Kerry, Mapes, Armitage, Powell, The NYT, Corn and the rest of those skunks were willing to foist a pack of lies on the public to deliberately undermine President Bush and OIF. Next thing you know, the Post will be telling us of France's role in a scandal involving U.N. sanctions against Saddam, and the geniuses at truthout.org will be on the real story, Speaking Truth To Power According To Larry Johnson.

Former Democratic Governor and Senator Zell Miller has his sights set on the real problem in the Plame/Wilson affair: the CIA, who appear to have set up a domestic dirty tricks squad whose members include Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

Some absurdly claim that Plame had nothing to do with her husband's political activities against President Bush. But let it be clear. Plame could not have done what Wilson did and gotten away with it. Wilson could not have done what he did without Plame giving him a way to do it.

Something has to be done. We can't let the CIA become the domestic dirty tricks shop, with Republican and Democratic agents each trying to pull down their opposing presidents.
We need a Plame rule. Any family member of a CIA agent tapped to help out must live by the same rules regarding information disclosure and domestic political manipulations as those imposed on the agent. If the family member fails to live by those rules, the agent is terminated.

Clearly this will restrict the flexibility of the CIA. But who ever thought that the flexibility given to CIA agents would be misused to destabilize a U.S. president? No one — until Valerie Plame.

Of course Miller is correct. It is therefore time for a comprehensive managerial and operational audit of the CIA, with special attention to the roles of Valerie Plame, her husband and their partners, whoever they might be, in undermining the Bush White House prior to the 2004 Presidential election. I hope naming both the agency's and the media's players in this mess will form a good part of Scooter Libby's defense because I want to hear his side of the story. The air needs to be cleared in Washington in time for the 2006 elections.

Larry C. Johnson worked for the CIA for four years in the early eighties or so and is now a self-professed expert on worldwide spookiness. His story is well told by Byron York, but to experience the essence of the Larry-Man himself, you've got to groove on his words, so here they are, direct from Larry C. Johnson's blog NoQuarter.

Note: I've included some readers' comments, including my own, to provide context; they appear in regular type. Larry's answers appear in their original shout caps. LARRY C. JOHNSON LOVES SHOUT CAPS.

How can someone be patriotic who gives up operational secrets or defends those who do?
EXACTLY, WHICH IS WHY THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT MARY MCCARTHY DID BUT AMPLE EVIDENCE THAT GEORGE BUSH DID. CAN I SIGN YOU UP FOR THE IMPEACH BUSH CAMPAIGN?

Fact: Tenet never disapproved. Tenet went after Wilson in a July 2003 statement.
WRONG. GEORGE TENET TOLD THE WHITE HOUSE IN OCTOBER 2002 TO REMOVE ANY REFERENCE TO URANIUM IN AFRICA FROM BUSH'S SPEECH.

LOL...The big, bad CIA guy can't take other opinions so he has to ban people. How ridiculous is that? How Trite? But we believe in free speech right? Not LJ. Try doin a few searches and see what everybody else is sayin' about him. See what LJ had to say:
YOU KNOW ASSHOLE, WHOOPS, I MEAN AXEY, THE NICE THING ABOUT RUNNING MY BLOG IS THAT I DON'T HAVE TO TOLERATE TROGS LIKE YOU. YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NOT READ WHAT I WROTE NOR DO YOU KNOW MY HISTORY ON THESE MATTERS. NO PROBLEM. YOU ARE A MORON AND ARE BANNED.

The CIA has conducted a war against Bush for the last 3 years. Clarke, McCarthy, Wilson and Plame are the players thus far. There are no doubt more. there's no question that the CIA has reason to want to hurt Bush. This is on the edge of sedition.
AND YOU CAN'T SEE THE TRUTH BECAUSE YOUR HEAD IS SO FAR UP YOUR ASS.

UNCLE TOM, YOU ARE A BLOWHARD AND A JOKE. YOU ARE MAKING UP YOUR SERVICE RECORD. MY FRIENDS, WHO ARE ACTUAL WARRIORS, NEVER VOLUNTEER WHAT THEY DID OR WHAT AWARDS THEY RECEIVED. IT TOOK ME YEARS TO FIND OUT. GUYS LIKE JOE LOPEZ, SILVER STAR WITH MARINES; DICK GANNON, EX-COMMANDER FIFTH MARINES (TWO TOURS IN VIETNAM), PAUL EVANCOE, NAVY SEAL RETIRED WITH MULTIPLE AWARDS INCLUDING THE BRONZE STAR, AND LARRY DUGGAN, THE 100TH MAN WOUNDED IN VIETNAM. YOU ARE PROBABLY ONE OF THE GUYS WHO WENT TO SALVATION ARMY, BOUGHT OLD UNIFORMS, AND HAS PERSUADED HIMSELF HE WAS THE REAL DEAL. ENJOY YOUR FANTASY TOUGH GUY.

I guess the actual banning was for calling attention to his July 10, 2001 op-ed in the NY Times wherein he claimed we had nothing to fear [from terrorists]. That got me banned. The other post was deleted, the one where I questioned the VIPS calling for people such as McCarthy to do what she did.
SUE, YOU SURE ARE A BRIGHT GIRL. THANKS FOR HELPING DRIVE UP THE TRAFFIC TO MY SITE. MY ADVERTISERS DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE A TROG OR A CLEAR THINKER. THE FACT THAT YOU VISIT SHOWS UP AS A NUMBER IN MY COLUMN. THANKS FOR TAKING THE BAIT SWEETHEART. SUCKER.

IF YOU WOULD ACTUALLY READ AS OPPOSED TO REPEATING REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS YOU WOULD KNOW THAT THE CIA REPEATEDLY TOLD THE PRESIDENT THAT THE CLAIMS THAT IRAQ WAS SEEKING URANIUM IN WEST AFRICA WERE BASELESS. IS THAT A DIFFICULT CONCEPT? DO YOU LACK A DICTIONARY? ROBERT JOSEPH, WHO INSERTED THAT LANGUAGE, DID SO OVER THE OBJECTION OF THE CIA. BUT, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT FACTS?

JOE (Wilson) HAS NOT CHANGED HIS STORY AND HE HAS BEEN VINDICATED. IF YOU WOULD SIMPLY READ THE RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED STATE DEPARTMENT MEMO, IT IDENTIFIES FIVE OTHER SOURCES BESIDES JOE THAT CORROBORATE JOE'S TESTIMONY. LIKE I SAID, YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN FACTS.

US INTEL COMMUNITY SAYS THE BRITS ARE WRONG. AND SSCI (NOT SSIC YOU BOZO) IS A SLANTED REPUBLICAN REPORT. OF COURSE, YOU BELIEVE THE BRITS OVER THE CIA. ANOTHER GREAT AMERICAN.

Here once and for all is confirmation that Joe Wilson claimed, and continues to claim, that VP Cheney sent him to Niger:"Wilson is now at the center of a major political maelstrom involving the White House, the C.I.A. and the second gulf war in Iraq. In 2002, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney, Wilson was assigned by the C.I.A. to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger for the purpose of advancing his nuclear program."
I took that quote directly from Joe Wilson's online bio at http://www.greatertalent.com/biography.php?id=258
The bio then says, "When his (Wilson's) investigation turned up nothing, Wilson reported back to officials in Washington that there was no basis for the claims."
We have long known these are patent lies, the purpose of which was to a) cover up the fact that Valerie Plame Wilson was responsible for sending her husband to Niger b) attempt to legitimize a story fabricated by a cabal of CIA employees, including Larry Johnson, Mary McCarthy and numerous others, in co-ordination with the Kerry campaign, for the purpose of undermining the Bush administration in hopes of propelling John Kerry to the White House in 2004.
Does that sound about right, Larry?
YOU NITWIT. I WILL SAY THIS ONCE AND IF YOU PERSIST IN BEING STUPID WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO PARTICIPATE ON THIS BLOG.HERE IS WHAT THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT STATES: EVENT ONE--13 February 2002. During his CIA morning brief, Vice President Cheney asks the CIA to find out the truth about an item in the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Military Joint Intelligence Center Executive Highlight (Vo. 028-02) that analyzed a recent CIA intelligence report and concluded that, “Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program”. No judgment was offered about the credibility of the reporting. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report [SICR], page 38)HERE IS WHAT JOE WILSON WROTE IN HIS OP ED:"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report." (NY Times, July 6, 2003)JOE WILSONS NEVER SAID WHAT YOU CLAIM HE SAID. LIKE I SAID, SHAPE UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE OR GET LOST.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Thursday, 27 April 2006 at 19:40

ABU. YOU DO NOT GET TO POST LIES ON MY BLOG. VALERIE WAS UNDERCOVER, AS WAS I. WHETHER YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT IS NO CONCERN OF MIND. TAKE YOUR LIES ELSEWHERE. YOU WILL BE DELETED.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Friday, 28 April 2006 at 16:17

FROM LARRY JOHNSON (NOTE, THE USE OF CAPS IS SIMPLY A DEVICE TO HIGHLIGHT THAT THE FOLLOWING IS MY RESPONSE TO THIS CHUCKLEHEAD, ABU).ABU, JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO INSIST THAT THE SUN RISES IN THE WEST DOES NOT MAKE IT SO. I WILL NOT SUBJECT FOLKS WHO READ THIS BLOG TO MINDLESS CRAP. IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH YOUR STATEMENT, "Plame twice nominated. . ." IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO DEFAME HER OR JOE. I HAVE WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY ON THIS POINT BUT WILL REPEAT KEY FACTS. VALERIE'S BOSS AT THE CIA ASKED HER TO WRITE THE MEMO. VALERIE DID NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SEND JOE OR ANYONE ELSE ON A TRIP TO NIGER. HER BOSSES WERE REACTING TO A REQUEST THAT CAME FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE AND WAS COMMUNICATED TO CPD BY THE DAILY BRIEFERS.
FOR YOU TO INSIST THAT VALERIE KNEW ONE YEAR IN ADVANCE THAT GEORGE BUSH WAS GOING TO MAKE THE CLAIM IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS THAT "IRAQ WAS TRYING TO BUY URANIUM IN WEST AFRICA" AND, BECAUSE OF HER FORESIGHT, SENT HER HUSBAND TO NIGER TO "NOT" GATHER EVIDENCE SO THEY COULD EMBARRASS BUSH AND HELP JOHN KERRY IS DELUSIONAL.
FINALLY, VALERIE WAS A NON-OFFICIAL COVER OFFICER UNTIL THE DAY HER NAME APPEARED IN THE NOVAK ARTICLE IDENTIFYING HER AS A CIA OFFICER. WHETHER YOU ACCEPT THESE FACTS OR NOT IS OF NO IMPORT TO ME. THESE ARE FACTS AND YOU DO NOT GET THE LUXURY OF PLAYING ALICE IN WONDERLAND HERE. UP IS NOT DOWN. BLACK IS NOT WHITE.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Saturday, 29 April 2006 at 03:26

FROM LARRY JOHNSON:ABU, REFUTING YOU IS NOT A PROBLEM. IT IS A WASTE OF TIME BECAUSE, AS I HAVE ALREADY POINTED OUT, VALERIE PLAME WAS UNDERCOVER. DESPITE THAT FACT YOU CONTINUE TO INSIST, WITHOUT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE, THAT SHE WAS SOMEHOW AN OVERT EMPLOYEE. YOU ARE FREE TO POST YOUR BULLSHIT ON YOUR ON BLOG. YOU CALL ME A COWARD BUT THEN START WHINING BECAUSE I REFER TO YOU AS DELUSIONAL AND A CHUCKLEHEAD. I'LL LEAVE IT TO OTHERS TO DRAW THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS. PERSONALLY I WOULD RATHER HAVE A FACE TO FACE MEETING WITH YOU TO DISCUSS THE ISSUE OF MY COWARDICE. I SUSPECT THAT IS SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO ENTERTAIN.
AS FAR AS YOUR DRAMATIC REVELATIONS GO (WHICH CAME FROM THE NATIONAL REVIEW) THEY ARE MISLEADING GARBAGE:
...
ABU, WRONG AGAIN BUTT MUNCH. IN FACT, WE NOW KNOW THAT TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS THE PRESIDENT AND THE VICE PRESIDENT RECEIVED INFORMATION FROM THE NIO FOR AFRICA WHO INFORMED THEM THAT THE CLAIM ABOUT IRAQ TRYING TO ACQUIRE URANIUM WAS BASELESS. WHAT IS IT ABOUT BASELESS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
...
SEE ABOVE. THERE WAS NO ATTEMPT TO BUY URANIUM. IT IS NOT JUST THE WORD OF JOE WILSON. IT ALSO IS THE WORD OF THE US AMBASSADOR TO NIGER, THE DEPUTY COMMANDER OF U.S. EUCOM, AND THE CIA.
...
I HAVE ANSWERED THIS REPEATEDLY. BULLSHIT. THE MEMO VALERIE WROTE WAS IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST FROM HER BOSS. HER BOSS MADE THE DECISION TO SEND JOE AND HER BOSS CAME UP WITH THE IDEA TO ASK JOE TO DO THE TRIP.SO, ABU. YOU ARE NOW BANNED FROM THIS SITE. I WILL DELETE EVERY PIECE OF LYING CRAP THAT YOU TRY TO PUT HERE. WE'RE DONE.
Posted by: YFS Saturday, 29 April 2006 at 16:30

E.J. Dionne doesn't like what Dick Cheney said about Nancy Pelosi's plan to pull out of Iraq, about which Cheney has recently commented,

Al Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That's their fundamental underlying strategy, that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we'll quit and go home. And my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al Qaeda.

Does Dionne even attempt to demonstrably refute Cheney? No.

Power Line tells the story well:

Dionne accuses Cheney of being "beside himself" over Wilson's column in the New York Times in which the debonair diplomat claimed that his trip to Niger revealed that, contrary to what President Bush had said, Saddam Hussein had not sought nuclear material from that country.

If Cheney was in fact "beside himself" over this he had every right to be because Wilson lied in his New York Times article. As John explained here, Wilson reported to the CIA, which sent him to Niger to investigate, that the former prime minister of Niger had told him that Iraq made an overture that the Prime Minister understood as an attempt to buy uranium. This is just what the administration had been claiming, as in the president's famous 16 words about Niger in his state of the union address.

However, Wilson represented in his New York Times piece that his trip to Niger had not borne out the president's claim. Wilson thus flat-out lied in his New York Times piece in order to cast the administration in a false light. Accordingly, Vice President Cheney had every right to be upset.

Of course, Cheney's anger would not have been an excuse for taking unlawful action against Wilson or his wife. But Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation failed to find that Cheney (or Scooter Libby for that matter) took any such unlawful action against them.

Thus, it is Dionne, not the vice president, who is "spinning" and "smearing."

Meantime, Wilson and Plame are still traitorous liars.

MORE ON WILSON/LIBBY [Byron York]
This afternoon CNN reported the news, published earlier in The Corner, that Lewis Libby's defense lawyers say they will produce five witnesses who will testify under oath that former ambassador Joseph Wilson told them that his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked for the CIA, a job status that, allegedly, was classified. CNN also reported a response from Joseph Wilson:

BLITZER: And John, producer, Stephanie Katube (sp), just got a statement from Ambassador Joe Wilson. Let me read it to you and to our viewers. "The last I heard," Wilson says, "this is case is about allegations Mr. Libby lied, perjured himself before the FBI, special prosecutor and grand jury and obstructed justice. None of those charges of which he's been indicted has anything to do with me."

Wilson goes on to say, "Furthermore, the government in the person of the special prosecutor in his court filings has made it clear it believes several White House officials were engaged in a campaign to, quote, `discredit, punish and seek revenge' on me. It would appear that campaign is ongoing."

What seems notable about Wilson's statement, if CNN read it in full, is that it does not address the issue of whether or not he told people that his wife worked for the CIA.
Posted at 6:58 PM

Bad News For Idiots: Evil Genius Karl Rove has been informed by the Special Prosecutor's office that he will not be facing charges relating to Patrick Fitzgerald's meandering investigation. The New York Times reports today:

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity.

In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove."

For all those idiots waiting for Jason Leopold's reality-based predictions to manifest in this universe, the only thing they know for certain today is that they've all been duped by shills, which is what makes them idiots in the first place. I mean, how far ahead of the news-cycle can you get? Leopold now has to either admit he was making things up out of whole cloth or out the source of the lies he has been spreading on behalf of someone else's agenda, because the only thing Jason Leopold can know for certain is that he will now go down in history as not just another discredited Rove-hating crank, but quite deluded and therefore eminently exploitable by a country mile.

Leopold will go down in history as one of America's great early blogging jackasses. That can't be good for him.

Truth, out.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who thinks Wilson/Plame plaything Larry Johnson has been pillow-talking Leopold.

Also today, President Bush secretly flew into Iraq to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Bush also countered recent news reports and declared himself the new head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, replacing Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who got his ass blown up last week.

"There's a new sheriff in town," Bush said to a bare-bones press conference in Baghdad's Green Zone, adding that, although he won't be there to manage every aspect of the insurgency, "we have in place over 130,000 deputies across the country who are ready to consult with insurgents twenty-four/seven, if you know what I mean, heh."

Oh yeah: Obama Sides With Bush. Again.

From the Washington Times:

The Obama administration Wednesday took the side of top Bush administration officials - including most-vocal recent critic, former Vice President Dick Cheney - in the ongoing fight over the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of a lawsuit brought by Mrs. Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, against several top Bush administration officials. The department's move continued the Bush administration's policy to fight the suit, which has already been dismissed by two lower courts.

"The decision of the court of appeals is correct and does not conflict with any decision of this Court or any other court of appeals," said the brief filed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and Justice Department attorneys Mark B. Stern and Charles W. Scarborough. "Further review is unwarranted, especially since Americans have long known that these two miscreants are huge liars, and it is deliciously just that they have finally been so badly boned by the huge liar they helped elect President."

That last part may be False But Accurate™.

Background
Abu Wabu's flawless record for calling the Plame-Wilson idiocy.

If Christopher Hitchens' take on the end of the BDS-fueled Plame Game story is too, shall we say, strident for leftist sensibilities, maybe they'll find it easier to read Jack Kelly. Probably not. Either one is certainly better reading than David Corn or Michael Isikoff have provided lately, although it's fun to watch those two backpedal into passive-prose mode to gloss over their own part in this fiasco.

The list of losers is huge, but there is also a big winner, as Captain's Quarters points out:

It's easy to add up all of the people who lost in the collapse of Valerie Plame leak case after Michael Isikoff and David Corn revealed that Richard Armitage originally gave the information to Robert Novak. Joe Wilson watched his carefully-constructed and mostly false version of events come apart at the seams. Novak lost his job at CNN (later catching on with Fox) and came under tremendous criticism for his refusal to act to free other journalists from legal action. Patrick Fitzgerald put a lot of tarnish on his previously sterling reputation for extending a criminal investigation for years after the culprit confessed five days into the Department of Justice probe. Judith Miller lost the respect of her peers because of a belief that she protected Bush administration officials and acted as a mouthpiece for them, an assessment that none of her colleagues bothered to revisit after the Isikoff/Corn story came out on Sunday.

The only man who appears to have emerged from the spectacle relatively unharmed and perhaps enhanced is Karl Rove.

I love it.

Imagine believing even a word of the Wilson/Corn/Isikoff fabrication, never mind being ideologically gullible enough to have swallowed it whole.

Note to idiots: That burning sensation in your cheeks? That's the heat generated by your brain realizing its own stupidity.

HT: Red Forman

Nine months ago almost to the day, I wrote that Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of Scooter Libby had changed nothing about the fact that notorious liar Joe Wilson and his double-knot spy soccer-mom wife Valerie Plame were treasonous cranks, which they of course still are and always will be. Christopher Hitchens has nailed that coffin shut and presents more documented evidence that the truth about the Niger uranium biz was simple and clear to anyone without a vested interest in remaining an idiot:

...both pillars of the biggest scandal-mongering effort yet mounted by the "anti-war" movement—the twin allegations of a false story exposed by Wilson and then of a state-run vendetta undertaken against him and the lady wife who dispatched him on the mission—are in irretrievable ruins. The truth is the exact polar opposite. The original Niger connection was both authentic and important, and Wilson's utter failure to grasp it or even examine it was not enough to make Karl Rove even turn over in bed.

I part with Hitchens on his characterisation of Wilson as having "missed" the Niger connection. Wilson did no such thing; he was sent by his wife and her CIA cohorts (his claim to have been sent by VP Cheney notwithstanding) specifically to debunk the story. Wilson may be missing integrity, trustworthiness, love of country, a conscience, whatever, but he didn't miss anything in Niger- he simply lied in service to treason against his country.

Valerie Plame has by turn both taken credit and disavowed responsibility for her employer's choice of her husband to "investigate" and then "debunk" the famous Niger-Iraq yellowcake story. Somehow, a Republican Senator has finally noticed that little conflict.

Sen. Christopher Bond:

Mrs. Wilson told the CIA Inspector General that she suggested her husband for the trip, she told our committee staff that she could not remember whether she did or her boss did, and told the House committee, emphatically, that she did not suggest him.

NRO's Byron York is Fact-Checking Valerie Plame Wilson. 1 2 3 4 .

Fox News reports: President George W. Bush will commute Scooter Libby's ridiculous jail sentence, enraging idiots around the world and setting off the next round of conspiracy-mongering and BDS.

Meanwhile, notorious liar Joe Wilson and his double-knot spy soccer-mom wife Valerie Plame are still treasonous cranks.

Still nothing but bad news from the Fitzgerald investigation for all the Bush-haters. First Fitz' erroneous filing sends the idiots and their MSM friends riding off in all directions with fresh lies, as Stephen Spruill reports:

Plame-watcher Tom Maguire analyzes the Libby team's response to Patrick Fitzgerald's filing last week. As you might recall, that filing led to an avalanche of stories about its revelation that President Bush authorized Libby to talk to reporters about parts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. A misquote in that filing also led reporters to allege that Bush and Cheney told Libby to lie to the press. Fitzgerald corrected the misquote two nights ago in a letter to the judge. Some news organizations have followed up with their own corrections. Some are too busy getting other facts wrong.

And what does the NYT do with the Fitz revision? It buries it on Page A17 after blaring the initial, false allegation from Page A1. No change there.

Byron York has the Big Nut today, and concludes:

Libby's new filing, and the Fitzgerald filing that preceded it, suggest that the CIA leak case, if Libby goes to trial, will move far beyond the issue of Valerie Wilson. Fitzgerald's discussion of the National Intelligence Estimate and of the administration's general response to Joseph Wilson, Libby argues, "indicates that at trial all aspects of the government's response to Mr. Wilson will be relevant — including any actions taken by the President." If that is the case, then the trial, which Fitzgerald has said will be a limited criminal inquiry into whether Lewis Libby lied, will more resemble a broad inquiry into the politics of pre-war intelligence.

Wilson, Plame, the MSM, the idiot left: what a bunch of dunces. Either Libby will have his day in court and all the idiots will wind up with egg on their faces, or the Fitz case will die on the vine because the government doesn't want to give up real classified material, not the brightly-colored pretend-stuff Joe and Valerie like to play with.

The Wilson/Plame story is proving to have legs out of all proportion to original expectations, with wildly divergent takes on its meaning and lessons, but there is always one guy who can see a story in its entirety right from the outset. In the case of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, that guy is Mark Steyn:

Well, Joseph C Wilson IV's 15 minutes is now in its third year, and judging from the pass given to him by the major newspapers and TV networks there's no end in sight. Why would the media collude in this fraudulent buffoon's self-aggrandization? After all, the first folks he lied to were them. But they seem to have decided their investment in him is now so deep, they're stuck with him. This is what I wrote a year and a half ago, in the fond belief that the chapter-and-verse exposure of his falsehoods would finally drive Wilson from public life. If only.

Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Via Confederate Yankee (he's on a roll):
Twenty-four signatures belonging to erstwhile "intelligence professionals" endorse their polemic to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary demanding Michael Mukasey not be confirmed as Attorney General until he absconds with Congressional powers and unilaterally defines the law. The letter is so shot full of nonsense that all it does is confirm once again that Larry Johnson and his closest friends, including notorious liars Joe Wilson and his double-knot-spy soccer-wife Valerie Plame-Wilson, are at best traitors and at worst Constitutional dunces.

Meanwhile, adults read Andrew C. McCarthy:
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Waterboarding and Torture

Via NRO's Media Blog, one of the most impeccably informative blog entries I have ever read.

Seixon's work connecting the dots between the VIPS, Joe Wilson, David Shuster, Jason Leopold et al is bearing robust fruit:

Truthout is whoring itself for VIPS and Wilson, with Leopold acting as a mouthpiece, William Rivers Pitt backing him up, and Richard Sale chiming in with his UPI-credibility. They’ve all been running numerous rumors and outright falsehoods fabricated by VIPS to influence public opinion and perhaps even Fitzgerald’s investigation. The Fitzgerald Niger forgeries story was invented by Vincent Cannistraro and Larry Johnson of VIPS; it was peddled to Justin Raimondo then Richard Sale and Martin Walker of UPI. Leopold carries the gig by repeating all of these stories in Truthout, while Larry Johnson conducts damage control when things get out of hand.

There can no longer be any doubt that most of these explosive and uncorroborated “news” stories are being manufactured by the tight-knit group of former intelligence officials in tandem with Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, and most likely backers in the Democratic Party. It is also probably no coincidence that David Shuster and Chris Matthews of MSNBC have carried many of the same rumors and false stories, such as the one claiming that outing Plame damaged efforts on Iran. Shuster has been hyping a Rove indictment as imminent for over a month, something only one other source has been doing: Jason Leopold.

VIPS was started to compel intelligence officials to illegally leak classified information to damage the Bush administration, and is apparently now in the business of manufacturing false news and rumor-mongering to do the same. It should come as no surprise that a group of veteran intelligence officials would have the clout to pull off such an enterprise, and that they would cut any corner necessary to fulfill their agenda.

Media Blog points out,

Referring to these VIPS guys as "former intelligence officials" and nothing more is highly deceitful. They are activists, and granting them anonymity serves no purpose other than to conceal that fact from news consumers. How often have we seen this happen in major news stories about this case?

Drip, drip, drip.

DRIP.

Moussaoui should have faced a military tribunal and been given the death penalty, but then Jamie Gorelick's Wall shouldn't have prevented the FBI from catching him in time. Life in prison 24/7/365/6 lifetimes doesn't do it for me. And sorry, being portrayed as an abuse victim doesn't excuse conspiring to murder en masse. There are no mitigating factors for Islamofascist animals.

Chickenhawk Alert: Warren Bell has a letter to the left: Dear Soft Thinkers

Thomas Joscelyn on The Media's New Favorite Moonbat, Ray McGovern. And McGovern's friend Larry Johnson is a howler, too. Gateway Pundit has lots that will make babies clap and adults cringe.

More from Thomas Joscelyn:
Joe Wilson's 60 Minutes
Another media outlet falls to the Plame storyline without so much as a whimper.

[I]f Wilson and his wife were so concerned about her cover, and possibly the cover of other agents, being blown, then why did he publish an editorial in the New York Times discussing a classified intelligence-gathering mission he went on? Why did he then go on to make many media appearances peddling his own fictional version of his mission? Did Wilson think that foreign intelligence services would not do a little background work on him, his family, and all of their ostensible connections? Ed Bradley was not interested in answering any of these questions.

That's why Ed Bradley works for CBS.

Goss Out, General Hayden In? Kosturbators rev it up.

Mark Levin: Another drunken Kennedy, or another Rush?

Power Line: How Italian communists collaborated with Iranians to murder Italian troops in Nassiryah in A Sick Story. As usual, Gateway Pundit has more. Despicable, the left's stock in trade. No conscience, no shame.

Crown Publishing To Further Out Liar Plame.

More down the road.