During his interview on
Meet the Press, former WH Press Secretary Scott McClellan confirms that reality has a liberal blogger bias:
MR. RUSSERT: Why didn't you say to him, "Mr. President, this is the fundamental issue confronting our country." Why didn't you go to your superiors and say, "Guys, ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem here. This is the fundamental issue [about the Iraq War], choice or necessity, and the president seems unaware of it."
MR. McCLELLAN: In retrospect, I probably should have. I probably should have said something more about it. But, again, there's so many issues going on, you get caught up in advocating and defending the president's stance. And he'd already made the decision, and the president's someone that, once he makes a decision, as you know, he expects everyone to march in lockstep. I don't-- you know, it's tough to go there and try to challenge those views inside an administration that is so insular like that, but it also goes to the president's decision, that he had made this decision to confront Saddam Hussein, and it was going to be either he comes clean or we go to war very early on. That's they way the president operates. He makes the decision, and then it's how do you implement that decision? And I think that happened late in 2001, and then his advisers, from my perspective, I don't think challenged him like they should have about the necessity of going to war. And from my standpoint, it's a moral view, we shouldn't be going to war unless it's absolutely necessary. Now there are--there was justification that could be made to remove Saddam Hussein, separate and apart from that, and plenty to argue there, but we overplayed and overstated the case for war.
Scottie is the first person who worked inside the bubble to state that he thinks the decision to go to war with Iraq occurred in "late 2001". I believe he is correct, and would cite four (
inexcusable) decisions that would seemingly support his view.
1) During the Spring of 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces group who were hunting Bin Laden
were transferred from Afghanistan to prepare for war with Iraq.
2) In
June of 2002, Psy Ops in Iraq began.
3) For over a year before the war started, the Bush administration
refused to bomb Abu Zarqawi's terrorist training camps in Kurdistan, because it might have removed one of the pretexts Bush used to make his "case" for war with Iraq.
4) In retaliation for a NYT op-ed they didn't like, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby
"outed" a covert CIA agent working on WMD nonproliferation in Iran.
For me, these four points "scream the loudest" because they reveal the supreme dishonesty at the heart of the Bush administration's "Global War on Terror". It was never about moving heaven and earth to liquidate the evil freaks who planned the carnage on 9/11. Bush and Rummy never even cared to properly finish the job in Afghanistan, because it was merely preparation for the larger war in Iraq. And the war in Iraq was never about the "threat" of Saddam's scary WMD's-- it was about neocon pipe-dreams of democratizing the Middle East at gunpoint.
"No one could've predicted" that this panglossian enterprise would balloon into a trillion dollar war with four thousand dead Americans, thirty thousand injured... while Bin Laden and his #2 are keeping tabs on the action from Waziristan, and will soon be fondly recalling the events of seven Septembers ago.
Labels: Afghanistan, Bush, Cronies, Der Karl, Iraq morass, military, OBL, Plame
15 Comments:
"Seven Septembers ago"
Again, the concept of Global War on Terror rings pretty hollow when you've got military and economic agreements with the very countries that promote the sort of terrorism you're ostensibly fighting...
One thing: Valarie Plame was not a covert agent. She had not been stationed overseas for more than five years and was not working in a clandestine capacity when her name was leaked. Or as Joe Wilson has said, "[m]y wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity."
Also, it's dubious to say that the leak was "retaliation." Novak's recollection of how he received the information from Armitage seemed inadvertent.
The CIA confirmed her covert status. She testified under oath (imagine that) that she was covert at the time. The special prosecutor also determined that Plame had done covert work overseas on counterproliferation issues in the past five years, and the CIA was "making special efforts to conceal" her identity.
Armitage was not the only leaker.
very sad to see folks trying so hard to defend treasonous actions.
Also, that joe wilson quote is incredibly out of context. So much so, the AP had to correct the article it originally appeared in. The quote does not support your claim.
He is a forkin'Press Secretary for Hobbits'sake! I can hear the fart of silence should a boy named "Scotty" pipe up at to the Presidente...uh, Sir, I think your wrong? Riiiight...Excuse me, Press Secretaries don't Do contradiction on that side of the mirror. Wrong pay'grade by a long shot.
mac,
The CIA confirmed her covert status.
The law confers covert status, not the CIA. "Covert" is a legal term; it refers to a person whose identity is classified, but also who is serving, or has served, outside the country within the past six years. Furthermore, for the purposes of criminal statutes, the person leaking the covert agent's identity must have actual knowledge of covert status.
Furthermore, as a factual matter, neither the CIA nor Plame herself were going to any considerable lengths to hide Plame's identity. Plame's neighbors knew she worked for the CIA, and so she obviously wasn't keeping her occupation under wraps. Furthermore, the CIA's cover for Plame was insubstantial (I haven't studied this for a while, but understand for a while her work address was officially listed as CIA headquarters).
The special prosecutor also determined that Plame had done covert work overseas on counterproliferation issues in the past five years . . .
Going on brief trips overseas doesn't qualify as "serving." She was not on foreign assignment within the past five years. There was no avenue here for a criminal conviction, certainly not with the rule of lenity (requiring that criminal statutes be interpreted against the state). Fitzgerald could trump this up all he wanted; it didn't make her covert under the applicable law.
[V]ery sad to see folks trying so hard to defend treasonous actions.
Good grief. This is like the conservatives who shout that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster. Get a grip.
Mac,
Also, that joe wilson quote is incredibly out of context.
I've read the context. Personally, I think it was a slip of the tongue, but I've since read it in context and his explanation is vaguely plausible, if self-serving.
Fitz, the special prosecutor assigned by the DOJ with a long record of prosecuting terrorists, determined she was covert under IIPA. It was accepted by the Judge. It has not been challenged in any legal way. Do you think Fitz is a partisan hack? He did not pursue prosecution against the leakers because of the difficulty of proving they knew of her status.
Going on brief trips overseas doesn't qualify as "serving."
Why do her assignments overseas (7 to 10), on official CIA business for the Counterproliferation Division, while undercover, not qualify as service?
Good grief. This is like the conservatives who shout that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster. Get a grip.
ahhh, not quite. didn't Bush Sr. call such folks (leakers) traitors?
and i'm sure joe wilson, a former ambassador under Bush Sr. to Iraq and several African nations, had a "slip of the tongue" while in front of wolf blitzer.
mac,
Fitz, the special prosecutor assigned by the DOJ with a long record of prosecuting terrorists, determined she was covert under IIPA. It was accepted by the Judge. It has not been challenged in any legal way.
Well, no criminal charges were brought except with respect to Libby lying to the FBI. There was never any opportunity to apply the legal definition of a covert agent. To the extent the judge "accepted" Fitzgerald's conclusion, it was not a legal holding.
Do you think Fitz is a partisan hack? He did not pursue prosecution against the leakers because of the difficulty of proving they knew of her status.
I think it would have also been impossible to *prove* her status. Because she was not stationed overseas within the previous five years, because Plame had already leaked her identity to everyone under the sun herself, and because the CIA wasn't taking much action to protect her identity, I doubt she could be found to be covert under a criminal statute. Remember, even the slightest ambiguity in a criminal statute is supposed to be read in favor of the accused, not the state.
Why do her assignments overseas (7 to 10), on official CIA business for the Counterproliferation Division, while undercover, not qualify as service?
They could as "service" to the CIA, sure. However, the phrase "served outside the United States" connotes (in my mind) being stationed overseas, not merely taking short trips. If the drafters had intended to encompass any foreign travel on CIA business, they could have phrased it that way to specify their broader intent. Since they didn't, and because the definition applies to criminal statutes, it must be read as narrowly as possible. Hence, it only refers to being stationed overseas.
ahhh, not quite. didn't Bush Sr. call such folks (leakers) traitors?
Did he? I don't recall that and I don't know the context. In any case, treason isn't a legal context that's relevant here -- it's more than a few steps up the ladder.
I'd like to note that the leaking of Plame's identity was certainly stupid and probably damaging to the CIA. I think Plame and Wilson were also incredibly reckless with her identity, although the wider, public leak was the fault of members of the Bush administration. However, I also think the leak was inadvertent and certainly was not illegal.
Just to be clear -- it was horribly foolish to play fast and loose with Plame's identity, but there wasn't an underlying crime because there was no intent and Plame was technically not covert. Also, the hyperbole suggesting that "Rove is a traitor" and so on is simply agitprop with no basis in reality.
"stationed" is your word (and Novak's), it is not in IIPA. "served" is the word, which very directly covers "service". It is not narrowly interpreted as "stationed".
Bush Sr. on leaker's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvu3Ecnvd74
Owen, honey, if you think that Karl Rove is anything BUT a greedy, self-loathing closet-case, manipulative piece-of-shit cowardly TRAITOR, I'd like to acquaint you with a little something that I call "reality." You might find it useful at some point in the future.
That parasitic fat little waste of oxygen, surely the bastard stepchild of Dick Nixon, is TRULY the root of all evil. Face it, he makes Dick Cheney look SCRUPULOUS.
mac,
As I said, "served" implies something more than short trips overseas. If a veteran says he "served overseas," it implies he was stationed overseas, not that the army sent him to Europe for a week. That's the way I read it, anyway. Without a clear definition in the statute, or in a related statute, you have to go with the most limited definition.
anntichrist,
I think Karl Rove is nothing more than a political operative and strategist. He does what it takes to win. The Democrats have Carville and Brazille, and the GOP has Rove (and others). Their jobs tend to be more about pure strategy than strict ethical standards.
A simple point taken from a Robert Parry Article:
So, consider a special forces soldier, stationed at ft. bragg, residing in fayetteville, conducting clandestine counter-terrorism missions in the middle east. suppose even the CIA director declared his identity covert. Guess it's ok to reveal his identity for a political purpose, no need to prosecute, no law broken, no need to fire anyone, no need to even revoke security clearances... he wasn't really covert.
