Plame security breach? It just ain't so, Joe - (Mark Steyn on "PlameGate!")

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.COM ^ | JULY 18, 2005 | MARK STEYN

[CHARLITE]

Karl Rove? Please. I couldn't care less. This week finds me thousands of miles from the Beltway in what I believe the ABC World News Tonight map designates as the Rest Of The Planet, an obscure beat the media can't seem to spare a correspondent for. But even if I was with the rest of the navel-gazers inside the Beltway I wouldn't be interested in who ''leaked'' the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to the press. As her weirdly self-obsesssed husband Joseph C. Wilson IV conceded on CNN the other day, she wasn't a ''clandestine officer'' and, indeed, hadn't been one for six years. So one can only ''leak'' her name in the sense that one can ''leak'' the name of the checkout clerk at Home Depot.

Back when Woodrow Wilson was running for president, he had a campaign song called ''Wilson, That's All.'' If only. With Joe Wilson, it's never all. He keeps coming back like a song. But in the real world there's only one scandal in this whole wretched business -- that the CIA, as part of its institutional obstruction of the administration, set up a pathetic ''fact-finding mission'' that would be considered a joke by any serious intelligence agency and compounded it by sending, at the behest of his wife, a shrill politically motivated poseur who, for the sake of 15 minutes' celebrity on the cable gabfest circuit, misled the nation about what he found.

This controversy began, because Wilson objected to a line in the president's State of the Union speech that British intelligence had discovered that Iraq had been trying to acquire ''yellowcake'' from Africa. This assertion made Bush, in Wilson's incisive analysis, a ''liar'' and Cheney a ''lying sonofabitch.''

In fact, the only lying sonafabitch turned out to be Yellowcake Joe.

[agincourt1415]

And to add to this cartoon, the DU, is acting like this is the next Watergate.

Can the Democrats and Liberals, get any more LOONEY?

[decal]

"Can the Democrats and Liberals, get any more LOONEY?"

And not loony like James Thurber's grandfather in the attic in Columbus, Ohio - loony like General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr Strangelove."

[knews_hound]

bttt

[randog]

And to add to this cartoon, the DU, is acting like this is the next Watergate.

No kiddin'? Just a few weeks ago the "next Watergate" was the Downing Street Memo.

Actually, this might be the "next Watergate", or rather the "first anti-Watergate" in which the Administration attackers end up in the Gray Bar Hotel.

[icwhatudo]

O MY!!!!

A MUST READ!!!!

[ottersnot]

The Bush white house is playing thier ususal solid game of letting crazy stuff like this pass. It's worked very well.
Clinton's war room jumped on every negative comment.
The BWH just lets it run its course, lending the flat, short, denials, but not getting involved in the liberal flame game.

[FReethesheeples]

Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's "cover" (even if she had not been a covert CIA agent at the time of the alleged "leaks")?

It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press.

Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a year ago:

He certainly bragged about it per a famous and highly reliable source's (named below) account of his own face-to-face encounter with Amb. Joe Wilson prior to Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent/employee.

Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.

Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful ("hot") wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.

I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.

However, it is now easy to surmise that Joe Wilson is a crass, materialistic, self-promoting, vain, egotistical, bragaddocio-opportunist, so this account is perfectly consistent with Valerie Plame's TWO photo shoots in Vanity Fair.

[STARWISE]

Great article bump!

[CHARLITE]

"O MY!!!!

A MUST READ!!!!

Thanks! I thought so, too!........

And thanks for the "BTTT," knews_hound! Nice hearing from you again!

Char :)

[Echo Talon]

''Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Tuesday.''

Got that? If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, John Kerry.

LOL!

[CHARLITE]

Your post was just great the first time around; - very interesting story, but you seem to post it on every Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson thread.........sometimes twice on the same thread.

I suppose it's OK to do that, but it's getting to the saturation point now.........although new people come to each different thread, who perhaps haven't already seen this story, but I can't help noticing that you put it up all the time.

Char (:

[doug from upland]

Indeed. This is a GREAT piece by Mark.

[CHARLITE]

"Got that? If you don't let us go nuclear, we'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, John Kerry."

LOL!.......Thanks! I second that! I also thought that it was one of his funniest lines! Glad you posted it again, Echo!

Char :)

[hole_n_one]

Over 100 times just today!

Multiple times on one thread.

I'm hitting abuse on your spamming a$$.

[Admin Moderator]

Please don't spam the threads too much

Thanks

[syriacus]

Funny, and true, with lots of great phrases. My favorite phrase was

a politically motivated narcissist kook's drive-thru intelligence mission

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Countless times, over a period of many long years, I've heard about how adroit the CIA is at destabilizing governments. I suspect that it would be easier to count the stars in the sky than conspiracy theories about the CIA. Many of these conspiracy theories were so convoluted that they made John le Carré novels look straightforward by comparison. Most were covered extensively in the MSM -- with the requisite anti-US slant.

Now, we have a CIA "operative" and her husband at the centre of an intrigue apparently designed at destabilizing the US government itself. Naturally (I've come to believe that I've fallen into a parallel universe, where the totally bizarre and twisted is natural), the MSM is ignoring the possibility that this is a CIA plot -- or, at the very least, that it is the machinations of a highly trained CIA operative.

[Candor7]

Stay tuned folks , it won't be over until the fat lady sings. If Karl wants his pound of flesh, Joe Wilson may be in for a very rough time. Certainly his disinformation trip to Niger was a result of either his collusion or naivete with French Intelligence. Clearly then he was in over his head; he may very well find himself appearing before the Grand Jury and then what recommended charges will flow from that?

Mr. Wilson may wish that he had never heard the words,
" yellow cake." Certainly he may have to account for a very large windfall of what appears to be 200 million dollars in 1998, part of which eyeball.com seems to
reveal he used to purchase a $770,000 home.

There are some sweaty palms inside the beltway tonight.
Special prosecutors can interpret their tasking very widely, and the Dept. of Justice money expended demands an end point. Will it be Joe Wilson, hoisted on his own petard? Will it be the journalistas involved? Will it be both? Will our CIC magnanimously retreat and let them live to fight another day? [Contrary to liberal media denials,the man does have some class.]

This drama may just be beginning. Karl may insist that the special prosecutor go for the throat, and that choice will be made, based on how distracted Karl wants to keep the Dems for some time. Will we hear sudden Dem calls for
"bipartisanship?" If so they will have eaten crow again, and I can taste it from here and you know what ?

It tastes really, really, good to me!Here you go Chris Matthews, here Karl Schumer, here ya go Ted Kennedy, Crow!
Eat it , thas' right now chew on it , masticate baby!

[claudiustg]

---The police have found the suicide bomber's head in the rubble of the London bus, and Iran is enriching uranium. The only distraction here is the pitiful parochialism of our political culture.---

Amen.