The Opinionated Bastard

We’d have one more spy if Joe Wilson’s wife hadn’t been outed in an act of sheer partisan treachery.

That’s how much this administration cares about its spies.

Just an observation.

Uh, while its bad to out spies, the Wilson case is a little more complicated then that.

First off, she was the wife of an ambassador, a public figure, so its not like she was a deep cover agent. Second, Wilson’s online bio mentioned her by her maiden name, Valarie Plame. (Ooops)

Novak also called the CIA, and they confirmed her employment by them, but asked him not to print it.

He later remarked that it had been an off the cuff comment by someone, and in interviews with the reporters from the White House press room, it seems that everyone knew she had worked for the CIA for some time.

So she more or less “used to be” a spy, and had become an analyst instead after being married to a high-profile guy for awhile.

Here’s a good timeline

So I dunno. I think that in this case what happened is that everyone “knew” she used to do something for the CIA but didn’t know what, and things kind of snowballed. Someone knew she had been the analyst on the Niger thing, which led to Wilson being tasked to go over there, so then remarked as much to Novak. Novak has said that if the CIA had been a little more forceful he wouldn’t have used her name, but they said she wouldn’t be in any danger, and she wasn’t really going to be covert anymore now that she was married to Wilson.

It wasn’t until David Corn wrote in the Nation that anyone realized that Novak had done a no-no.

So I don’t know if there’s anyone to blame here. Sometimes shit just happens.

Wikipedia has a lot to say about this, and gives its own timeline. I’ve pulled this interesting nugget:

* 8 August 2003 (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08WEAP.html?ex=1065240000&en=ebdb9bc720f8d4c2&ei=5070): Days after Wilson "publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program," Wilson says he became "a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.... [and] Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml) by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials."

* 26 August 2003 (http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002009.html): Wilson participated in a "public panel in Washington" on Thursday, August 21st, and is quoted as having said "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." See transcript of August 21st panel discussion (http://www.pacificviews.org/archives/000094.html)

No-no’s? Shit just happening? I can just see that now on the final report of the Justice Department and FBI’s inquiry: “Because of unfortunate ‘no-no’s’…shit happened.”

President Bush, standing at Ground Zero: “Shit happens.”

Karl Rove at 2004 inauguration: “Wow! Shit happens!”

But I belabor the point.

Good tip on the Wikipedia article.

Though its important to point out that all of the above you quoted are Wilson’s statements, and he’s not exactly a disinterested party. The journalists involved alternated between saying “government officials” and “administration officials” so its not even clear that they were even Administration types.

To quote Novak from the Wikipedia article: “During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA’s counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. “

Now Wilson and his wife denied that she suggested it, but its turned out from later transcripts that she did actually suggest Wilson.

The real issue is not Valarie Plame’s cover, but that the cover company she worked for got blown. Its not that her life got endangered, its that other lives did.

Anyways, we need more spies. :-)

Hmmm. The quotes I pulled don’t show up in my comment. Sloppy cut and paste on my part?

I pulled the Joe Wilson quote because I liked how pissed he was at Karl Rove, and something about “frog parading” Rove, whatever that means. I thought that this was a very funny image.

Who knows WTF happened. It’s a nest of vipers in D.C., to borrow from J.C., if HE even said that.

People were definitely out to get Wilson, for his “turning traitor” as they saw it. What if he’s telling the truth, and he’s been the subject of retribution for trying to get the real story out? I’ve seen him speak, and he’s a steady, steely guy, as articulate and straightforward as some notable heads of state are not.

Holy crap. How are you supposed to know what is or isn’t true about any of this? Especially waaaaaaaaaaaay up here in the lava fields…

More spies? You own a tux, don’t you? Maybe it’s time for a drastic change of employment, Pierce.

Wetter. Pierce Wetter. Shaken, not stirred.

dean, you dont get it. The Bush admin cannot do anything wrong, and cannot be critiqued! Everything is meticulously justified and defended. Haha, how reality flies in the face of what we sometimes hope is the case.

ernie

Oh, I just follow this rule: “Never put down to evil what you can put down to incompetence.”

So if you claim Bush is evil, you’ll get an argument. If you claim he’s incompetent, I’ll ask you “compared to who?” mostly because the entire lineup the Democrats put up in the last election made Bush look like a genius, except perhaps Lieberman.

Bush does a lot of things that drive me up a tree, it just seems to me that its the things I agree with he gets criticized for…

looks like karl rove might be going to jail. good.

ernie