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July 27, 2005

Stop telling us what we don't want to hear, you America-hating commie!

Quotable:

I voted for George Bush in November of 2000 because I wanted a President who knew what the meaning of "is" was. I was tired of political operatives who spent endless hours on cable news channels parsing words. I was promised a President who would bring a new tone and new ethical standards to Washington.

So where are we? The President has flip-flopped and backed away from his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak. We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are implicated in these leaks. Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson. This is wrong.

Former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson debunks the myths and lies the Administration is using to cover their crimes. This was given during the hearings held by Senate and House Democrats (they weren't official hearings, since Republicans weren't interested in the public hearing anything bad about their dear leader.

These are the same folks who insist that we are fighting for freedom and that security is of the utmost importance. They show this by refusing to hold hearings on a leak done out of spite because someone criticized the administration (which is something one can do without reprisals in free countries). They show this by refusing to acknowledge that this leak compromised an intelligence agent's cover as well as our security.

The GOP is insisting that Plame was not really undercover. Which is stupid, since investigating yellowcake in Niger isn't best done with a "I WORK FOR THE CIA" T-Shirt on. But who knows? Maybe it's going to be a new Administration policy.

Johnson dispatches of this lie several times:

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. At the time I knew her only as Valerie P. Even though all of us in the training class held Top Secret Clearances, we were asked to limit our knowledge of our other classmates to the first initial of their last name. So, Larry J. knew Val P. rather than Valerie Plame. Her name did not become a part of my consciousness until her cover was betrayed by the government officials who gave columnist Robert Novak her true name [emphasis Sheelzebub's].

Okay, so we're talking about someone whose cover was so open that she allowed her classmates to only know her as Valerie P. even after they graduated. Just in case there were some Rove apologists who couldn't keep up.

Although Val started off with official cover, she later joined a select group of intelligence officers a few years later when she became a NOC, i.e. a Non-Official Cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. She was using cover, which we now know because of the leak to Robert Novak, of the consulting firm Brewster-Jennings & Associates. When she traveled overseas she did not use or have an official passport. If she had been caught engaged in espionage activities while traveling overseas without the black passport, she could have been executed.

Back to the annoying paraphrasing, but I know that some of the apologists will start spinning. Save your time, folks. Let's get it straight--that snivelling shill, Robert Novak, and that filthy traitor, Karl Rove, put Plame's investigation--and her life--in peril.

Did I mention that it's a felony to knowingly out an intelligence officer?

But Jennings has to make sure we know. The right-wing lapdogs are so used to chanting the same tired lies over and over that he's going to chant the truth over and over.

We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover. For starters, if she had not been undercover, then the CIA would not have referred the matter to the Justice Department. Some reports, such as one in the Washington Times that Valerie Plame's supervisor at the CIA, Fred Rustman, said she told friends and family she worked at the CIA and that her cover was light. These claims are not true. Rustman, who supervised Val in one of her earliest assignments, left the CIA in 1990 and did not stay in social contact with Valerie. His knowledge of Val's cover is dated. He does not know what she has done during the past 15 years.

Yeah, but--but--her neighbors knew, I bet! What a great story to tell at parties!

Val only told those with a need to know about her status in order to safeguard her cover, not compromise it. Val has never been a flamboyant, insecure person who felt the need to tell people what her "real" job was. She was content with being known as an energy consultant married to Joe Wilson and the mother of twins. Despite the repeated claims of representatives for the Republican National Committee, the Wilson's neighbors did not know where Valerie really worked until Novak's op-ed appeared [emphasis Sheelzebub's].

Problem is, the administration just doesn't care. They yelp about security and terrorism, but keep agents from doing their jobs of gathering. . .intelligence. I'm not a fan of the CIA, but I'm struck by the Bush administration's apparent willingness to defy their own logic. I'd love to know how an administration that claims to be concerned about terrorism and national security would shrug off the fact that Rove's leak compromised our security. Plame's cover company is as good as useless now, and anyone who had been associated with it is in danger. As is she. How, exactly, does this serve our need for national security?

The answer is, it doesn't. But then, it was never about our national security. If it was, we wouldn't be in Iraq tilting at windmills and nonexistent WMD's. We'd be gathering intelligence on Al-Qaeda and going after their top thugs. Then again, it's not like the Bush administration listens to intelligence, unless the reports tell them what they want to hear.

We're not doing that because it was never about national security. Bush and his cronies have left a trail of slander and fear-mongering a mile wide and deep. Between Dick "Chicken Little" Cheney's dire prediction that a Kerry victory would get us attacked by terrorists, to the lies that Iraq had WMD and posed an imminent threat, to the right-wing's accusations of anti-Americanism to anyone who didn't pucker up and kiss Bush's feet, to Rove's catty hissy fit over the weakness of Democrats in the face of terror, it's obvious that it was never about freedom. It was never about security.

Get it through your heads now. It's about keeping control and winning elections through fear.

Posted by at July 27, 2005 08:36 PM