Tom is in blog mode again, must be the weather. Come to think of it, it is kind of a winter sport in these parts. With baseball over, the Vikings on their back, and golf all but a memory, it's blogs or hockey.
Hmmm...or both.
On to Today's Treats from Tom, which are starting to appear with more regularity.
The AP is doing its usual bang-up job covering the riots in Paris. For six days now, angry youth have been tearing apart portions of Paris, and AP doesn't think its noteworthy that it is more muslim violence.
Not one mention. Six days of violence. I guess they forgot the "who" in "who, what, when, and where."
Today's Treats also included this column from Mark Steyn, written before the indictments and the Miers withdrawl. It is a substantive column that attempts to explain the mentality in the White House. A very good read.
Given my interest in the Wilson scandal, I found sections noteworthy.
Steyn points out the lies told by Wilson in his book about his wife's level of involvement in his being chosen for the Niger mission, and proceeds to lay out the evidence against Wilson's assertions.
The 2004 Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s report on pre-war intelligence has 48 pages on Wilson that exposes everything he’s said publicly about his mission as a lot of baloney. Not only did the Senate report and the Butler report in London and British Intelligence and French Intelligence think Saddam was trying to acquire uranium from Niger, but so did a former Prime Minister of Major Wanke’s, who said so to Wilson, who said so to the CIA.
One could add that the 9/11 commission also found Wilson's claims bogus.
That Wilson tried to pass off a whopping load of malarkey on to the administration and the American people is a fact, not an opinion. Not only that, given the nature of the issue, it is a dangerous fact. He passed on the wrong intelligence and then used that intelligence to undercut an elected government. Foreign policy could have been based on that bogus intelligence.
By the way, isn't that exactly what the left accuses Bush of?
Furthermore, Wilson even tried to legitimize that intelligence by falsely attributing his trip to Dick Cheney. That is also a fact.
What I find so astounding is not that Wilson would skew the truth to taint the Bush administration, everyone does that. It is not that the Democratic Party would twist this entire case to make the over-reaching claim that Libby's indictment is "key to the question of pre-war intelligence."
What I find so astounding is how it has been reported. I simply can't imagine crafting stories about the Wilson affair day after day, week after week, and failing to include the facts of the case as they pertain to Wilson. Time after time he is characterized as a dissenter, someone who "disagreed" with the administration. He has been painted as the victim of a Republican machine, a tortured truth-teller whose life has been turned asunder by a right-wing cabal.
It's not just flabbergasting, it is grossly incompetent and an insult to a formerly noble profession. It is in itself, a scandal.
Libby might fry for false statements. Who knows? Maybe Rove will fry too. In hindsight, the only mistake the White House appears to have made was to try and legitimately discredit Wilson in private. They should have just held a press conference and pointed out the facts of the case.
WASHINGTON D.C.-Vice President Dick Cheney rocked the press room late this morning, announcing a Justice Department investigation into the actions of a CIA analyst and her husband, a former ambassador.
"We have uncovered an attempt, which we believe was intentional, to have bogus intelligence used as a basis for foreign policy in a time of war. This attempt to pass discredited intel on to the administration and the public, was perpetrated by a former ambassador, whose wife, in turn, is an employee of the CIA," said Cheney.
According to a press release from the Justice Dempartments, an investigation will proceed, based on evidence suggesting that Valerie Plame, an analyst at Langley, pushed the CIA to send her husband, Jospeh Wilson, on a fact finding mission to Niger. Furthermore, that her husband, in turn, held back information from the administration that was contrary to his own conclusions.
Granted, Wilson as "soon to be indicted for treason in a time of war" might be a bit over the top. But it would certainly be as fair-minded as the press reports we are getting now. At the very least, we would be getting some facts relating to the lead-up in the investigation. But in all of the endless background included in every single update on the case, it is all but impossible to find.
I guess the press has spent so much time speculating about Rove's future indictment for outing Valerie Plame, and whether the indictments would "reach all the way to the top," that they just couldn't muster the energy to speculate about Wilson, or Plame, or the CIA.
It's amazing how quickly those non-elected, black-budgeted, closed-session, ultra-secretive, black-jobbing, civil rights violating, always listening, thugs at the CIA became of no concern to the media. Seems just yesterday the CIA was the big bad wolf with too much power; the power, even, to affect the political discourse and manipulate foreign policy.
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