Karl Rove

[techweenie]

Originally posted by cowtown
Okay, since you didn't comprehend my offer, I'll repeat: if Rove spends one day in jail OR is pardoned by the president, I pay you. If not, you pay me.

C'mon, put your money where your mouth is.... Otherwise, you're just...talking.

Oh, I read what you put up there. It would put me in the position of betting on the legal system delivering justice. And you yourself brought up Simpson and Jackson...

[cowtown]

Fair enough. I agree that Simpson and Jackson are not shining examples.

[techweenie]

Originally posted by fintstone
The law requires that a covert agent must be knowingly outed. As far as I have read, there is no indication that Rove even knew Plame was a covert agent....and there is nothing in the Newsweek article...or any other that I have found... that indicates otherwise. According to testimony, he only knew she had a job at the CIA working with WMD. That would include an awful lot of folks without covert jobs.

Very good. This is accurate information -- perhaps a first for fint.

There are four separate conditions to the law (from GHW Bush) that Rove probably can 'loophole out' on, since it requires proving certain types of knowledge and intent.

Nobody so far has even mentioned the damage Plames' outing did to her field operatives -- most of whom, I understand, were informants within Iran's nuclear program.

[fintstone]

Originally posted by techweenie
Oh, I read what you put up there. It would put me in the position of betting on the legal system delivering justice. And you yourself brought up Simpson and Jackson...

LOL...Justice is the last thing you want.

[fintstone]

Originally posted by techweenie
Very good. This is accurate information -- perhaps a first for fint.

There are four separate conditions to the law (from GHW Bush) that Rove probably can 'loophole out' on, since it requires proving certain types of knowledge and intent.

Nobody so far has even mentioned the damage Plames' outing did to her field operatives -- most of whom, I understand, were informants within Iran's nuclear program.

Did it ever occur to you that the damage was caused by Plame? ..what covert agent in their right mind would let their position be known....or get involved with politics...especially dirty politics like she and her husband were involved in?...LOL

[WOODPIE]

Why would Robert Novak refer to Plame as an "Agency operative" if he thought, or knew, that she was only a paper pusher or analyst? He would only be able to know this if his source (Rove) knew.

Ed

[fintstone]

Perhaps he did some additional research or had other sources. One would certainly expect him to before publishing such.

[WOODPIE]

I'd bet you are correct on the additional research and other sources thingy. That is why it wouldn't be wise to take cowtown's bet.

[350HP930]

When I read threads like this I have to wonder if fint is brain damaged or if he is getting paid to spread disinformation and spin on the internet.

[CamB]

Fint - are you actually ok with Rove manipulating public opinion by smearing Wilson and (on purpose or inadvertantly) outing Plame?

I mean, do Rove's actions meet the "common decency" test - please try answer without using the word "liberal".

[fintstone]

Cam
It was proved long ago that Wilson is a liar and a charlatan. He was not smeared...but in fact...he smeared the administration and the nation...and was caught in his lies. He put his dirty politics ahead of his own country. The whining about Plame is just a diversion.

[CamB]

I thought he was at least partially correct (although he did play dirty politics - precisely what I am accusing Rove of doing. They're not alone either).

[fintstone]

Wilson was just another dem lying about the administration and Iraq who was exposed.

Wilson contradictions leave Democrat senators speechless

July 15, 2004

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Chicago Sun Times

Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that did not bark, the most remarkable aspect of last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report is what its Democratic members did not say. They did not dissent from the committee's findings that Iraq apparently asked about buying yellowcake uranium from Niger. They neither agreed to a conclusion that former diplomat Joseph Wilson was suggested for a mission to Niger by his CIA employee wife nor defended his statements to the contrary.

Wilson's activities constituted the only aspects of the yearlong investigation for which the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, was unable to win unanimous agreement. According to committee sources, Roberts felt Wilson had been such a ''cause celebre'' for Democrats that they could not face the facts about him.

For a year, Democrats have been belaboring President Bush about 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address in which he reported Saddam Hussein's attempt to buy uranium from Africa, based on British information. Wilson has been lionized in liberal circles for allegedly contradicting this information on a CIA mission and then being punished as a truth-teller. Now, for committee Democrats, it is as though the Niger question and Joe Wilson have vanished from the Earth.

Because a Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating whether any crime was committed when my column first identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, on advice of counsel I have not written on the subject since October. However, I feel compelled to describe how the committee report treats the Niger-Wilson affair because it has received scant coverage except in a few media outlets. The unanimously approved report said, ''interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD (CIA counterproliferation division) employee, suggested his name for the trip.'' That's what I reported, and what Wilson flatly denied and still does.

Plame sent out an internal CIA memo saying ''my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'' A State Department analyst told the committee about an inter-agency meeting in 2002 that was ''apparently convened by [Wilson's] wife, who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.''

The committee found that the CIA report, based on Wilson's mission, differed considerably from the former ambassador's description to the committee of his findings. That report ''did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.'' As far as his statement to the Washington Post about ''forged documents'' involved in the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium, Wilson told the committee he may have ''misspoken.'' In fact, the intelligence community agreed that ''Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa.''

''While there was no dispute with the underlying facts,'' Chairman Roberts wrote separately, ''my Democrat colleagues refused to allow'' two conclusions in the report. The first conclusion merely said that Wilson was sent to Niger at his wife's suggestion. The second conclusion is devastating: ''Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.''

The normally mild Roberts is harsh in his condemnation: ''Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. . . . [N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.'' Roberts called it ''important'' for the committee to declare much of what Wilson said ''had no basis in fact.'' In response, Democrats were silent.

[CamB]

Ah come on - its a load of politicking, and it appears that (a) someone chose to ignore or reword what he reported - whether this was reasonable or not; (b) his wife ended up being outed; (c) whomever did it appears, on the face of it, to have been motivated by malice.

There is enough undercurrent there to suggest that Wilson was (rightly or wrongly) smeared.

What most irritates me though, is that the internet isn't old enough for me to be able to search back and find out what the Republican vs Democrat (instead of Democrat vs Republican) situation was a decade ago. I don't wanna hear about how it was all about Clinton and he was a bad man.

Both sides will have had their fair share of dirty tricks, and I guess I'd go almost as far as condoning it. They're politicians and can't be trusted.

[fintstone]

Not to be redundant or disagreeable...I disagree....and as I have said before in this matter...
The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committe made it very clear that the committe had discovered that Wilson had not only lied, but he had misrepresented information that he had fabricated or read in press accounts as actual information he had uncovered on his "mission". Lying and then misrepresenting officially obtained information to discredit his country and the President seem quite dastardly to me. Particularly in wartime. I think it borders on treason. I guess, as always....the end justifies the means.
Bush had been called a liar because he had stated that Iraq had attemped to buy radioactive material from Africa. All the "outing" info was just an attempt to divert attention away from the simple fact that the very one accusing the President of lying was the one misrepresenting the facts.....just like every other time the "lies" that Bush supposedly told were proven to be true and the person who made the charges turned out to be the liar.
Wilson was not smeared....he soiled himself.....and his wife in the process.

[Moneyguy1]

Lying is knowingly making a misstatement. It is not lying if you repeat something, thinking that it is the truth.

The main problem here is that one must decide which is worse...No one from an administration should use his or her position for revenge, although it appears to be the norm rather than the exception. I am waiting to make any judgement, even a personal one.

[fintstone]

If one copies information from an article in the newspaper and reports it as info they found out as factual in their little "spy adventure"....then it can be called nothing else....but a lie. Clearly he knew he did not find out the info firsthand as he reported...and he eventually admitted it....Much as he and his wife lied about how he was selected to do the little spy bit.

[Moneyguy1]

fint... Of course one should admit the source in their notes, but if the individual believes the source to be accurate, with the telling, the "source (the newspaper) is forgotten. And, IMHO, if the "source" is not included, then the comments should be suspicious. No rational person should accept unsubstantiated information including (and especially) the president.

[fintstone]

The problem was that Wilson lied to the press and the nation at the President's expense. Wilson openly contradicted the president in public based on Wilson's supposed work in Niger...which Wilson was lying about. I agree that no rational person should have accepted his claims....and the adminstration did not.....but in their typical lockstep fashion....the liberals and the media did....but are they rational?

[CamB]

I believe Wilson continues to dispute that. I have no idea as to what the truth is, and I don't really have the energy to find proof.