Fingers Crossed

The Strib on Armitage: "I know you are but what am I?".

No, really:

To hear Bush administration defenders tell it, news that Richard Armitage was the original source of the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA work means the entire Plamegate tempest was a whole lot of nothing. That spin should be a tough sell, if folks pay attention to the facts.

But very easy if you pay attention to the real facts.

Armitage is a former Navy officer who served with distinction in various high-ranking defense and diplomatic posts under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Yeah, but he let Valerie Plame's name slip.

In chitchat at the end of a conversation with newspaper columnist Robert Novak in 2003, while deputy secretary of state, Armitage let slip that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, worked at the CIA. Armitage apparently did not know Plame's CIA work was undercover and classified.

So there you go, administration supporters say: There was no conspiracy to "out" Plame as part of a plan to "get" Wilson. So far as Armitage goes, that makes sense. He appears to have made a foolish, forgivable mistake, though why he remained silent about it is mystifying.

Only if you assume the "mistake" was "foolish", and have "forgiven" it in advance.

Armitage is a long-time foe of the administration - one of the left-of-center ideologues who clog the State Department and the CIA.

But Armitage's error does not lift the thick layer of Plame-related gunk from the reputations of White House adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and his ex-chief of staff, Lewis Libby. While Armitage had no anti-Wilson ax to grind, they did.

Right - a justifiable one.

And while Armitage may have had no bone with Wilson, he certainly did with the Adminsitration - a fact the Strib chooses to ignore.

In fact, Armitage learned about Plame's CIA association from a memo written in response to a request from Cheney's office for information about Wilson. The White House's "get Wilson" effort was already underway. Armitage's slip offered them an opportunity of which they made maximum use.

So?

Wilson - an employee of the Executive Branch - screwed the Executive Branch. He wrote one thing in his report to the CIA, and then contradicted it in his NYTimes OpEd.

Novak needed confirmation of Armitage's information. He got it from Rove. Between them, Rove and Libby peddled the story to various Washington reporters, insinuating that Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate possible Iraq purchases of uranium was a junket arranged by his wife -- and that Wilson was a has-been showboat who just wanted a free trip to Africa, where he had worked as a U.S. diplomat.

Right, but not as a weapons inspector!

Wilson had zero background in tracking down illegal weapons and materiel shipments!

Wilson may be a showboat, but he is also an experienced African hand who was sent on a legitimate mission by the CIA (not by his wife), and convincingly disproved the Niger-Iraq uranium stories central to the Bush case for war

Except that he did no such thing.

The Strib has had its' collective mind made up about Bush and this war since long before Bush allegedly pre-sold himself on invading Iraq.

Posted by Mitch at September 1, 2006 06:43 AM | TrackBack