Ah, such vindication. I've been contending that the second leak most likely came from CIA or State. Now a bigtime columnist is speculating the same. One again, advantage weblogs. :)

I thought the rhetorical Clinton position was in
support of regime change. Does that mean that
Wilson was in opposition to both the Clinton's
and the Bush's positions?

Wilson was sent in the first place because he was the last charge d'affaires in Baghdad before the First Gulf War; he later served as Ambassador to Niger and Director of African Affairs for the National Security Council. Seems like he'd be just the fellow I'd want to investigate Saddam's mischief or lack thereof in Niger.

Noel Erinjeri

Kind of like sending Chamberlain to look intto the V-2 program?

OJ: The Chamberlain comparison is, by now, as old and tired as the reflexive leftist comparisons to Hitler of anyone standing politically to the right of center. And in this case, you are reading Wilson dead wrong. That's no shame, certainly, since a number of conservative pundits (such as Safire and the now wildly spinning Novak), not to mention the RNC spin machine, are working very hard to ensure that confusion.

The truth is that Wilson, in addition to the African posts noted by Noel, was also the last U.S. ambassador to Iraq pre-Gulf War, and a genuine hero of that first conflict. He was well respected by Republican foreign policy experts, and was an uncontroversial choice for a Nigerian mission requested by none other than Dick Cheney. That is the simple answer to your question. He was sent because he was the right, and possibly the ideal, man for the job.

In interviews (pre-scandal), Wilson made clear that at the time of the mission he was if anything a Bush supporter, as most people were post-9/11 (Wilson also supported the invasion of Afghanistan), although he did have reservations regarding a new military intervention in Iraq. That position never wavered--he is on record publicly advocating military intervention to disarm Hussein--until more recently, and especially since the political attack on his wife.

Finally, Valerie Plame's status as at least a former covert operative for the CIA is no longer in doubt, so cancel your big "if" on that score.

We can quibble all you like about the relative harm this may have actually done (which is impossible to know without further leaks), about how this leak-as-political-attack compares to past political shenanigans, about how serious a crime this really is. The reality, however, is that in the public sphere this scandal has some teeth right now, and it is not yet clear that Bush administration will emerge unscathed. The seriousness of the charges is reflected in the degree of misinformation and propaganda being directed at Joseph Wilson and his wife, such that so many conservatives can still scratch their heads and wonder if maybe Plame was just a lowly "analyst," and if maybe the real scandal was the fact that Wilson was sent to Nigeria at all--questions that have already been answered.

On the other hand, it is oddly satisfying to watch conservatives spin and deny in exactly the same fashion that die-hard Clinton supporters once did in the midst of any of the more serious of their scandals (the travel office firings being the only one I can think of that involved genuine dirty tricks).

M:

If he opposed the war he shouldn't have been sent. You don't send opponents to make your case. Whoever leaked should be fired if they knew they were committing a crime and prosecuted, but the fact that he was being used by the CIA for its own purposes is more important to the public dialogue than her cover for whatever.

Novak seems to think it was an accidental violation and Mr. Wilson presents himself as a partisan:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20031006-122422-1284r.htm

OJ: I'm not sure I understand. Wilson's job was to make the administration's case? Since the story of the Nigerian uranium first broke late last year, I had always thought that Wilson's job was to investigate the validity of the claim that Iraqis had been there actively trying to drum up a deal for uranium (never mind, for the moment, that they had no way to enrich it). Certainly, if the administration wanted someone to buttress false information, they could have sent a like-minded ideologue to tell them what they wanted to hear. As it stands, they went through the CIA in a rare show of rationality. As it stands, you are dodging the real heart of the matter: the CIA-sponsored evaluation of the Nigeria story by Wilson was right. The papers were forgeries (as other investigators had already determined), and there was no solid evidence for recent Iraqi activity in Nigeria. The "purposes" in question would seem to be entirely above-board, making political affiliations (as I have said several times now) utterly irrelevant.

At the time Wilson was sent, he was not an opponent of the Bush administration. He gave money to the Bush 2000 campaign, supported the war in Afghanistan, was highly regarded by the Republican establishment, etc. His bona fides as an active opponent of Saddam Hussein are unassailable. That he is partisan now is only to be expected, after butting his head against the brick wall of an administration completely unconcerned with inconvenient facts that contradict its ideologically-driven policies. Some of his more recent comments have been histrionic, even irresponsible (the "frog-marching" Karl Rove bit, for one), but one might expect an emotional reaction to a political attack on one's spouse, at least from a non-politician. I'm not sure I would be more composed were the executive branch to go after mine. Thankfully, she's not in the CIA.

I really don't turn to the Washington Times for anything. Part of that is principle--I have no wish to put money in the disgusting Rev. Moon's pockets. Part of that is simple dislike. Disregarding the source, however, is relatively easy, since both Novak's and Wilson's comments are available from other sources. Novak is spinning at this point, contradicting and re-contradicting himself at every turn. Too much of his current exculpation of his sources relies on complete trust in his nuanced interpretation of how "strongly" the CIA did or did not dissuade him from publicizing Plame's identity, or what his interpretation of the "intent" of his sources may have been. It's little more than a convenient way to lie. Maybe even to himself.

And, by the way, whoever "leaked" should be fired whether or not they knew they were committing a crime. Warnings are for minor traffic violations; this was a felony, and whoever "leaked" had to know, at least in part, the significance of what they were leaking.

As for how seriously Bush takes this transgression, the liberal weblogs are full of one comparison in particular: the identity of the "leaker" is easily determined from a perusal of White House phone and e-mail logs--figure out who talked to Novak around July 9, and you have your man (men?). No move has been made to do this. When Wesley Clark made a comment, entirely in jest, about his phone calls to the White House not being answered, it was a matter of days before the logs had been checked and the absence of those calls publicized. The priorities are rather clear, if completely understandable...

M:

Why would everyone have reason to know that this CIA functionary was covered by such a law, if she is? If someone on the staff checked with the White House Council or Justice and was told she was covered but then leaked it anyway, by all means fire and prosecute. If they thought it was pertinent information, which it is, and didn't know it was illegal to say so, they should only be fired if the leak violated White House protocol.

Personally, I'd have had a congressman reveal it on the floor of the House so he couldn't be prosecuted, after first warning CIA that it was going to be revealed.

The information about the CIA's behavior was more important than which desk she gets to sit at.

CIA is supposed to work for national security. The President had determined that removing Saddam was vital to that security. They may not have been obligated to whitewash their report but were obligated to send someone who was on board, not someone who supports Democrats for office and opposed the war. (Who in America oppoised Afghanistan?, besides that one black congresswoman?).

I'm sort of with Mike on this one. However, there seem to be some salient points:

First, If I recall correctly, the President's sixteen words cited British intelligence regarding attempted uranium purchases in Africa, not merely Nigeria.

Second, how can one dispositively establish a negative in eight days in one country, no matter how thorough the investigation?

And the British stand by their report.

Jeff, you mean Niger, not Nigeria.

I think the original question still stands: why was Wilson sent? His diplomatic credentials are beside the point. Is it really standard procedure, when the Vice President asks the CIA to look into a delicate issue, for the CIA to hand the job over to a non-CIA employee who happens to be married to an agent? That sounds fishy to me, and it did to Bob Novak, who started all this by trying to figure out why Wilson was chosen.

Frankly, this sounds like somebody in the CIA didn't really want this investigation to find anything.

Gee guys, I don't know. Let's say the office of the VP contacts the CIA and asks for someone to get to the bottom of papers that seem to show Hussein dealing for uranium in Niger. Someone named Valerie Wilson, nee Plame, is one of the CIA's experts on the subject of WMDs, and is either a former or current covert operative in the ongoing quest for information on foreign weaponry. Ms. Wilson happens to be married to a former diplomat with 23 years of experience in Africa, including Niger, who coincidentally was also ambassador to Iraq for a time. I can't imagine her motives in suggesting Mr. Wilson could have been innocent. No, those two devious DNC operatives had it in for Bush's foreign policy ALL ALONG! BWAH-HA-HA-HA!

I'm sorry to be so flippant, but all of this "why was Wilson sent?" stuff really makes me giggle. I'll concede that there is some small chance that the CIA sent Wilson as part of some overarching conspiracy against the Bush administration, but if so, they covered themselves really, really well. There was no reason _not_ to send Wilson. Even if you favor OJ's penchant for sending only those who are "on board" (i.e. are ideologically pure), in early 2002 there was no reason to believe Wilson wasn't at least considering buying a ticket. And really, there can be no reason to favor someone who is "on board" other than an expectation that the facts will then be fudged in your favor. There is every indication that Wilson was sent to find the facts as well as they could be known, without fudge, not the least of which is that he succeeded in doing so.

OJ, by definition, Valerie Plame's covert status could only have been known to people with some appreciation of what it meant. That is the definition of "cover." (Disingenous remarks by some that her status was somehow "common knowledge" notwithstanding, of course--it was only "common knowledge" after administration sources made it so). There is no sense in which someone who knows who Plame is would have to go check to see if it's OK to let everyone else know too. I'm no expert on the CIA or procedures regarding classified information, but there is enough educational info out there for me to figure out that much.

Sorry, M. I'm not convinced. There doesn't have to have been an "overarching conspiracy against the Bush administration", just a dodgy decision by one person in the CIA to send this bozo on an important intelligence mission which he was not qualified to perform. By his own admission, Wilson spend his time having tea with various senior officials and simply asking them if Iraq had tried to purchase uranium. Talk about "phoning it in"!

Let's have a thought experiment. Bush decides to investigate this leak. He choses an ex-ambassador known to be politically friendly, but who has no law enforcement or intelligence background. This fellow has a week's worth of lunches with Karl Rove and other high-level administration officials, and asks them if they leaked. They say no. He proclaims there was no leak. Case closed. Satisfied?

M:

What's the point of having an intelligence agency that can neither warn you when attacks are coming nor fake documents when you want to go to war?

Do you know any CIA agents? It's one of those deals where it does tend to be common knowledge; you just don't talk about it openly.

PapayaSF:

oooops. Thanks.

PapayaSF: I'm just going to have to end my participation in this particular thread by expressing my disbelief that anyone would consider Joseph Wilson unqualified to do the job he was sent to do. It is unfortunate that he made that self-deprecating comment about having tea with various senior officials and then writing his report, but in more extensive interviews he has made clear that there was more to it than that. As a one-man mission, he could hardly have rifled through mining company files [said companies are unlikely to be Nigeran (Nigerese? Nigeric?) anyway] or otherwise engaged in the sort of investigative work one might wish to perform if one wanted to unearth evidence of an illicit sale of uranium. But then, that's not what he was supposed to be doing. He was supposed to be investigating the validity of documents already in hand that, if genuine, would have indicated such a sale had taken place. It was enough to talk with his own contacts in Niger--and how many Americans have such contacts?--to prove the documents to be fakes.

Other than some overheated comments in interviews ("frog marching" Karl Rove, most notably), what has Wilson done to earn the term "bozo" other than contradict what the Bush administration, and so many other right-wingers, wanted badly to be true? I suppose he also came out strongly against the Iraq war several months later, which in the eyes of neocons is treason, but then in neocon eyes opposition to any part of the Bush administration agenda is treason. Patriotism is synonymous with loyalty to a particular party. I have no interest in confronting that sort of wild-eyed fanaticism, if there is any element of that in what you are saying.

As for OJ, the more I interact with you in this (yours, most graciously) space, the more impressed I am with your fundamental cynicism, at least with regard to politics. For my part, I find it a mark of social progress that an American government can find it so difficult to cobble together the requisite fictions to induce a sufficient proportion of the population to go to war. We have Republicans in part to thank for that, given that they managed to turn the waging of wars on foreign soil into just another partisan affair with their behavior during the Clinton administration. The shame of it, though, is that there was sufficient reason to "finish the job" in Iraq already, and it would have been relatively easy to engineer a decent pretext had the Bush administration just been willing to wait for another round or two of more agressive inspections. Why the administration chose two complete fictions--the existence of WMDs in Iraq, and an Iraqi-Al Qaeda link--as their actual justification, is something that I find baffling. I mean, someone in the administration had to know that the pre-emptive approach was sufficiently unprecedented, at least from a nation nominally committed to a semblance of international law, that the lies used to justify it would be examined a bit more closely than similar lies had for past wars. Maybe I'm also a member of the stupid party; frankly, when it comes to explaining the Bush administration, we all are.

Also, based on my limited knowledge: the CIA has taken some well-deserved heat, along with the FBI and every other facet of the intelligence and security apparatus in the U.S., for failing to avert 9/11. As a contrarian, however, I might point out that the Bush administration was warned by the CIA that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack American jets a month previous, but nothing was done to increase airport security in the wake of this warning. There's blame enough for everyone on that topic.

Finally, I should mention that I will be closely watching Bush's response to the Wilson/Plame scandal to evaluate the sort of man he is. Given his past record, it's rather clear he suffers from a lack of personal responsibility, a disturbingly willful ignorance of matters that might contradict his dogmatic beliefs, and an avert-the-eyes approach to dirty tricks his staffers might pull (such as the sliming of McCain in the SC primary). But he has yet to offer crystal clear evidence that he's lying scum. The test is simple: given that White House phone records can be quickly and efficiently pulled in order to slime a Democratic primary candidate (Clark), it should be relatively easy to figure out who (if anyone) within the White House spoke with Bob Novak just before publication of his column of early July. If Bush does this, I will consider him an honorable man. If not, there is no reason to view him with any less spleen than conservatives viewed Clinton; he will prove himself to be precisely the man they believed Clinton to be.

M:

It'd be wonderful if politics were a forum where absolute rules applied, unfortunately though the standards for behavior tend to change depending on whether a Democrat or a Republican occupies the White House. Thus a Pack wood had to go, but a Clinton gets to stay. The Democrat Wars were all premised on falsehoods--WWI, WWII, N. Korea, Vietnam--even obviously manufactured ones, but it is only with the Republican War that every detail must be scrutinized for exaggeration.

Of course the case was overstated to the UN. WMD seemed the only premise that might win some international support for a war that, as you note, was justified without them. Included in those reasons were the ties of Ansar-el-Islam (?) to al Qaeda, which no one questions, and the offers of aassistance to al Qaeda by Saddam, which Osama turned down at the time.

It also seems reasonable to assume that Saddam was pursuing WMD, given his history.

However, even without al Qaeda or an actual WMD program, he was in violation of the resolutions that let him off the hook in '91, which included a requirement that he liberalize the political regime. Therefore, this was effectively just a resumption of the temporarily paused war.

Even without any of that though, he was a bad guy and Iraqis deserve better. If the President lied for that, I'm okay with it. I hope he lies about Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Baby Assad, and a few others too.

M.: If Wilson's job was more than one person could handle, then he should have said so, instead of coming to a conclusion. And if the CIA sent one guy to do a job one person couldn't do, that's just more evidence the CIA screwed up, seemingly intentionally.

I used the term "bozo" partly because I think he did a cruddy job, and partly because of the undiplomatic, partisan way the guy has acted since all this hit the fan.

If he was supposed to be investigating the validity of the documents, then why wasn't his conclusion "the documents are forged"? To go from that to "Iraq never tried to buy uranium in Niger" is an unsupported logical leap.

No, I'm not a fanatic or neocon. A libertarian with some conservative tendencies, actually. And it's a bit of pot-calling-the-kettle to charge "fanaticism" while saying things like "in neocon eyes opposition to any part of the Bush administration agenda is treason".

As for the "complete fictions" of Iraq's WMDs and links to Al Qaeda, you seem willfully ignorant. Were the WMDs that Iraq used in the '80s fictions? Were the ones the UN inspectors found up to 1998 fictions? Was the botulinum toxin David Kay reported a few days ago a fiction?

Re Al Qaeda, Bush always said we were fighting terrorists of global reach, not just Al Qaeda. Saddam publicly funded Palestinian suicide bombers. He publicly harbored various Palestinian terrorists. (One was the first person killed in the US bombing at the start of the war.) And there are various Iraqi links to the '93 WTC bombing. There's more, but I'm sure you have access to Google. Try it.

I had told myself I was done with this thread, but I have to respond to some of what you've said, PapayaSF.

First, I'll give you my "treason" comment was an exaggeration. Thankfully, the Ann Coulters of the world do not speak for all conservatives, or even all neocons. They certainly do not speak for libertarians, who are justly horrified by the Bush administration (although they are loath to seek succor with the Democrats, naturally).

I have to disagree with you on Wilson's performance. I think he did an excellent job, and he did exactly what he was supposed to have done. While it is formally true that it is impossible to state that "Iraq never tried to buy uranium in Niger," it is also true that there is no evidence that they did, and the evidence that was put forward was forged.

WMDs in the 80's were certainly not fictions--after all, the Reagan and Bush administrations were partly responsible for them, as was every administration back to the early 60's. (As the joke goes, how did we know so much about Saddam's weapons before the first Gulf War? We looked at the receipt.) The botulinum toxin David Kay found was an old vial from those early programs, probably lost and forgotten since that time. [Sidebar: I am unimpressed by the notion that biological weapons other than maybe smallpox would qualify as a WMD. No one, with the possible exception of the U.S. military, has yet figured out how to deliver them efficiently enough for that.] Iraq's WMD capability post-1998 was a fiction.

To clarify other matters, Saddam did not fund Palestinian suicide bombers, at least as far as anyone knows (or has told us). He gave money to the bombers' families after their deaths. The degree to which this constitutes direct support for terrorism is debatable. He harbored Palestinian terrorists, all of whose crimes were more than a decade old--not that this excuses anything, but it hardly constitutes a link to terrorism sufficient to justify a war. I am unaware of Iraqi links to the '93 bombing; the only links I can find by Googling are from complete cranks and tend to be linked to the now-debunked notion that Hussein attempted to assassinate Bush I.

Similarly, bin Laden famously despised the secular government of Saddam Hussein, and although in the early to mid-90's Hussein probably did offer to link with Al Qaeda, his offer was rather angrily turned down, as it was seen (accurately) as little more than a ploy for good publicity in the Muslim world. Ansar-al-Islam operated on Iraqi soil, but soil that was not under Hussein's control; were they ever in his zone of influence he would have crushed them as he did all extremist Islamists who threatened him. In point of fact, there are dozens of other nations more directly linked to terrorism than Iraq. One of them is the U.S., which harbors several far-right-wing fringe groups engaged in terrorist acts (albeit small-scale; but then, does anyone remember Oklahoma City?). The invasion of Iraq had genuine strategic aims that could have been used to justify it, but it had no relevance to the war on terrorism whatsoever, and if anything may have contributed to that particular problem.

Hussein was certainly a brutal dictator, but the world does not have a shortage of them, and I am dissuaded from seeing that as a justification for the war by itself by the simple fact that the U.S. has never had any great problem supporting this sort of tyrant when it has been convenient. I am further dissuaded by the fact that the U.S. continues to do so now, the most relevant example being in Central Asia where a number of despots have been appeased to facilitate operations in Afghanistan. The recent conservative focus on "regime change" in Iraq is something I have never been able to completely understand.

"Saddam did not fund Palestinian suicide bombers, at least as far as anyone knows (or has told us). He gave money to the bombers' families after their deaths. The degree to which this constitutes direct support for terrorism is debatable. He harbored Palestinian terrorists, all of whose crimes were more than a decade old--not that this excuses anything, but it hardly constitutes a link to terrorism sufficient to justify a war."

If that's what you believe then this thread probably is pointless. It'll be hard for any of the rest of us to figure out how that's not direct support for terrorism.

What's to figure out, OJ? If hairs are going to be split over how one cannot formally prove a negative, such as "Iraq never sought to purchase uranium in Niger," I can just as well split this one and note that supporting the family of a deceased suicide bomber is at best indirect support for terrorism. The money doesn't pay for the bomb materials or their assembly, for whatever training and other infrastructure underlies a suicide bombing operation, or what-have-you. At best, it might provide a bomber some peace of mind prior to the act, knowing that their family will be financially compensated for their "sacrifice." This assumes that anyone so patently, desperately insane as to blow themselves up in the hopes that a few Jews might blow up with them can have such a thing as peace of mind. But that hardly counts as "direct" support for terrorism, unless you are of the opinion that any family unfortunate enough to have produced a suicide bomber is logically then also an integral part of the terrorist network.

M:

There are apples in those oranges. Whether Saddam tried buying a certain slice of yellow cake is an open question, on which folk can disagree honestly. But no one questions that he had a thirty year record of pursuing WMD do they?

Similarly, whether he gave terrorist organizations money to fund their organizations could have been an open question, if he hadn't bragged about it. But whether cash payments to terrorists' surviving families encourages and supports terrorism isn't truly an open question except to a closed mind.

M:

I don't see how any of us can say that Wilson did an excellent job. Eight days in country, and only at the hotel? On the other hand, we just don't know what he did there, so we can't totally debunk him, either (except to the degree that he seemed pre-disposed to his conclusions).

The bottom line is that his "mission" was basically a phone-in. Otherwise, insertion-type folks would have been sent who would have been there for weeks, not just meeting bureaucrats but doing recon and possibly even gathering samples. Surely we know where these mines and other facilites are, and surely we know the companies involved (and can find out what is what from their records).

This whole affair is strange, because it either shows that the CIA (and State Dept.) are monumentally stupid or monumentally insubordinate. It also makes the Bush admin. llok bad, either way. And Wilson/Plame look silly as well. Maybe it was orchestrated by Terry McAuliffe, although he isn't that smart, either. What was Ollie North doing in March 2002?