Wilson/Plame, again

Like others, I’d really hoped we were done hearing about or commenting on Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, but Mike at Uncorrelated has a round-up and some commentary that really can’t be ignored as he wonders -as many have wondered – why no one is talking about the apparent conspiracy that had a CIA agent and former ambassador working together (and hard) to file a report which – upon investigation – has proved false, false, false?

Wilson/Plame conspired to create a false intelligence product–that’s not a MacGuffin. Wilson joined the Kerry campaign well before his notorious OpEd. How deep is this particular rabbit hole? Did the Democrat leadership conspire with the Wilson to mislead the American people about the nature of the Iraq war in order to obtain political advantage? Substitute two years worth of lefty rhetoric here to generate suitable outrage over “lying”, “misleading to war”, etc…

I think Rove has pointed us in this direction and that Rich and the NYT editorial board is desperately calling for us to “ignore that man behind the curtain…”

You’ll want to read the whole thing and also check out the roundup. Interesting stuff. I was amused that only Just One Minute seemed to catch that Russert and Cooper were basically, “A Couple of Implicated White Guys Sitting Around Talking…”

All of this via one little visit to Bogus Gold.

UPDATE: Jack Kelly suggests that another shoe is about to drop

MORE:
Andrew McCarthy: Did the CIA “Out” Valerie Plame?”
Plame was first outed to the general public as a result of a consciously loaded and slyly hypothetical piece by the journalist David Corn. Corn’s source appears to have been none other than Plame’s own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson — that same pillar of national security rectitude whose notion of discretion, upon being dispatched by the CIA for a sensitive mission to Niger, was to write a highly public op-ed about his trip in the New York Times. This isn’t news to the media; they have simply chosen not to report it.

The hypocrisy, though, only starts there. It turns out that the media believe Plame was outed long before either Novak or Corn took pen to paper. And not by an ambiguous confirmation from Rove or a nod-and-a-wink from Ambassador Hubby. No, the media think Plame was previously compromised by a disclosure from the intelligence community itself — although it may be questionable whether there was anything of her covert status left to salvage at that point, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

This CIA disclosure, moreover, is said to have been made not to Americans at large but to Fidel Castro’s anti-American regime in Cuba, whose palpable incentive would have been to “compromise[] every operation, every relationship, every network with which [Plame] had been associated in her entire career” — to borrow from the diatribe in which Wilson risibly compared his wife’s straits to the national security catastrophes wrought by Aldrich Ames and Kim Philby.

Captain Ed: LA Times Still Can’t Get Plame Facts Correct …and … Broder Can’t Read, Either

Michael Barone Our Titus Oates Wilson’s article said George W. Bush lied in his 2003 State of the Union Address when he said that British intelligence reported that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa. But Wilson’s mission covered only one country, and the British government has stood by its report.

Moreover, the report that Wilson sent the CIA said that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger in 1998, unsuccessfully; agency analysts concluded, not unreasonably, that this strengthened rather than weakened the case against Saddam

Christopher Hitchens: Rove Rage
The third bogus element in Wilson’s boastful story is the claim that Niger’s “yellowcake” uranium was never a subject of any interest to Saddam Hussein’s agents. The British intelligence report on this, which does not lack criticism of the Blair government, finds the Niger connection to be among the most credible of the assertions made about Saddam’s double-dealing. If you care to consult the Financial Times of June 28, 2004, and see the front-page report by its national security correspondent Mark Huband, you will be able to review the evidence that Niger—with whose ministers Mr. Wilson had such “good relations”— trying to deal in yellowcake with North Korea and Libya as well as Iraq and Iran. This evidence is by no means refuted or contradicted by a forged or faked Italian document saying the same thing. It was a useful axiom of the late I.F. Stone that few people are so foolish as to counterfeit a bankrupt currency.

James Lewis/American Thinker: Spy Valerie and the Rogue CIA
Valerie Plame’s CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr.

Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, “The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out.”

It was a publicity stunt from the get-go. Wilson’s “confidential trip” to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his “expose” in the Times. He’d gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson’s charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.

Astute Blogger: One of the All-Time Great Roundups of the Year

Michelle Malkin: On McCarthy’s piece
I think it’s time to contact the New York Times ombudsman, Byron Calame, and ask why we haven’t read about (the CIA OUTING PLAME) in his newspaper:

• E-mail: public@nytimes.com
• Phone: (212) 556-7652
• Address: Public Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036-3959

She suggests you ask the NY Times ombudsman about this while you’re at it. Good idea.