Da Plame! Da Plame!

Although I have many thoughts about political issues, I don't really consider this a political blog. But for some reason I've had politics on my mind this week. There has certainly been a lot of fodder out there to chew on including the legalization of gay marriage in Canada and the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice in the U.S. I'll definitely have something to say about these things, but tonight I want to address L'Affaire Rove.

Given my political leanings, my take on this situation might surprise you - I think this is really a misguided, red meat issue for Democrats. More specifically, I think this really is causing them to take their eye off the ball because this whole story is just burying the lead that the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence (at the very least) to drum up support for their war. Don't get me wrong - I think that the investigation should go on, and if a crime was committed, the perpetrators should pay. Revealing a covert CIA agent's identity is tantamount to treason. I think that even if the outing of a covert CIA agent happened "inadvertently", as Rove's defenders claim, he should be fired for incompetence. And I think the way the White House has reacted to this whole situation is absolutely ridiculous. Two years ago they had no problem denying Karl Rove's involvement in the leak, and asserting that anybody involved in the leak would lose their job "at a minimum", as can be read Here. But now that the Matt Cooper revelations are public, they don't want to make any comments while the criminal investigation is going on. (Read Here.) The problem is that the investigation was going on at the time of the initial White House denials as well. The Republicans and their media whores have been coming forward with every lame defense like, "He never actually mentioned her (Valerie Plame's) name."

But let's not forget what precipitated all this. Joe Wilson was sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate if Iraq sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from that African nation and verify a document obtained by British intelligence. Wilson came back and reported that didn't feel there was enough evidence on that lead. In subsequent months, the original document was found to be a forgery, and the CIA determined that there was no evidence to support the claim. At the next State of the Union address in 2003, President Bush uttered the now infamous sixteen words, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," despite the objections of CIA Director George Tenet. Then in July of that year, Joe Wilson wrote his Op Ed piece in the New York Times in which he talked about his trip to Niger, and in which he asked, "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?" And then days later, his wife's identity was Outed by Robert Novak.

Even if you believe all the Right Wing spin that Wilson was lying or playing politics, or that it was his wife who suggested him for the trip, that does not excuse the revealing of her identity. However, I don't belive a word of it. A clear pattern has developed in which if you voice dissent against the current President and administration, you will be smeared. It happened to Richard Clarke. It happened to Paul O'Neill. It happened to Joe Wilson, and his wife and potentially many of her associates were collateral damage. So the scandal around the leak of Plame's identity basically buried the question of Bush's manipulation of intelligence to promote a war. And now that Karl Rove has been associated with the scandal, all discussion of the Downing Street Memo has dissipated. Things that make you go Hmmmmmmmmm.

Finally, I want to add a word about the other intriguing figure in all of this, Judith Miller. I believe that if any journalist is jailed for withholding the identity of a source, there must be a serious crime being investigated. I absolutely believe that journalists should be shielded from the threat of jail except in extreme circumstances. Judith Miller should not be in jail for not revealing her sources. Judith Miller should be in jail for impersonating a serious journalist. She is chiefly responsible for the press being on board with Bush for the war with her Irresponsible reporting on WMD in the New York Times. It's very ironic that she's now serving time for protecting the administration lowlife who outed Valerie Plame as a way to discredit a man who questioned their justification for attacking Iraq. She's doing her part for the war all over again.