That's Quite Enough Bogus Outrage
I'm getting sick of the latest spin on the Valerie Plame Wilson story. There's plenty of substance here to chew on, why do so many reporters and pundits choose to focus solely on a non-issue: That the President would be more concerned with leaks that were harmful to him than with leaks that were in his interest?
Does anyone seriously believe there's been even one Presidential Administration in the history of this country that hasn't at some point or other orchestrated the release of information for political purposes? Or that Presidents who get very frustrated when information that paints them in a bad light is leaked to the press nevertheless are perfectly happy when the leak works to their advantage?
It's politics, and it's part of the way the game is played.
Now, as to whether those leaks were legal, or whether the President really does have unitary power to, on a whim, declassify information, and also whether even if he does, it would have been right of him if he had chosen to revoke (without notice) the classified status of an undercover CIA agent, that's still an open issue.
And if you want to get outraged over THAT, be my guest. But to act as though there's something shocking that the President might not be as opposed to favorable leaks as he is to unfavorable ones, that's just smoke and mirrors. Enough already. It's a non-story.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 4/08/2006 09:13:00 PM
2 Comments:
"Opposed and unhappy" is one thing, but threatening to jail the leakers when the leak is unfavorable and keeping mum when he orchestrated it himself is quite another. (Did he do that? I'm good at making accusations and bad at backing them up.)
Friday, April 14, 2006 10:21:00 AM
I agree this doesn't make the President look good. Very little that he does makes him look good.
For example, have you seen the recent articles on the "Mobile Bio-Weapons Labs" that Saddam supposedly had at least 7 of and that we had supposedly captured at least 2 of?
The experts who actually examined them in Iraq said they weren't bio-weapons labs. The "experts" back in the White House and the Pentagon (who never examined them directly) disagreed.
And the Administration touted (for over a year afterwards) these labs as a success in the war and justification of WMD claims.
The Administration response is that there wasn't a consensus. The key thing is (and thanks to Countdown with Keith Olberman for pointing this out), even if you accept this argument, that they honestly didn't know which report to believe, the BEST possible spin you can put on the Administrations defense is that it amounts to cherry picking the intelligence, something they've vehemently denied ever doing.
So, they lied or they cherry picked. Either way, they have been caught with their pants down.
Oh, and as to whether he orchestrated the leak or not, it appears they were very careful not to have him explicitly talk about the identity of Valerie Plame. The claim now (in contrast to what they had previously said) is that the President exercised his magical "de-classification" powers and POOF, the information was no longer classified and therefore it wasn't a "leak" but "providing important information to the public".
The interesting part of THAT story is that even if it happened exactly as they say (and not about two weeks later, as they previously claimed), the parts of the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) that he declassified were only the parts that supported Administration claims about aluminum tubes and uranium from niger, not the volumes of intelligence estimates that said neither story was likely true.
So again, at BEST, the President engaged in an instantaneous declassification of dubious validity (even if it is technically legal) of cherry picked sections of the intelligence designed to give the impression that there was universal support for their decisions in the intelligence community, instead of (as becomes increasingly clear) wide ranges of skepticism of some of the claims which have turned out to be the most bogus. Oh, and in the process, destroyed a CIA agents career and quite possibly hampered other on-going CIA investigations which were compromised by the outing.
My point of this post was not to give the Administration a pass for its behavior, not at all. It was just that a number of left-wing commentators are expressing outrage that the President might be more upset about unfavorable leaks than favorable ones, and it seemed a bit disingenuous to me.
I dislike it when any side of an argument resorts to bogus arguments targeted more at the emotions than the logic. There's plenty of valid stuff to be annoyed at and afraid of in this Administration, like the very real chance that in the next year or so, with almost no military resources to spare at present, we may be starting World War III by deploying nuclear weaponry on up to 17 identified targets in Iran.
And the fact that the Administration is still touting the line that a couple of good strikes against the Iranian government and the people will rise up and overthrow them, which apparently means that the Administration has not learned that we will rarely if ever be greated with hugs and flowers as liberators after bombing someone's home country.
I'm really tempted to write a long screed about the latest catch phrase "the war against religious extremism", because all the while we're attacking extremist theocracies of other religions, our leadership is trying to bring us ever closer to some sort of evil hybrid fascist theocracy here. But somehow, religious people who are ever so happy to talk about someone ELSES extremist fundamentalism get a mite touchy when you point out their own. Spec in the other guy's eye, log in your own, but I've said it many times, most of the so-called Christians these days follow so little of the teachings of Christ (whose name is actually IN the name of their religion, for heavens sake) that they really have no business claiming the name.
But that's enough blathering for today, I have to get back to working.
Liam.
Friday, April 14, 2006 11:33:00 AM
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