A question re L'affaire Plame

[pecunium]

Ok, this has been bothering me since the whole thing started.

Wilson goes to Niger. He comes back, and thinks the Administration isn't playing fair with the facts.

Someone decides he's a loose cannon and needs to be discredited.

So far it all makes sense; but the next part is where I get lost, how was outing his wife supposed to discredit what he had to say? Were we supposed to think he was incapable of rational thought because his wife might have gotten him assigned to look for info? This was, after all her baliwick... so perhaps he was to dense to see the facts, and she had to spoon feed him? Or is it that her being a covert operative in some way so thorouhgly emasculates him that we can't believe what he says?

That's the part that bothers me? What real effect was supposed to come from this revelation (other than perhaps putting some people in the White House at risk of criminal charges)? I can't see anything coming out of such a plan which would actually do the White House any good.

Maybe it was a secret ploy on Bush's part to get out from under Rove's thumb, and a brilliant plan (a la the ending of, The Sting) is coming together.

But I doubt it.

Comments

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

It's very sneaky, almost Mafia-like. They got back at Wilson by going after his wife. How cowardly is that? They're also trying to imply that it's those damned libruls conspiring together to queer the evidence of Dear Leader's Axis of Evil.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think it goes way back beyond that. The dislike of the CIA by the rough and ready westerners who hang around with Dick Cheney goes back to when it was the OSS and known derisively as "Oh So Social," because the OSS officers were mostly ivy league graduates. There's a sense that the CIA has a taint of elitism to it that rubs the conservatives who disdain the social graces wrong.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That and the fact that Analysis, (unlike Covert Ops) has always said the wet dreams of the fear-mongering right are wrong.

The Missle Gap? The CIA said it was nonsense.

Hordes of sleeper cells in the US? The CIA said it was nonsense.

Iranian moderates, whom we could bribe into power with weapons? The CIA said it was nonsense.

Iraq as a player in the Al Qaeda jihad? The CIA said it was nonsense.

So the CIA has to go, and now they want to give John "I never so much as heard of death squads" Negroponte absolute control over them.

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Interesting comment on GWB's relationship with his Dad, isn't it? Wasn't GHWB head of the CIA? Makes you wonder if Cheney is the new surrogate daddy, doling out rough-and-ready approval for his wayward boyking.

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

I think it was to destroy his wife's career and as a bonus, perhaps putting her life in danger.

It was also supposed to discredit him by showing that he and his wife both have an axe to grind with this administration, and they went looking for something to "lie" about.

Mostly, it was just more of Rove and Libby's brand of dirty revenge politics.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Right... but what axe? That's the part which has never been made clear. Unless they were trying to sabotage the CIA by implying the don't care about the truth, because they are a hotbed of Lib-symp, terrorist loving, anti-Americans ove at Foggy Bottom.

TK

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

the partisan axe. see, they hate Republicans!

[texaslawchick.livejournal.com]

Weren't they Republicans?

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

you know, I am not sure. I know they were moderates, and Cheney said they were liberal sympathizers.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

He was a Foreign Service guy... who made ambasador. His actually being sincere in that job makes him suspect to the White House (the Foreign Service is largely apolitical... they have to be to stay sane, because apart from the ambassadors they have to serve under administrations which do turn, and turn about; almost at whim), and further to be in the foreign service requires exposure to other cultures, and something akin to a classical education. None of the present adminstration is as smart as Wilson, and they know it.

She was an NOC... which means she was patriotic, but may not have been nationalist. She was also probably apolitical (and tending toward moderate). Since she was an NOC, in proliferation, she was certainly more dovish than the present White House.

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Dick Cheney doesn't like the CIA. He hasn't liked the CIA for a long time, and he distrusts the CIA. When the CIA was downplaying the evidence for the yellowcake he didn't like that, and when he found out that Wilson's wife had been influential in convincing the State Department to send Wilson to Nigeria to check things out, he took it as more evidence of a CIA plot to discredit the White House. So the "this guy's wife is a CIA officer who set things up for him to do it" is code for "this guy's a ringer for the other team, the team that's trying to make us look bad. Don't trust him."

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I realise they think that, sort of, but I don't understand why they thought this would say that to the rest of the US.

Me, I expected it to whither on the vine (and a call from Cheney's office to Ashcroft may have been the start of the coffin that Judy Miller probably nailed shut with her lame-ass explanations of her mysteriously unknown, then rediscovered (in her desk, of all places) notebook, with the quotation from an unkown source; revealing Plame's name.

Before Wilson came out with his views.

Her apparent possession of Secret clearance is another matter altogether; to say nothing of her apparent improprieties in the field.

TK

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Niger, he corrected pedantically. The country where they don't have yellowcake, rather than the country where they don't have tons of money that will fall on you if you answer the nice e-mail.

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're the target audience for discrediting Wilson.

The inferred charges were twofold

a) Nepotism and corruption. Wilson couldn't have got the job unless Plame gave him this tasty little holiday (actual details of the job would, of course, invite questions as to why the hell someone would think Niger was the ideal cushy holiday destination, but I digress)

b) Appeals to sexism. "Hah, Wilson got told what to do by his WIFE. His WIFE earns more money than him, probably. He's not a REAL MAN."

There's still a significant portion of the country for whom that kind of thing matters.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Oh, a someone who knows people like Plame (or at least knows people who used to be like Plame) and probably works/worked with Plames... I am most decidely not the target for this.

I think keelhauling is too good for outing an agent. The collateral damage (forget that she can't work anymore, and that all her contacts/sources are burned... and that on proliferation) is immense. I can guarantee that people in other countries; some of them probably innocent, are in prison, and dead, because her name was outed.

Pisses me off doesn't begin to cover my sentiments.

TK

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree with you (even as a liberal peacenik communist pacifist or whatever form of treachery I'm practicing today), but that's not quite what I meant. I meant that you're not the kind of guy for whom "his wife got him the job" is an automatic trigger for scoffing about him being a pussy-whipped, limp-wristed potentially closeted homosexual who didn't get the shit kicked out of him enough in school.

And also that you probably have the first idea about Niger and how it's not most nepotists first pick. ("hey honey, happy birthday, you get to go to Niger all by yourself and talk to people about Uranium!" "Are you still mad about those shelves? I'll put them up when I get time!")

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

But the kind of guy who's likely to be swayed by the wife got him his job argument is (to be a tad bigoted) likely to be a loyal Bush follower, being more the Kirche und Kinder sort to begin with.

I am the target audience for whom they want to discredit Wilson, so the whole play seems worse than a bungle, it seems stupid.

TK

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

Now that I don't doubt, but I think it was a case where someone made an error of judgement and let their emotions run the shop for a brief while. The first major PR error of the Bush administration, I think.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

Your "a" is close, but I'd like to put a finer point on it. Here's the chronology:

Wilson goes to Niger and discredits the yellowcake story.
Bush mentions the yellowcake story in the State of the Union several months later.
Wilson goes public and says 1) The yellowcake story is bullshit 2) They know it's bullshit because they were the ones who asked me to go.
Novak writes "they didn't know the story was bullshit because we weren't the ones who sent you."
Wilson says "who the hell sent me to Niger, then?"
Novak writes "um, your wife is involved in the relevant CIA agency. She sent you."

Wilson's wife was an explanation for why Bush didn't know about Wilson's report. It also adds hints of nepotism and sexism: decorating an excuse with unsavory overtones too unseemly to overtly mention is a Rove trademark. (Ex: McCain's black baby.)

Blowing her cover is a huge issue, but as a related issue I'd be curious whether anyone has shown that the ostensible reason for outing Plame was dead wrong. I.E. regardless of who actually sent Wilson to Niger the White House *did* get the report and *did* know that he'd discredited it before the State of the Union.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That was a typo, it was supposed to read, "as someone who knows people like Plame." It was self-referential.

TK

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I do find it sad that anyone lets Team Bush get away with implying someone else is being nepotistic.

That's sort of like the black hole calling the kettle black.

I think it is much simpler than all that

[(Anonymous)]

I think outing his wife was to set an example of what happens to people who don't tow the party line. The fact that the administration basically shot itself in the foot, is just another example of their incredible lack of foresight.

Susan in St. Paul

Re: I think it is much simpler than all that

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, at some level it does that (because all the folks who are NOC will worry about telling the truth) but at the core level, of discrediting Wilson it, so far as I can tell, fails.

TK

[mountain-spirit.livejournal.com]

are you a Niger lover?

[mountain-spirit.livejournal.com]

oh and this...

Sniper shot from the point of view of the insurgents.
Must have had plating. Seems like it was a rifle round and it didn't penetrate. This is why you wear body armor.
http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/articles/military_photos_20057170.asp

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Perhaps your use of "discredit" gets us off on the wrong foot in this enchainment. Oh, if "his wife /s/e/n/t/ /h/i/m/ suggested his name" does that, they'd be pleased, but I wouldn't be surprised if their major motivation were simply vengeance -- combined with a mafia-like warning to anyone else contemplating revealing anything that reflects unfavorably on President Bush's integrity or ability. The NeoCons seem to tolerate (grudgingly) criticism & contradiction from the left-wing politicos, but not from conservatives, moderates, or apolitical or non-aligned career-bureaucrats or journalists.

[mountain-spirit.livejournal.com]

here's another good one


http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/footage52_5.html