Friday, September 1, 2006
Not that you needed the WaPo to tell you that. You've read it everywhere by now, but I feel I'd be derelict in my duties not to echo today's long overdue Washington Post editorial on the Wilson/Plame affair. Besides, I look to look at it. I wonder if there was any screaming in the chambers of The Washington Post over this: End of an Affair
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago...
[snip boiler-plate Libby and White House made mistakes prose]
...it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
Michelle has some links.
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Leave a comment to: Yes, Joe Wilson was full of it
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I've got a really big smile on my face! This is the best news since Sen. Santorum and Rep. Hoekstra revealed that our soliders had indeed found over 500 chemical weapons in Iraq! (The unclassified report stated that these chemical weapons were still hazardous.)
Another BIG DISH OF CROW for the liberals here in the US!
The WaPo here, if they're doing much of anything beyond CYA activity, it's not at all apparent. Christopher Hitchens, in Slate:
"In the stylistic world where disclosures are gleaned and ironies underscored, the nullity of the prose obscures the fact that any irony here is only at the authors' expense." Hitchens, describing David Corn's and Michael Isikoff's use of passively "ironic" and generally nullish descriptors vis-a-vis these latest revelations.
The WaPo here is simply more understated, but given their own complicity in the flame out of "Plamegate", it's CYA activity nonetheless.
Hitchens's Slate piece.