Thanks for the clarifying update. Seems like the most important investigation Congress could undertake would be of the OVP's manner of doing business.

Cheney needs to resign and face the music. If he won't go, we can help him to the door.

So when will this be reported widely in the press?  When will the House impeach the bastard?  When will the Senate remove Roberts' credentials and evict him? When will they have an impeachment of Cheney and convict him?

A serious legal question for the constitutional lawyers/scholars here:

 Can the VP be impeached without going after Bush at the same time? IOW, is it constitutional to pick off the second-highest constitutional executive officer if it can be shown that he engaged in misfeasance or malfeasance, or in fact engaged in actions that undermined the interests and security of the United States and the Constitution, which he took an oath to protect? 

Or is it a package deal? I'd rather have a non-demon-possessed VP in the chair before Bush is impeached, but I remain skeptical that we'll be able to wait two years to get rid of them both, without risking greater catastrophe.

This would obviously have to be done so that both parties acted together in the interests of the nation during such dire and ominous days.  

From Article II, sec 4: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

There is no particular protection for any government official that is either elected or appointed with Senate approval. Cheney is fair game.

As reported in today's WaPo, the OVP has grown extra-Constitutional, with increased staff and power. Such is perfect material for an important set of hearings, on whether this should be allowed.

Don't let the Democrats off the hook either. They signed off on this nonsense. They were willing to hold their nose on this matter in order to get other items out in the public arena. Dumb move I believe, but that's their excuse. Pat Roberts was despicable but he was enabled by other members of the Committee.

I pointed this out somewhere else but what the hell. I have read that as our troops were marching to Baghdad in late March...they passed by what they knew to be munitions depots. They didn't touch them because they believed (the lies) that there were probably nuclear, chemical or biological weapons among the or beneath the conventional weapons and they could be set off.

As we now know, the Iraqis had easy access to a veritable "candy store" of weaponry from the depots. So, in the end the lies of this administration have not only led to the random slaughter of thousands of innocents, thousands of our own troops lie dead or maimed for life. I think it can be said that our dead troops are among the innocent.

Targets of Opportunity

In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity.

[. . .]

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.

Karen Kwiatkowski (LtCol USAF-Ret), "The New Pentagon Papers", Salon, March 10, 2004

The LtCol illuminates a timeline showing that even before the Office of Special Plans had been officially created in the Pentagon, there was the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA), which was staffed by many of the same NeoCons that ran the OSP. Notably, Douglas Feith was in charge of both the NESA and its offshoot, OSP. The then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, needs also be considered, as he was a Senator 'Scoop' Jackson aide in the 1970s along with Doug Feith, Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams, and was a prior hijacker of the Government Intelligence Services during the Ford Presidency, in a group known as 'Team B' (Sourcewatch - RightWeb), which challenged the CIA's assessment of Soviet capabilities with greatly overestimated figures.

Back to Mr. Feith, and more current linkages: Feith's ties to Ghorbanifar, Rhodes, Franklin, Ledeen, SISMI and the Yellowcake Bellyache. Douglas Feith, the admitted Pentagon spy for AIPAC, Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode met with notable conman to the Reagancomics in the Iran/Contra debacle, Manucher Ghorbanifar in Rome, December, 2001.

For those unaware of Ghorbanifar, here is an abridged listing of Ghorbanifar's mentioning in the Walsh Iran/Contra Report:

• Part I: The Underlying Facts
• Part II: History of the Investigation
• Part III: The Operational Conspiracy: A Legal Analysis
• Part VI Investigations and Cases: Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency
• Part VIII: Officers of the Department of Defense
• Chapter 1: U.S. v. Robert C. McFarlane
• Chapter 8: The Enterprise and Its Finances
• Chapter 9: U.S. v. Richard V. Secord
• Chapter 15: William J. Casey
• Chapter 16: Robert M. Gates
• Chapter 18: U.S. v. Duane R. Clarridge
• Chapter 24: George P. Shultz, M. Charles Hill and Nicholas Platt
• Chapter 30: Donald T. Regan

Here are a few more current Ghorbanifar links, courtesy of FreeRepublic(feed the snake its own tail):

• Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much
• Ex-spy to enlist US in ousting Iran's leaders
• Iran-Contra Figure Re-emerges as Middleman for Iraq Information to U.S. Government
• CIA declined intelligence, former official says
• CIA And Pentagon Split Over Uranium Intrigue
• CIA SAID TO BE MALINGERING - CRITIC CHARGES AGENCY IS LAGGING IN
• Iran-Contra figure re-emerges as middleman for Iraq information to U.S.
• Iran-Contra figure re-emerges as middleman for Iraq information to U.S. government
• Pentagon met with discredited figure from Iran-Contra scandal

From a source many TPM Cafe members will be more comfortable with comes the story of the Feith/Rhodes/Franklin/Ghorbanifar meet:

The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a consultant.) Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians. One of the Iranians, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, was a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who claimed to have information about dissident ranks within the Iranian security services. The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington.

Alarm bells about the December 2001 meeting began going off in U.S. government channels only days after it occurred. On December 12th 2001, at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, America's newly-installed Ambassador, Mel Sembler, sat down for a private dinner with Ledeen, an old friend of his from Republican Party politics, and Martino, the Italian defense minister. The conversation quickly turned to the meeting. The problem was that this was the first that Ambassador Sembler had heard about it.

[. . .]

The meeting was a source of concern for a series of overlapping reasons. Since the late 1980s Ghorbanifar has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The Agency believes Ghorbanifar is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything to do with him. Moreover, why were mid-level Pentagon officials organizing meetings with a foreign intelligence agency behind the back of the CIA -- a clear breach of US government protocol? There was also a matter of personal chagrin for Sembler: At State Department direction, he had just been cautioning the Italians to restrain their contacts with bad-acting states like Iran (with which Italy has extensive trade ties).

According to U.S. government sources, both the State Department and the CIA eventually brought the matter to the attention of the White House -- specifically, to Condoleezza Rice's chief deputy on the National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley. Later, Italian spy chief Pollari raised the matter privately with Tenet, who himself went to Hadley in early February 2002. Goaded by Tenet, Hadley sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities. Hadley then contacted Sembler, assuring him it wouldn't happen again and to report back if it did.

The orders, however, seem to have had little effect, for a second meeting was soon underway. According to a story published this summer in Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily, this second meeting took place in Rome in June, 2002. Ghorbanifar tells The Washington Monthly that he arranged that meeting after a flurry of faxes between himself and DoD official Harold Rhode. Though he did not attend it himself, Ghorbanifar says the meeting consisted of an Egyptian, an Iraqi, and a high-level U.S. government official, whose name he declined to reveal. The first two briefed the American official about the general situation in Iraq and the Middle East, and what would happen in Iraq, "and it's happened word for word since," says Ghorbanifar. A spokesman for the NSC declined to comment on this and other meetings and referred The Washington Monthly to the Defense Department, which did not respond to repeated inquiries. Ledeen also refused to comment.

Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris, "Iran-Contra II? Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation, The Washington Monthly, September 2004

Although not a part of most major American news media coverage, the Italian Spy Chief (former) Nicolo Pollari is currently on trial in italy in their CIA renditions court case. (Salon - CNN). Italian newspaper La Repubblica ran an October, 2005 three part Niger Yellowcake Expose which identified Pollari, and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as complicit actors in the scheme. It was authored by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo, and a nice English translation is available:

1. "Berlusconi Behind Fake Yellowcake Dossier", October 23, 2005
2. "Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA", October 25, 2005
3. "Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam", October 26, 2005

A final note on Michael Ledeen, who was utterly intertwined with Iran/Contra and was the initial introducer of Ghorbanifar to the Reagan Admin, as well as the primary go-between. In a 1987 time Magazine article, Ledeen was quoted defending Ghorbanifar:

In any ordinary business, Manucher Ghorbanifar would cut an implausibly mysterious figure. Officially, he has been a shipping executive in Tehran and a commodities trader in France. By his own account he was a refugee from the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which confiscated his businesses in Iran, yet he later became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government. Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: "He is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing.

George J. Church, "The Murky World of Weapons Dealers How arms traders bartered with U.S. policy", Time Magazine, January 19, 1987

As a measure of the man, Ledeen:

(CIA Director William) Casey met with Ledeen and asked Ledeen to talk to Ghorbanifar about taking a lie-detector test at the CIA.

Footnote 59: The CIA administered a polygraph examination to Ghorbanifar on January 11, 1986. The results indicated that Ghorbanifar showed deception on 13 of 15 questions. The only two questions for which no deception was noted were his name and place of birth.

Walsh Iran/Contra Report-Chapter 15: William J. Casey

(One also needing note, but unreferenced in this, is AEI fellow, Michael Rubin, who was a member of the OSP, and Pentagon representative in the CPA)

Since Nixon was the driving force in WH usrpations it was appropriate to ignore Agnew. Cheney's a different animal.

However, we do have precedent regarding civil action while an elected official is in office, so maybe a civil-liberties suit would be a useful line of attack.

These things that you call "bullshit" obviously get under your skin, Larry.

First of all, your impression that you want to convey that the sainted folks at CIA and WINPAC were trying to convey doubt about "attempts" or actual "deals" to purchase yellow cake and that Cheney was diss'ing them and brushing them aside because he was on the warpath is ....I will use a less scatological word than yours, Ridiculous.

Remember, this whole thing started because Cheney had doubts and wanted elaboration. He is a consumer of Intelligence and the elected Vice President of the United States, and if he walks into the CIA and Alan Foley or Ray McGovern or Valerie Plame are intimidated, they can suck eggs. Alan Foley, head of WINPAC was the biggest whiner and stonewaller in the place and we all know that he was trying to slant intelligence to his own ideological purposes. So was Wilson and so was Plame. He openly admits that his connections to Bolton's people at state was a chance to spy on them and when Armitage and Powell end up covering up the Novak source is it any surprise there is a hotline between the two agencies.

Foley, thought that by conveying that Iraq hadn't actually purchased yellowcake that he could create a dead end, but when the President used the 16 words he became frustrated that his stumbling blocks that he had thrown in front of the White house had not had their intended effect, he and Wilson started crying that no one listened to them. Now That is plain Bullshit!

Every thing that was stated in the 16 words is true and your secret document bolsters that assertion by mentioning that the British through further investigations stood by their belief that "attempts" had been made to purchase. If the President or Vice President as consumers of intelligence consider it important that "attempts" to purchase are significant and they speak the truth and say so in the 16 words, then Alan Foley, WINPAC, and Wilson can shit in one hand and cry into the other and see which one fills up faster.

Foley had denied that Plame even worked for him or that he had even heard of her before Novak's article, which is a lie. Larry, your soulmate, Ray McGovern is also a partisan hack and a liar that spreads 911 type conspiracies that Bush is behind terrorist attacks like 911 to stir up fear. I suppose the Pentagon didn't actually get hit by a plane and the WTC was set off by demolition charges. With tinfoil hat nut jobs like that in the CIA, is it any wonder Cheney went over there to see what kind of acid these guys or on?

Is it my imagination or are you stretching things a bit here. You said the memo said "widely disseminated". I don't see those words. In the paragraph you mentioned that "proves" the VP was briefed on information that he disregarded, it says,

"....The DIO disseminated information--obtained independently from a sensitive source..." I imagine in the tradecraft "widely disseminated" is different than "disseminated". If I am reading from the wrong angle let me know, if not I suppose in the tradecraft what you are doing is known as disinformation.

The memo has as a recipient, "Mayfield and a not e to "pass to hannah and libby, asap". Please supply the link to the mention of Dick Cheney being debriefed with this document. If I have overlooked the information that is referenced in the byline, please help me out.

If there is any doubt about the truthfulness of the 16 words, the paragraph #6 that you note, reiterates AGAIN for the millionth time,

"...a former senior nigerian official we are confident would have known of uranium sales--also said that he believed iraq was interested in discussing yellowcake purchases when it sent a delegation to niamey in mid 1999..."

So again proof that Wilson did convey the Iraqi intentions to his debriefers and then later LIED at the time he outted himself and his wife by claiming that Bush had misrepresented his findings.

Larry, here are the Facts:

The 16 words were true from every conceivable angle.

Cheney expressed doubt and investigated further and then used Wilson's, Foley's and others information to bolster a true statement.

Alan Foley is a Liar. WINPAC was a rogue operation.

From at least the time that she wrote her book, "Germs", Judith Miller knew the personnel at WINPAC rather intimately including Foley and Plame. Andrea Mitchell did too. The DC cocktail circuit is a pretty small world especially for a showboating house husband like Wilson and his wife.

Ray McGovern is mentally unstable and has actively worked against our government from the inside. He works on behalf of NION a communist party operation.

Plame put down her address to the Front company on a campaign donation long before the Novak article. A total breech of protocol and more proof of her and her poseur husband's reckless behavior.

Plame is a liar. Wilson has been inducted into the Liar's hall of fame.

Your final paragraph, has absolutely no basis in fact.

"...But we now have a clear picture that the intelligence community was trying to tell them uncomfortable truths that Bush and Cheney did not want to hear. Just remember that as the U.S. death toll in Iraq continues to soar..."

The Intelligence community was not telling "uncomfortable truths". Whether it was intentional attempts to mislead the White House or just passive aggressive foot dragging from a weepy post 911 agency that felt under appreciated by Cheney's open house visits, one thing it was not,..it was not a wholehearted effort to carry out their obligations to provide intelligence to the White House. The same Senate report you mentioned, chastised them for that reason and characterized the Wilson Junket as a botched job unworthy of the expectations the american people have of the CIA.

Your buddy, Ray "You da man" McGovern, said the main reason for the CIA's creation can be summed up in four words, "No More Pearl Harbors". Well, under your watch and McGovern's and Foley's and Plame's, we did have another Pearl Harbor and over 3000 people died and now in war another 3000. Your attempts to rewrite history to make your buddies look good is projection. It is said that Bush went to war to make his father look good or his oil buddies that live in a bat cave in a basement below the west wing.

It would be much easier to argue that your constant efforts to hide the facts and misrepresent the actions of the white house is an effort on your part to deflect the fact that your buddies failed to avoid the four word charter, "No more Pearl Harbors".

When the Truth of that is too hard to face, I could see why a fantasy would make a tempting refuge for your gang.

I think there is a name for your refuge, ..."BULLSHIT!"

Beg to differ, but the Consumer-in-Chief for intel was in charge and uninterested in preventing new Pearl Harbors. Live with it.

The most obvious difference in the Agnew/Cheney comparison is that the former VP was guilty of criminal activity that began before he became VP. I wasn't aware that he was still receiving the graft and "High Quality Groceries" (LOL) while VP, though. 
The difference between that and Cheney is that the current VP hasn't been named in any independent criminal action from, say, when he headed Haliburton. 
Wouldn't that mean that someone in Congress is going to have to grow a pair to be willing to take him on directly now, as a sitting VP FOR HIS ACTIONS AS VP, especially since everyone's been so loathe to talk about that. I realize the GOP's shameful hounding of Clinton debased the whole impeachment process, but still... What the hell is it going to take? 
But in any case, should it become necessary, the path to Bush is through Cheney. And they know it. 

I guess you're loose screws have finally come out.  You seem unhinged tonight.

Tom

Jan, You and I have covered this ground before. Please tell me when Bush said that the 16 words were false. If the best you can do is say that tenet said it should have been removed, that's not the same as the WH saying its not true. In Tenet's so called falling sword statement, he said the 16 words were factually correct, but the process within CIA by which the intelligence made its way to the SOTU was not to the standards he would have liked. Considering his agency was running amok, is it any wonder he didn't say he had wished he hadn't gotten out of bed that morning?

Tenet did not say the 16 words were false. He said they were correct, so if your favorite MSM talking head told you thats what it meant, pick a more reliable news outlet or read the document yourself.

The other ground we have covered is the Powell statement, which is also not a reliable statement of the factual nature of the 16 words.

The White House has never said the words are not true. If you find a janitor at the White House that says so, that still doesn't change the fact that the words are true.

That makes Wilson a liar. It makes Bush's statement true. It makes the entire affair a simple partisan hit job on a President that was cooked up before the war even started. Larry continues to try to dress up this pig and trot it out on the dance floor.

Finally if you knew the factual answer I would respond with to your illogical post, then why even post it?

No one has yet responded with the answer to the question....The Byline of Larry's Article is that Cheney was briefed. If the information is there,...please help me find it. I want to know if the entire basis of his article is true or false.

So then, why did the OVP go to battle stations immediately following Wilson's NYT Op-Ed (and after Kristof's earlier column)?

Why not simply say the Niger story had no relation to the "16 words" in the SOTUS? 

Probably it happened during one of those periods you were an inpatient at your local emergency psychiatric facility.

If the 16 words were true, what is the "error" for which George Tenet took the blame? 

Really, we can only do so much to keep you informed and oriented toward reality.  It gets tiresome. 

Unlike you, I have an analog life (sometimes).  I only have so much time to post here.  I do not try to verify all my news with primary documents examined in PDF form.  Sometimes I just believe reliable sources.  Between just believing you and just believing Larry, the choice is easy.

How can I explain the "Error" that your author is attributing to Tenet when it didn't come from Tenet's words. As I just said, Read the text of Tenets "Falling on sword" statement that Jan is refering to and he clearly states that the 16 words were true. I also said if your favorite talking Head, Emily Barucas has misstated Tenet's words, go read for yourself and get a new source. Your trusted source Larry has not helped us prove the veracity of this article either.

You have already stated you don't check things like that out, you just go on a hunch and then call people names. If you can't back up your information with facts, there is no need to tire yourself by keeping me informed. Worthless information is not something I need to be informed on.

Wilson assumed 1) that the "16 words" were a reference to the claims set forth by the Italians (the Niger yellow-cake story) and 2) that those claims were being attributed to the British in order to allow the Administration to have a defense/deniability if the claims were proved wrong as the Administration knew they would be, eventually -- Oh Perfidious Albion!

Wilson knew that the Administration had never had much confidence in the capabilities of the CIA. Why, then, he asked himself would it base anything on MI6's assessment capabilities of which it knew much, much less -- and more so why when the Brits weren't willing to make the USG privy to their raw data? Or to ask it differently why would the SOTUS emphasize the Brits recent discovery of which the USG knew nothing and not mention the Italian story which it had investigated? What sense would that make?

As a partisan Wilson wanted to get the Niger facts on the table and force the Administration to say what its position was really based on -- the British claims or the Italian ones -- that is, fish or cut bait.

Didn't Wilson come to the most logical conclusion -- that is, that the "16 words" were really a backdoor reference to the Niger story?

God bless you Larry.

Repetition  does not tranform a lie into a truth. FDR

I've got to say, TJ, that your post here sure looks like a clear case of the tin calling the foil hat. 

Neoboho

But let's get back to the "16 words" -- not that we haven't been there enough times over the past four years.

I remember Bush's slow, quiet meaningful delivery of the sentence, eyebrow raised rhetorically and I recall physically, as well, as if it were yesterday.

And I thought to myself at the time "Why is he attributing this important intelligence finding to the Brits? Oh, of course, we've checked it out and found it to be true. He's simply giving credit where credit is due."

What I don't recall is our media ever asking the White House post-SOTUS whether our intelligence agencies agreed that the Brits' report was true.

Wouldn't that have been the obvious question to have asked?

If your blind trust in Fitz has no limits, then why if his argument is ironclad did he not charge Libby or anyone else with violating the IIPA. Maybe because you and he can cast around falsehoods all day, but in court they usually have to be backed up.

If Fitz asserted that Ms. Plame's status was classified then why no indictment?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2305-2005Jan11?language=printer

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act requires more than that. Here are links from two years ago that Victoria Toensing and Bruce Sanford addressed these specifics . Briefly, in addition to having classified status a "covert" agent must have served outside the United States within the previous five years; the US must be taking active steps to conceal the agent's identity; and the discloser must be aware of the agent's status.

Mr. Fitzgerald's 2004 affidavit had a famous footnote:
“…To date, we have no direct evidence that Libby knew or believed that Wilson's wife was engaged in covert work…”

I will not go through all of the examples of the CIA not taking care to keep her status concealed or for that matter Wilson and Plame and their recklessness. You think her including Brewster on her campaign donation is a great idea, but as I have said, it is against CIA policy, why? Obvious. What if the FEC or anyone else wants to track where the donation came from and finds out that Brewster has no storefront or reliable proof of existence? They make it simple, just don’t put it on there. Use the front when necessary only.

Wilson did blabber her name to others and in fact introduced her as his wife to Pincus months before his OP-ED. Pincus is not a cub reporter. The most obvious failure of CIA’s WINPAC and Plame to keep her status secret is they included her and her family in a mission, without a confidentiality agreement and they did nothing to alert Wilson of his recklessness during the months and months of publicly criticizing the the most public man on earth based on his secret mission. It is common sense that the media will investigate every aspect of the story including who sent him and why. They were not being careful to conceal her identity, especially for the fact that several reporters already knew she worked at the CIA.

Regarding the aspect of the IIPA regarding Libby or anyone else knowing her covert status, aside from Libby or anyone else knowing what department she worked at, why don’t you tell me who revealed her covert status. Her working at WINPAC did not require her to be covert. Who revealed that?

Why do you think Judith Miller went to Jail for 3 months? Why do you think last week she risked being in contempt again and going back to Jail? Judith Miller knew everybody at WINPAC as far back as 2001 when she wrote her book “Germs” when she received her security clearance (which requires her to not divulge classified information) and practically lived at WINPAC. That’s why the flurry of activity last week and the sidebars that resulted in her admission that she could not say with certainty that Libby was the person that made her aware of Valerie Plame, because she already knew. If she claims it was not Libby, it conflicts with her GJ testimony, If she claims it is Libby, the Defense threatens to expose that she has violated the law through her security clearance because she becomes the outter. Several other Reporters such as Andrea Mitchell admitted that EVERYBODY knew. She shared that with Russert, David Gregory, and the whole NBC team, which is why Gregory and the NBC team has been caught in so many lies over the matter. They knew.

Your trust that the French have our best interest at heart is laughable. Are you not even aware of all of the subterfuge from the French because of their receiving Saddam’s bribes? Regardless, the official stance of the French has been and is now, that the 16 words were true and that Iraq sought Yellowcake.

You seem to want to confuse the veracity of Italian documents with the truth of the 16 words and the false accusations that Wilson made. It might confuse you, but no rational person is falling for it.

Your logic arguing that the 16 words are false because as you assert that they were based in part on the forged documents doesn’t hold up even if that were true. The 16 words were based on a number of different corroborating sources of Intel, the reliability was borne out in the fact that the assessment was true. You still have not disproven that.

What does it matter who initiated the assertion that attempts to acquire Yellowcake was significant? The CIA showed it to VP, he asked for elaboration, they decided to put it in a speech. Alan Foley discussed it himself with the WH and when they arrived at the final 16 words, Foley signed off on it. That’s Foleys testimony before the Senate committee. Tenet, was accepting responsibility for Foley’s political hit job and a botched junket to Niger that overlooked important information. Roberts was chastising Clinton appointee Tenet, for failing to keep his keystone cops at their desks and doing their jobs instead of commandeering the intelligence apparatus of our government for their own political purposes at a time of threatened National security. Roberts should have told Tenet to personally go down to Foley’s office and stick his but up his ass.

What is your point about Yellowcake? No one said the powder can be poured into a bottle rocket and blow up the world. It can be enriched, converted to Uranium hexaflouride which can be used in weapons. Is this the “Saddam never meant any harm” argument? He was a madman in search of nukes, when he was under UN sanctions to disarm. He was in breach in million different ways.

You still haven’t proven that the 16 words were false. The fact is Wilson lied for political reasons. His willing allies in the media slammed the President with lies and you liked it, but in the end, Wilson’s attack was based on lies.

This garbage about they had the "temerity to speak the truth" might not be so laughable if they weren't drowning in their own bald faced lies.

Wilson?
Truth to Power? No, Lies from an off the shelf rogue operation that comandeered the people's Intelligence agency.

As I stated above, it was Alan Foley, the one who sent Wilson and Plames boss that signed off on the "British" angle. Why? who knows. Was Foley hoping to deflect attention from his own attempt to do a political hit job on the white house? Was it Foley's CYA? Was he honestly confirming that the 16 words were true which he today states openly? Who knows?

Again, as of the week of the OPED, Tenet asserts that Iraq had sought yellowcake and that the 16 words are true, regardless of the different sources of origin. Wilson's assertion was that it was not true. Wilson was wrong.

Somehow, even though he was wrong in your view, Wilson was right in the general sense that there was no nuclear activity to act on, as was El Baradei, as was Blix, as were Kay and Duelfer.

So the only hope for preserving the honor of this administration is to preserve the illusion that the intel was wrong. On that it depends, of course, at what level one takes the intel. Raw unvetted is a bad practice for known reasons, but the final product is also compromised when the folks in charge make it clear what answer is wanted.

This is the source of the continuing controversy over Iraq intelligence. There are a number of public-version assessments that gloss over the doubts and outright disssents from the CIA troops, and we only have unattributed sources countering those. However, since the anonymous sources like those talking to Hersh were proved right and the public intel was proved wrong, I think we should assess the public versions as corrupt.

And whether or not it was criminal, it was a bad move to out Plame. Doing so launched the current trial, made the WH look nervous and vindictive, and was after the fact of war, anyway. Libby may deserve a not guilty verdict on the particular charge, although it's pretty hard to credit his conveniently poor memory. In any case, the facts that matter are 1) no WMD, and 2) somebody spilled the beans on Plame.

We'll leave the first as too excruciatingly embarrassing but the second is a situation where if the WH staff didn't know if a CIA employee was covert they should have asked. If not criminal it is really bad security practice and the lot should have been fired, including Cheney. They certainly do not deserve security clearances.

Not sure I can dent your belief system but maybe you'll agree somebody screwed up.

I'm sure you've said it elsewhere and I missed it (my bad), but could you please quote -- from the words in Wilson's NYT Op-Ed piece because it's that publication which caused the WH and the OVP to go to war on Wilson -- exactly what language you're relying upon in forming your conclusion that Wilson lied?

I believe you are engaged in dissembling, the same problem that we have with Darth Cheney.   Dissembling does not necessarily involve outright lying.  Instead true statements are used in such misleading ways as to amount to lies. 

"The British have discovered..." becomes true, not because even Darth believed the remainder of the sentence is true, but because the truth rests on what the British have discovered. 

It is that same as someone who reads this page and notes my assessment of your mental condition "discovers that TJKING is insane."  That would be true.  However, as much as I suspect that you are a paranoid, I have no medical qualifications to determine it. 

Strike that part that involves the words "discovers that" and it is clearly false.  Anyone who uses the two phrases equivocally is dissembling, which is a form of lying.  So would you stop defending Bush and Cheney's lies on the grounds they were merely dissembling?

I'll tip my foil hat to that ... Watching paint dry is more productive.

~OGD~

ps: In case anyone has gotten totally distracted, this is what this thread is about: Dick Cheney was Briefed by CIA on Niger

Sorry, your lame attempt at logic doesn't hold up. If what the british discovered is factual, they discovered it. If it is alleged, then they believed they discovered or they discovered "what they suspect to be". What they found was factual and remains so.

"Scientist discovers sun spots". Are they in fact real, and do they remain so, yes.

"Alchemist discovers lead based gold process" No, he believes he did or what he suspects is. When in fact it has not been proven.

The British had before and then after empaneled commission after commision, including the Butler Report. All of them, (even the French agree) that the attempts to purchase Yellowcake referred to by Wilson, the Nigerian PM, The British, and George Bush, did in fact happen. Furthermore, the statement referring to the now proven factual british intel is true no matter how you look at it and is not as you assert, lying by use of factual statements. It is not dissembling. What you are attempting now would be considered a less skillful version of deception than dissembling.

Either lies or delusional. No one, not even Bush or Cheney would defend this view today.

Please, King, take your Meds.

"... Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?.."

The main lie is the premise of the whole OP ED that the WH took his report and lied about it. Thats either a narcissistic delusion of grandeur or an attempt to damage the President with false statements, but the entire premise of his piece is a lie.

One of the problems of hiding behind his mom’s skirt, by leaking to Kristof is when he lies to a reporter, he can later deny that he said he was sent by Cheney or “at the behest” of the VP.

Kristof 6/13/2003:

“…Condoleezza Rice was asked on "Meet the Press" on Sunday about a column of mine from May 6 regarding President Bush's reliance on forged documents to claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. That was not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that had already been flatly discredited by an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney…”

Behest: - "an authoritative order : COMMAND;2 : an urgent prompting"

Wilson has tried to blame Kristof and several other reporters that he did not tell them that he had “debunked” the forged documents, which is what Kristof wrote in May after the breakfast with Valerie Plame and Wilson. He later tells the Senate “under oath” that he may have misspoken:

“…Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents….”

Which is it? Has Kristof told a vicious lie about your claims or did you make a whoopsie?

It should be noted also that Tenet just days after the OPED pointed out that if he had viewed or debunked the forged documents at the time of his CIA debriefing, he should have said so, but did not.

You offered, as a citation to my challenging your allegations about Plame's covert status, an op/ed piece co authored by Victoria Toesing, who along with her husband, Joseph DiGenova, were both RNC/Bush contributor members of Bush's transition team, and who were both commonly seen talking heads speaking out against the travesty of Clinton lying about a BJ, and how it rose to the level of an impeachable offense. In the article you cited, Toesing identifies herself as an author of the relevant US Code in the Plame disclosure investigation, and then goes on to claim that the statute's intent is not what is meant by its text. Is this an admission of incompetence by Toesing? Again, I point out that the "cocktail circuit" slur is telling, since even this political hack could only go as far as repeating unproven hearsay when she wrote it:

"If it were known on the Washington cocktail circuit, as has been alleged, that Wilson's wife is with the agency..."

Then you ask me if I am the comedian? Why was my post too derisive a response?

The op/ed itself is less than persuasive. It claimed that the statute was being wrongfully applied, because it was not intended as a means to target journalists, which is deceptive, because journalist were not targeted by the statute itself. If they refused to answer Grand Jury questions regarding their source(s) for acquiring the classified information, they were held to be in contempt. It is instead the non-enacted at Federal level journalist shield from prosecution for refusing to divulge confidential sources, not US Code, Title 50; Chapter 15; Subchapter IV. Why the conflation. All Miller would have had to do in order to avoid jail time was to roll-over on Scooter to the prosecutor. I do not like jailing journalists for not divulging confidential sources, but my distaste for it is absolute, without qualifiers under "National Security" predicates. This is not what Toesing wrote. Instead, she mused:

"Federal courts have stated that a reporter should not be subpoenaed when the testimony sought is remote from criminal conduct or when there is no compelling 'government interest,' i.e., no crime."

The she proceeds to imply that a journalist held in contempt for not responding to Grand Jury questions is being prosecuted under the aforementioned statute:

"When the act was passed, Congress had no intention of prosecuting a reporter who wanted to expose wrongdoing and, in the process, once or twice published the name of a covert agent. Novak is safe from indictment."

"At the threshold, the agent must truly be covert. Her status as undercover must be classified, and she must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years. This requirement does not mean jetting to Berlin or Taipei for a week's work. It means permanent assignment in a foreign country."

Compare that to the statute's definition of covert. US Code, Title 50; Chapter 15; Subchapter IV; Section 426. Definitions; 4(A) i and ii states:

(4) The term "covert agent" means - (A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency - (i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and (ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States

There is no minimum time duration for foreign service mentioned, which would be necessary to prove the legislative intent, since it would exclude all Intelligence resources which operated under a cover of analyst/consultant from the definition. then Toesing alleges that the US government was not taking affirmative steps to keep Plame's CIA employment covert, which is an essential element to the Statute's violation. The US must be "taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States" under it. Plame received W-2s that stated she was employed by Brewster-Jennings & Associates {*}. Is that not an affirmative action? There was grounds for the Fitzgerald investigation. even though a indictment and conviction would be unlikely because of the statute's codified standard of intent along with disclosure before it had been violated. This is why Libby was not charged under the statute, but he lied to Federal Investigators, which is a crime under a totally different section of US Code: United States Code; Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure; Part I - Crimes; Chapter 47 - Fraud and False Statements

My, my how the relativist right squirms when the worm has turned, and instead of a lie about a BJ in a frivolous civil suit, it is a lie in an investigation into a National Security leak. Suddenly, it becomes...you know..one of those Martha Stewarty kind of insignificant things:

Sen. Hutchison: Tim, you know, I think we have to remember something here. An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty. And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.

I think we should be very careful here, especially as we are dealing with something very public and people's lives in the public arena. I do not think we should prejudge. I think it is unfair to drag people through the newspapers week after week after week, and let's just see what the charges are. Let's tone down the rhetoric and let's make sure that if there are indictments that we don't prejudge.

Mr. Russert: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.

Sen. Hutchison: Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. And I'm not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process--and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), MSNBC's Meet the Press, October 23, 2005

Folks...

refer: this comment....

~OGD~