Guardian: (Freedland) Plamegate may seem arcane, but we all have a stake..

[EuroObserver]

I think he's got it!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1600746,00.html

<snip>

Plamegate may seem arcane, but we all have a stake in the outcome

This scandal offers an opportunity not only to discredit Bush, but the entire ideology used to justify the war in Iraq

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday October 26, 2005
The Guardian

Now America has its own David Kelly affair. There is no corpse - unless you count the US troops killed in Iraq, whose number is now 2,000 - but all the other elements are in place. A complex saga, turning on the unwanted outing of a government servant; a media organisation rocked by accusations of sloppy editorial processes; and a judicial investigation zeroing in on the charge that the government cooked up the case on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It will reach its climax any moment now.

...

To lose high-ranking officials like Rove or Libby would be trouble enough, but the Republican fear is that it won't end there. Yesterday's New York Times reported that Libby was told about Plame by none other than the vice-president in June 2003. That's tricky, since Libby has testified under oath that it was journalists who first tipped him off about the CIA agent. The revelation makes a liar of Libby and perhaps Cheney too: he went on TV in September 2003 saying he didn't know Wilson or who had sent him to Niger. At the very least, there is now proof that the effort to take on Wilson went all the way to the vice-president - if not further.

So this is the story - along with a sideshow about the conduct of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who may have got just too close to her White House sources - which has Washington gripped in the scandal fever that has become a perennial feature of every presidential second term. It was Watergate for Nixon, Iran-contra for Reagan, Monica for Clinton, and now Valerie Plame for Bush.

...

It is this which makes Plamegate America's Kelly affair. For just as the Hutton process put the honesty of Tony Blair's case for war on trial, so the naming of Valerie Plame has shone a light on the way war was sold to the American public.

For the Niger story, and the determination to keep it alive, was part of a wider effort by Cheney's office, with allies in Donald Rumsfeld's defence department, to cherry-pick the intelligence that would support the case for military action against Iraq. All through the summer of 2002, Cheney put pressure on CIA analysts to come up with anything which might cast Saddam as a maniac bent on nuking the US. In speeches, Cheney presented Baghdad as an imminent, lethal danger to America. He persisted in claiming a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, even when the evidence was nonexistent. He recycled the wholly discredited claim that Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague. He and his White House Iraq Group (Whig), which included Rove and Libby, were engaged in a campaign not merely to sex up the case for war - but to make it up altogether.

</snip>

[jaysunb]

1. In a nutshell.....

:toast:

[EuroObserver]

3. What I especially like is the way he slips Dr. Kelly

(and therefore Bliar) so deftly into the equation.

"For just as the Hutton process put the honesty of Tony Blair's case for war on trial, so the naming of Valerie Plame has shone a light on the way war was sold to the American public."

So, how is the Bliar going to spin his way out of this one? The supposed 'special relationship' trumps all? He simply calculated the Brit economy (and 'new labour' financiers) would benefit from reconstruction contracts and cheap oil? Maintaining the Brit 'warrior' reputation? His 'god' told him to do it? Hey - so what - we all make mistakes?

... And, to what extent will the Kelly case now be revisited?

[Amonester]

2. Off course... Helliburton's options' 3,200 % unprecedent growth...

where so... 'tempting' for the greedy bastard at the time:

"In speeches, Cheney presented Baghdad as an imminent, lethal danger to America. He persisted in claiming a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, even when the evidence was nonexistent. He recycled the wholly discredited claim that Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi agent in Prague. He and his White House Iraq Group (Whig), which included Rove and Libby, were engaged in a campaign not merely to sex up the case for war - but to make it up altogether."

Sparing Other Humans Being's Blood Was Not An Option For That Evil Chickenhawk.