Please explain the WHIGer thing for us dolts.

[devilgrrl]

Okay, I'm the dolt, just explain it for me.

:yoiks:

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. the people who brought you

the faked papers and yellow cake uranium have engaged, so it seems, in a criminal conspiracy... which could lead to charges including contempt of congress.

I think this is the shortest executive summary ever

[devilgrrl]

2. But why WHIGer?

I need to be edmunicatorated.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. White House Irag Group

[OKDem08]

4. del

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. you welcome andn only those who don't ask questions

don't learn.. ,kind off like goerge

[McKenzie]

5. link for ya...

and if you ask a question you are not a dolt...dolts don't ask questions in my experience.

http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000116.php

[Trajan]

6. Think of the White House wing of the OSP ....

Or .... The PNAC meets the Oval Office ....

Or .... Vicious, Treasonous, Lying, Warmongering Blood Sucking Conservatives steal the White House and commit criminal acts with impunity and without scrutiny by a compliant press and with the ignorant assent of masses of normally astute US citizens ....

Ok .. the 'normally astute' was a stretch .....

[Greeby]

7. WHIG = White House Iraq Group

Set up in mid-2002 for the sole purpose of catapulting the propaganda, presumably they got all their information from the Office of Special Plans (OSP), Rummy's own Pentagon-based intel agency

[Trajan]

12. Or Vice Versa ....

Which is the cart and which is the horse ? ...

One might wonder which element created the lies, but there is no doubt who generated policy ... nor who held the greater power ....

The Office Of The President Of The United States Of America formulates policy .... THEY are the stinking, reeking horse ....

[grytpype]

8. You're not a dolt...

The WHIG, White House Iraq Group, was a task force formed at the highest level of the Bush Administration to push for the war, part of their job was to sell it to the public and get public opinion in favor of the war.

The WHIG members were Scooter Libby, Karl Turdblossom Rove, Lyin' Leezie Rice, Karen Hughes, Stephen J. Hadley, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, and Nicholas E. Calio.

Limiting the discussion to the Plame case, it has been speculated that when news of Wilson's trip to Niger started popping up in the media, this alarmed them because it threatened the case for war (specifically that Saddam was trying to make a nuclear bomb). So they resolved as a group to smear Wilson by any means necessary, including by planting media stories that Wilson's CIA-employee wife put him up for the job as a boondoggle.

Certain WHIG members, Scooter and Turdblossom at least, went out to carry out goal of the conspiracy by talking to reporters and trying to plant the story.

This has lead to some speculation that in addition to Scooter and Turdblossom, other WHIG members, maybe the entire WHIG group, may be indicted for criminal conspiracy. IAAL and I think it is quite possible. Scooter's "copious" notes of WHIG meetings were of great interest to Fitzgerald.

[OKDem08]

14. So is the implication that they (WHIG) generated & planted the

Nigerian forged documents, using Wilson & thinking he would come to the conclusion they desired?
That begs the question - didn't they know outing a CIA agt was a crime? If yes, then WHY would they do that only for revenge? I read that Karl R was pissed and called VP 'fair game' following publication of Wilson's article.

[grytpype]

15. I dunno about the Niger forgeries.

Some have speculated that the WHIG was behind the Niger forgeries. I don't know. They did try to use them, of course, but I don't know that they were behind the forgeries themselves. I've always assumed it was some lowlife who figured he could make some money forging the documents and selling them to intelligence officials.

Did they know outing a CIA agent was crime?

That leads in a couple of directions, one is that they didn't necessarily know she was covert. The only public information I know of that would or should have tipped them off is the Ford Memo, which is probably where they got the (false) info that Plame put Wilson up for the Niger trip, had that paragraph marked S/NF, for secret / non-foreign (i.e. don't share with foreigners at all). But since Fitz is apparently working from the Espionage Act, which is broader than the Intel Identities Protection Act, it may not matter if they knew or not. At a minimum they were incredibly careless to say Plame worked for the CIA without checking into whether she was covert.

Another possibility is that they never cared about whether they were committing crimes because they thought they would never be caught or prosecuted.

Was it for revenge? There sure is a pattern in the Bush admin of viciously attacking anyone who goes off-message, whistleblowers especially. But I think the main motive was to discredit him so people would continue to belive the party line that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

[suffragette]

10. Here's some info from wikipedia

The White House Iraq Group (aka, White House Information Group or WHIG) was the marketing arm of the White House whose purpose was to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq (ie. the Iraq war) to the public. The task force was set up in August 2002 by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and chaired by Karl Rove to coordinate all the executive branch elements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. One example of the WHIG's functions and influence is the "escalation of rhetoric about the danger that Iraq posed to the US, including the introduction of the term 'mushroom cloud.'"


The members of the White House Iraq Group are:
Karl Rove
Karen Hughes
Mary Matalin
James R. Wilkinson
Nicholas E. Calio
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby

More info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Iraq_Group

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Wow made it to WIKI? I am impressed

[Trajan]

13. Heck .. everything makes it to Wikipedia ....

My son was looking up 'first person shooting games' there ...

They had them all .. in great detail ....

[w13rd0]

16. Notice who isn't on that list...

...Collin Powell and Andrew Card...

Maybe there's some truth to those rumors...