Is Armitage falling on his sword

[leftofthedial]

taking a bullet for the other PNAC neocons in the bush cabal

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. Yes.

a patsy, a rube, a scapegoat.


and a sucker to boot. He should have spilled the beans and become an american hero, but no... he's taking the fall instead. idiot.

[leftofthedial]

10. shades of William J Casey?

during Iran Contra, the bush cabal's last go-round with treason, perhaps

[InkAddict]

14. No, it's NOT a (brain) tumor said ANOLD (Kindergarten Cop)?

Repuke theory holds that it's always helpful to blame the dead guy, so maybe Rickie got a terminal Republican diagnosis. Course, they never, ever apologize or make reparations for the harm they cause!

[leftofthedial]

29. pick a fall guy

then suicide him


although he's acting like a naughty doddering old harmless uncle--oops! did I really just fart at the dinner table? Silly me!

[zbdent]

21. In Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", an "investigator" said

that "almost any death could be attributed to heart failure" - including decapitation ...

So, if you see Armitage suddenly and out of the Enron blue drop dead of "heart failure" ... keep that in mind ...

(I think it was "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" ...)

[EFerrari]

2. Most likely being thrown on his sword, with the promise of a nice

corporate gig.

[Subdivisions]

3. Yep eom

[tiptoe]

5. with the promise of...a pardon? nt

[EFerrari]

6. And he's one of the more sensible ones.

:shrug:

[leftofthedial]

11. george the first pardoned pretty much all the traitors

before he was removed

[Swamp Rat]

4. Maybe he'll get his own radio show like Ollie North

or G. Gordon Liddy.

[EFerrari]

7. "Felon Radio"

Get to work, we need a graphic!

lol

[Swamp Rat]

8. I know...

:D

I just posted a new one as a reply to your post on another thread. ;)

[EFerrari]

9. Thank you, Swamp Rat. You're always ahead of me.

:hi:

[Olney Blue]

22. Can we see it here too?

[EFerrari]

25. Here at this link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1995466&mesg_id=1995635

[Rocinante]

12. His family will be taken care of.*

*Maybe

[LibDemAlways]

13. Armitage probably had about as much choice as

the guy in The Godfather who had it explained to him that his signature or his brains would be on the paper. I would expect nothing less from the Bush Crime Family.

[Garbo 2004]

15. No. It's the contrary IMO, he's turning it back on the White House cabal.

So far Armitage has said nothing for public attribution on the matter. He apparently refused comment on the Newsweek article. (I suspect however that at least some of those who that were in a position to give out such detailed info did not chat with Isi and Corn without Armitage's knowledge and perhaps even consent.) We might not hear anything directly or publicly from Armitage while Libby's case is still pending.

While some here apparently think these revelations seem to let Cheney/Libby/Rove et. al. off the hook, IMO it only does that if you're thinking the way they want you to think. It only helps them if you accept the strategy of Libby's defense of trying to shift focus to others (like Powell and Armitage) and away from the coordinated, orchestrated leaking he and Rove were engaged in, their purpose in doing so, and then their subsequent lying about it for years to investigators and the grand jury.

Libby wasn't throwing suspicion at Armitage in one of his motions because they're buddies. Apparently there was no love lost between Armitage and the Cheney cabal. None of these "revelations" absolves Libby and the cabal of anything.

I'd be inclined to suspect that State Dept officials cooperated with Isikoff and Corn in part to defuse and undercut Libby's defense in regards to State/Armitage and to put the onus of the orchestrated campaign of leaks against Wilson and his wife fully on Libby's (Cheney's?) shoulders. Also recall State's INR had said the Niger yellowcake story was bogus long before Joe Wilson was sent to Niger. I imagine the book may have more info from them regarding how the cabal cherry picked and fabricated intel to provide an excuse for attacking Iraq. It's face saving time for Powell's State Dept allies and one suspects also a bit of payback against what Wilkerson calls "the cabal."

Also, IIRC, Fitz apparently referred to Novak's first source as the "innocent accused." Reportedly Novak's first source cooperated with the DOJ from early in the investigation. Not so Libby and Rove, who repeatedly lied about their involvement. And while it may well be possible that Armitage didn't know Plame was covert (plausible since the State Dept info/memo was his likely source of info about Valerie Wilson), there's evidence that Libby knew precisely where in the CIA she worked (Counterproliferation in the Directorate of Operations) because his own notes state that Cheney told him. Libby also knew her status was so sensitive he wouldn't discuss her on an unsecured phone with another Administration official. Libby subsequently apparently lied to Judy Miller about where Wilson's wife worked, telling her she worked at WINPAC in the Intelligence Directorate. (No doubt an old intel sniffer and cut out like Judy would know the difference between the DO and DI.)

Isikoff and Corn endeavor to make clear, based on what their sources told them, that Armitage was not part of the Libby/Rove/White House campaign against Wilson. I'd say that's precisely the message Armitage wants out there. He's not falling on his sword for anyone. If anything, he/his allies apparently are turning it back upon the cabal IMO. Corn's own article on this and the upcoming book here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/the-meaning-of-the-armita_b_28097.html

[H2O Man]

20. Correct.

Dick isn't falling on his sword. There is no deal to take care of him, or for a pardon, as others have suggested. Isikoff and Corn are providing details on a part of the scandal that the OVP/WHIG/OSP have hoped would protect Scooter and DC. It's partly a form of public education, partly public inoculation.

[leveymg]

28. Armitage, Powell and State are being given a pass by Corn. They don't

deserve it.

At the center of the outing of Plame and the selling of the Iraq Invasion are State Department figures and documents. While the prime movers behind the attempt to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson and the outing of Plame was Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the State Department played an essential role in the crime.

When Vice President Cheney ordered WHIG to go after Ambassador Wilson, Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman faxed a pile of classified State Department documents to Scooter Libby. Included in that May 31, 2003 transmission was the reconstructed notes of an analyst at the State Dept. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) who had attended a meeting with Valerie Plame prior to Wilson being dispatched to Niger. That document, the so-called INR Notes, is the first document identifying Plame as a CIA WMD analyst known to have come into the possession of Libby. It was incorporated as a footnote into the June 7 document, "the INR", that Grossman, a lesser-known but key neo-con, had prepared and disseminated within the Administration. While both Powell and Armitage later claimed the June 7 INR was created by Grossman without their authorization, this is the document Powell took on board AF1 during a trip to Africa that ended up being passed around by White House aides. It has not been revealed how widely distributed the earlier INR document, the INR Notes, was. It is known, however, that Libby who received the Notes from Grossman ended up sharing Plame's identity with Judy Miller on June 8 over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in DC, and that Novak outed Plame in his column four days later.

Now, we are told by Corn, it was Dick Armitage, Powell's principal intelligence aide at State, who was the second source to both Woodward and Novak, and that this was done inadvertantly because Armitage liked to gossip.

In the end, it was Dick Armitage's boss, Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell, who stood up behind the UN podium and, despite all that he knew to the contrary, delivered that oft-repeated speech about Saddam's "reconstituted" nuclear program, complete with those blown-up photos that showed Iraqi "WMD sites" and "biological weapons production trailers" that rationalized the invasion to the world. Why is Corn trying to make Powell and Armitage out to be the innocent dupes in this fraud?

Beyond a lame attempt to reconstruct the reputations of these Bush 41 Old Hands, there's also another agenda at play here. Corn's book concludes, as has Tony Bamford, that Ahmed Chalabi was part of an Iranian disinformation program to persuade the White House to get rid of Saddam Hussein. We should retain skepticism about this facile explanation about what drove the Bush Administration to invade and occupy Iraq. It was the White House, after all, which ordered the release of Ahmed Chalabi after he was arrested after he became the subject of suspicions. In fact, Chalabi was then given the post of head of the ministry that controlled Iraq's oil in the U.S.-supported transitional government. That would seem to be a strange punishment for spying on behalf of Tehran.

[Garbo 2004]

31. Well at least Corn in his article, unlike Isi, ascribes a possible motive

for Armitage that is not simply "oops, I'm such a silly gossip, I did it again."

Were Corn and Isikoff spun by Powell's and Armitage's State Dept allies? I think I may have suggested that in my post. I especially love the drama of reconstructed conversations, Armitage in a "panic" calling Powell, almost three months after Novak's first Plame column and shortly after a DOJ investigation was announced. And Armitage confiding in Ford of State's INR. (Ford as I recall is noted as the sender to Grossman on the INR memo dated June 10.) Oh the drama, the "fly on the wall" perspective for the reader, it's almost Woodward-worthy. ;)

(And Powell's certainly not blameless in his role in the selling of the Iraq war. Despite Powell's reported "heroic" tossing of the Niger info out of his UN speech, and the Niger info having been debunked by State long before, I recall Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that Powell and Tenet both peddled the Niger yellowcake and aluminum tube stories in secret briefings to Congress while the IWR was pending in Fall '03. These presentations apparently were effective in securing votes to pass the IWR.)

As I suggested, Armitage and company seem to be getting out the message they want via Corn and Isikoff. And it appears they're pointing the sword at the WH, not falling on it as some have suggested here.

[H2O Man]

33. It would be odd

that Mr. Armitage didn't connect his conversation with Novak with the original exposure of Plame, eh?

[Demeter]

16. Falling On His Toothpick, Maybe

I doubt it will even be much of a flesh-wound.

[annabanana]

17. (looking for H2O man). . . . . . . .n/t

[KittyWampus]

18. The Punks are TRYING to shift blame to him. Please stop helping them

by insinuating Cheney etc. are off the hook because Armitage fell on his sword.

[leftofthedial]

32. I'm not insinuating anything.

I asked a question.

So you think he's being pushed onto his sword then?

[mmonk]

19. Yes

Thank god there is a civil suit in process as well.

[radfringe]

23. NOT SURE

going to depend on a few things

-- how big and how many legs will this new twist grow?

-- how the white house responds

granted he's admitted to being a "big gossip", which leaves me questioning the wisdom of giving security clearance to a self-admitted big-gossiper.

sheepishly admitting that he's a big gossip downplays the seriousness of the leak. giggle...i'm just a big silly gossip...giggle

at the moment I'm more inclined to believe he's being pushed in front of the bullet rather than voluntarially jumping in front of the bullet...

meanwhile - Novak said his source still hasn't revealed him/herself, and he (Novak) thinks it way overdue.. which I'm interpreting that Novak thinks the source should come out now, and that this source is NOT Armitage.

[flyarm]

24. i watched Novak say that yesterday. HIS SOURCE, BUT DIDN'T HE SAY HE HAD

2 SOURCES??
..i was trying to remember yesterday without going through my files..but didn't Novak say originlly he had 2 sources?? Plural


What Novak yesterday was implying was he had one source..and it was about time this "one" source came forward ...

i was stunned by his spin yesterday..

fly

[Garbo 2004]

30. It's already known that Rove was Novak's second "confirming" source. At

least that's how Rove and Novak portrayed their claim of Rove's alleged "oh, you heard that too?" comment. (Rather pat response, considering IIRC that's what Libby said to Matt Cooper when he called him after Rove had spun him the "Wilson's wife" story.) DOJ investigators apparently suspected, as Murray Waas reported, collusion in Novak's and Rove's statements regarding that conversation but couldn't prove it.

[Armstead]

26. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

Armitage is more of an old-line foreign policy extablishment guy, not a Neo-Con.

It's possible that he let slip something he shouldn't have, not recognizing the consequences.

Maybe not, and the cabal is certainly culpable for their own actions in Plamegate. However, it's possible that this was more of a cock up in the first stage.

[walldude]

34. While I agree that that is possible it doesn't explain

why it has taken till now for this to come out in the open. Libby has already been indicted and fired, if this is true why did they not throw Armitage under the bus before Libby was canned?

[warrens]

27. Remember, in the wacky world of the Repuke system

Armitage is an extreme lefty. My feeling is that he fucked up, then clammed up. I doubt the repukes have enough on him to hurt him. If you saw his financial disclosure a couple of years ago, he's a very, very wealthy man, all made as part of govt service. No one short of Dick Cheney has worked the system so well. He's on the board of directors of half the companies in this country, at about $50K a pop for attending a few meetings, and he has millions squirreled away.

My instinct is he's to blame, and the others just used his info for their own purposes. Which doesn't excuse them. If they knew it was sensitive info and still spread it, even if Armitage had already told Novak, they're guilty.