Category: 沒有類 / Uncategorized

Before:

After:

The current claim by the Republicans is that Rove was told by a reporter that Plame is CIA, not the other way around. The funny thing is that he then turned around and passed this information on to the other reporters. And forget the fact that going around leaking a CIA agent’s identity is dangerous no matter where you got that information. And now the White House says that only a criminal conviction would result in someone being fired.

I guess that whole ‘values’ thing the Republicans claim to have wasn’t about honesty and responsibility. It turns out that ‘values’ is only about hating homosexuals and cutting taxes.

Only a few days ago, they were saying it would be inappropriate to talk about ongoing investigations, but now it’s fine for them to float these new theories about what really happened. That and try to divert the issue by continuing to smear Wilson’s reputation. They continue to claim that Wilson was a liar and his claims that Iraq didn’t buy uranium were proved false. That’s quite surprising, considering that the press has yet to cover the part where anyone was able to prove any truth at all that Iraq tried to buy uranium. Not a thing.

And then there’s the part where they complain that the Democrats don’t have the decency to let this scandal sit until the investigation is completed. Which is quite hilarious when you compare it to any of the Clinton scandals where the Republicans were out slamming on Clinton from the day he entered office until the day he left. Democrats have nothing to be ashamed of in not dropping this issue as long as the Republicans continue to spin the issue with deceptions and smears.

As long as there is any reasonable suspicion of White House wrong-doing, don’t let the issue drop.

Got woken up a few minutes ago at 5am with the wind howling and windows rattling. The current JTWC and CWB predictions have the eye passing just south of Taipei around 1-2pm today, so it’ll probably be like this all day.

The influential liberal blog Assign Blame has published an article of mine as this week’s Goat Of The Week about the Karl Rove scandal.

Thanks to akibare who pointed me to a leaked copy of the RNC Rove/Plame talking points. As I suspected, it’s a mish-mash of half-truths and deceptions. Let’s examine some of them.

“Once Again, Democrats Are Engaging In Blatant Political Attacks”

Wait a minute here! Are we talking about the same Democrats? The Democrats I’ve seen haven’t been able to muster up a mild criticism, much less a political attack. And to remind you, President Bush was the one who said he’d fire whoever was responsible for the leak. I guess he was politically attacking the Republicans too?

“Rove Discouraged A Reporter From Writing A False Story”

However, the fact that Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent and played a small role in organizing his trip was way more information than was needed to refute the story. And again, at least four reporters were told the same thing, it was more than just “A Reporter”.

“Assessments Wilson Made In His Report Were Wrong”

Weaseling. The report may not have been 100% correct, but it was mostly correct. On the other hand, the administration’s contention that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger was indeed 100% wrong.

“Joe Wilson Endorsed John Kerry”

Oh my god, if he supported a Democrat, he must automatically be wrong about EVERYTHING. And yet months after Kerry lost, the story is still in play. I guess the Kerry connection wasn’t the main reason behind the claims.

“Wilson Falsely Claimed Cheney Sent Him To Niger”

This claim is the one that is mostly laughably false. Their best ‘evidence’ of Wilson making this claim is this quote: “What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby’s statement, it was probably the vice president himself…”

Which turns out to be completely taken out of context. In fact, Wilson said JUST BEFORE this quote: “Well, look, it’s absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.” See, right there, he says plain as day that Cheney, Rice and Tenet knew nothing about his trip.

And then JUST AFTER that quote he goes on to say: “They asked essentially that we follow up on this report — that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.”

So IN CONTEXT, his quote that “I believe … it was probably the vice president himself…” refers to Cheney requesting the CIA look into the allegation. He clearly says that Cheney’s office requested the CIA look into the matter, the request filtered down to a departmental level where they decided to send Wilson to ask some questions. It is CRYSTAL CLEAR that Wilson is CLEARLY SAYING that there were at least three degrees of separation between Cheney and the decision to send him to Africa. He explicitly says that Cheney, Rice and Tenet had no idea he was sent. And yet through some kind of twisted logic, the Republicans think this proves he said that Cheney sent him. Incredible.

Go read the CNN transcript for yourself to see exactly what was said.

“Wilson Denied His Wife Suggested He Travel to Niger”

In fact, Wilson has denied that she was part of the decision making process. Let’s look at exactly what he said in the interview the RNC cites as evidence of this:

WILSON: “But the fact of the matter is, the decision — the invitation, the offer, or the request that I go out to Niger was made at a meeting, after this issue was discussed in a group of involving analysts from the CIA and other agencies. My wife was not at that meeting, and she specifically absented herself from that meeting, so as to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

BLITZER: “And I spoke to David Ensor, our national security correspondent, who says that a high-ranking CIA official does say the Senate Intelligence Committee report got it wrong on that specific point.”

WILSON: “Well, on July 22nd of last year, a Newsday journalist asked the same thing. And he was told by a senior intelligence official that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked alongside, but said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.”

Go read the CNN transcript.

“Wilson’s Report On Niger Had Thin Evidence”

In fact, what Wilson’s report had was very little evidence at all. It’s not surprising that this is the case, since there hasn’t been any solid evidence of any Iraq-Niger uranium deal other than a forged document. He had been sent to talk to his contacts to find out if there was anything to the story of a uranium deal. His contacts were unable to support the story. Maybe his report contained little evidence because the uranium deal was a complete fiction?

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Don’t be fooled. Besides being misleading half truths and political bluster, most of these points have little to do with the fact that Rove had a verified role in publicly exposing a CIA agent. That’s the central issue.

There’s been a lot of controversy over the threat of China buying up US companies lately. Most of the arguments are a bit flimsy though. This is the real reason to be concerned: Foreign ownership of Chinese steel mills will be barred. China continues to heavily restrict outside investment in Chinese companies, yet they want a free hand to invest in US companies. China needs to be told that their investment in the US must be reciprocated by lifting restrictions on US investment in Chinese companies. It is only fair that they need to play by the same rules in both cases.

It’s nice to see that the allegations against Karl Rove are starting to gain traction, with both the press and more Democrats speaking up about it. Unfortunately, the Republican camp is still way too organized in fighting this story. It’s been reported than the RNC put out a 3 1/2 page guide of talking points when discussing the story. While I haven’t seen these talking points, it’s clear from the latest coverage what the broad strokes are:

1) Deny There’s Any Evidence – Point out that nobody is really sure what grand jury testimony has been. Except that many reliable reports — including published excerpts of Matt Cooper’s emails — clearly identify Rove as the primary source. Clearly there’s more reliable evidence than there was that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. This seems to be the ‘big lie’ tactic where a half truth repeated often enough tends to become believed by people.

2) The Comments Were Misinterpreted – This theory has it that the intent of the information divulged was to counter claims that Wilson’s uranium expedition was approved at a high level in the CIA. The information was not intended to be published, but was intended to prevent other information from being published. This falls flat because the same story was told to at least four reporters, and two of them actually published it. It was also completely unnecessary to give as much detail if this was the point; it would have been sufficient to just say the funding decision was made at a departmental level.

3) He Didn’t Reveal Specific Information – The current claims are that Karl Rove was not in violation of law because he did not reveal specific information; that he did not know or reveal her name, and by implication that he didn’t know her role at the agency. This is at first plausible if you read Cooper’s notes which say that Rove stated that the trip was recommended by Wilson’s wife who is apparently agency (CIA). But this falls apart because this only requires the most basic additional information to fill in the gaps. And again, he told substantially the same thing to at least four reporters, and the two who published articles based on the information were both able to easily fill in the gaps. Such consistency indicates that it was a very deliberate release of information, not an off the cuff remark. This is splitting legal hairs, and while it may or may not work in a court room, it should not work at all in the court of public opinion. And Rove should know that the court of public opinion is ultimately what matters in politics.

It’s quite clear that those involved are trying to weasel their way out of this becoming a full blown scandal by these intentionally misleading half truths. The real story seems to be that Rove thought he could do a political hatchet job on someone critical of the administration’s fabricated Iraq WMD claims, and it’s finally blown up in his face. The Republicans should be careful in how much they invest themselves into protecting Rove, when that might end up blowing up in their faces. If they are smart, they’ll find a way to let Rove step down for some plausible unrelated matter and hope it blows over. I’m hoping they’re not so smart. My feeling is it could go either way. The Republicans have been nimble at avoiding scandal previously, but on the other hand they also tend not to do anything that would imply that they were even possible mistaken about anything.

There’s a good article, Just The Facts M’am by Steven Brant which provides excerpts on White House and Rove’s official responses on this issue over the last two years in case you want to see exactly the way they are trying to weasel the issue. By the way, I highly recommend reading the The Huffington Post which is a refreshing source of intelligent political commentary. (Though it’s a bit odd – Arianna Huffington used to be the wife of our local Santa Barbara conservative politician, Michael Huffington.)

The standard cliche about the ‘liberal media elite bias’ has justly been turned on its head in The Indisputable Media Bias by Cenk Uygur who examines the difference in coverage of scandals in the Bush and Clinton eras. I’ve already alluded to that in my rants about the Karl Rove scandal, so it’s nice to see a more complete analysis of the subject. However, I also give a big portion of the blame to Democrats who can’t seem to come together on any coherent, consistent message about practically anything when getting in front of the press. By contrast, Republicans are quite good at distributing focused talking points, and hammering on them in unison every time they get in front of the press. You can sometimes even hear the same key phrases uttered nearly verbatim by multiple people. The Democrats don’t seem to have quite the same level of organization as this, to their detriment.

While my server frequently sees a decent number of hits from the googlebot crawlers, they have always been very good about spreading out the hits so that they don’t put a large load on the server or network.

So imagine my surprise to find that for the last three hours straight, a single googlebot crawler at crawl-66-249-65-166.googlebot.com has constantly had multiple connections open to my web server continuously downloading file after file with no pauses, using up all my bandwidth. I had to do something I never thought I would have to, and had to put google IPs into the firewall.

Anyone else getting pounded by googlebot today?

So let me get this straight…

The White House official (allegedly Karl Rove) responsible for the leak continues to feel no political heat or legal repercussions over the illegal identification of a CIA agent.

Robert Novak who first published this illegally leaked information has faced no legal repercussions at all.

A reporter who also was leaked this information and wrote a followup story on the subject after Novak’s, and refused to reveal his source got a walk because his employer turned over some of his emails.

But reporter Judith Miller who also was leaked this information but decided not to write an article about it, and refuses to reveal the source is jailed for standing up for press freedom?

Is that justice?

I would have preferred they had jailed people starting from the other end of that list.