The Real Plame Issue: Bush Killed Us

It was a pivotal moment: CNN reports on November 6th, 2005 that Senator Harry Reid's (D-NV) shut-down of the senate, after the indictment of Scooter Libby, may be a response to "activists" complaining that Democrats weren't "putting up enough of a fight," that they "lacked spine," and did not "stand up to Republicans." The real news is that such long-running disputes are spilling onto CNN. There's no telling where this kind of talk may lead.

However, there is no time for these activists (I count myself one) to break their arms patting themselves on the back for forcing some real opposition. We have seen Democratic offensives suddenly halt and wither before, then lapse into baffling, bumbling inarticulateness.

Reid's rarely-invoked rule forcing the senate into closed session, to demand answers on the use of intelligence before the Iraq War, was a shot across the bow, but no more. Judging by the amount of unused ammunition at the Democrats' feet, it doesn't look promising. Absent a widened attack, the Bushies' instinct is that this can be reduced to another tempest in a teapot. And if there is anything the Republicans possess in abundance over the Democrats, it is excellent political instincts.

Democratics have settled on the "falsified intelligence" angle as the way to attack the administration's misconduct in the Plame Affair. Sen. Reid said:

"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions..."

With this strategy, it is not so much Valerie Plame's blown cover that matters as much as the light it sheds on the run-up to the Iraq war. The Bushies are confident that this line of attack will not cause their downfall.

As long as Bush sticks to his fallback position, that he didn't really know if Saddam had WMD, but he couldn't take any chances with "protecting the American people," he will ride this storm out, counting as always on ignorance, fear, and the general bloodthirstiness of Americans after 9/11. Bombing tens of thousands of civilians and losing over 2000 soldiers is no problem, as long as we're "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here." Who cares how we got into it?

In a nutshell this is what the Rovian gut understands, and Karl Rove's gut is not often wrong. Bush can say, the stupid lib'rals forget we had just been attacked on 9/11, and that Saddam would've gotten his hands on a nuke sooner or later, even if, uh, he wasn't even close this time.

With the betrayal of Plame itself reduced to a brush-fire, the Republican instinct understands what the Democrats do not: Americans will tolerate being lied to if they believe it was for their own good. The "fight them there rather than here" is a powerful narcotic to fearful Americans. Although it's absurd (nothing says they can't come here after the live-fire training ground we have provided in Iraq,) its pedigree is long.

During Vietnam we were told we had to fight them in Southeast Asia or we would be fighting them "on the shores of San Diego." My own dear dad went to that war, and the only reason he went, he said, was so that we, his young sons, "wouldn't have to." The real evil of this draft-dodger administration is to harness the noblest impulses of the bravest and most idealistic, and to use them for their own foul ends.

The Democrats are throwing the fight by holding back on the most damning aspect of the Plame Affair: Plame was no politically-motivated analyst working for the "thems" in a politically-motivated CIA. She was a weapons of mass destruction specialist. For most of her career Plame was non-official cover (NOC) on uncoventional weapons. NOC means the government can deny your existence if you are caught. As CNN national security correspondent David Esnor explains, a non-official cover operates "without the protection of diplomatic status...to recruit foreigners who [know] about murky international weapons deals involving weapons of mass destruction."

The intelligence networks Plame had built were an early warning system against weapons of mass destruction and other threats to our daily security. Most recently Plame worked in the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC.) When the administration blew her cover, it didn't betray her. It betrayed US, every man, woman, and child in America. Esnor says "the damage was most likely done" by "other nations tracking down...Valerie Plame Wilson's contacts and sources and shutting them down."

One intelligence officer after another has bravely stepped forward to put the lie to the "analyst" myth, risking career, reputation, and the well-known pathological wrath of the Bush administration. Ever the fast-friends good to have in a pinch, the Democrats apparently see and hear nothing.

One US official told Time magazine: "I'm beyond disgusted. I am especially angry about the bullshit explanations that she is not a covert agent. That is an official status, and there are lots of people in this building who are on that status. It's not up to the Republican Party to determine when that status will end for an agent." Time noted that foreign intelligence services were "known to have retraced her steps and contacts to discover more about how the CIA operates in their countries."

Another right-wing talking-point is that Plame's work could not have been secret if she reported to CIA headquarters and was married to a US ambassador. But, as one former CIA operative, Melissa Mahle, told Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, this reflects a total ignorance about the way the CIA works. And when an operative's cover is blown to other governments, Alter said "It isn't pretty." We already know the Pakistani Secret Service is riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers, one of the reasons we haven't found bin Laden. Now they know Plame's secrets too. There may be many a slit throat in obscure Third World back alleys thanks to the loose lips of the Bush administration.

The list of former intelligence officers claiming serious damage to the national security is long and growing longer: Michael Scheuer, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, David McMichael, Colonel Patrick Lang, Mel Goodman. Testimony from many of these intelligence officials was taken at the Dorgan (D-ND) Committee Hearings last July. Col. Patrick Lang, former director of the Defense Dept. Human Intelligence Service, went on the record saying that as a result of the Plame betrayal:

"the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain."

The Downing Street Memo showed once and for all that the White House was determined to "fix" intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion, no matter what the real intelligence said. The yawn with which this was greeted by the American public should tell the Democrats something. Americans don't care if they were lied into war. But they MIGHT care if it is now easier for "them" to get "here." What is amazing is that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has already given the Democrats more ammunition than they would need to impeach ten presidents. He made the connection between Plame and "national security" no fewer than nine times in his initial press conference, including such statements as:

-"The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security."

-"given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts."

-"This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter."

The bottom line is that George Bush and his people, by their reflexive habit of smearing all who disagree, have placed us in grave danger. In the New Warfare, one snitch giving the number of a single cargo container is worth a division of soldiers floundering around in countries they do not understand. Playing with the truth to entice a nation into war will not spark the popular outrage required to eject this administration, nor does it rise to the level of treason. But punching a hole in the intelligence shield painstakingly built to protect us, and to help gauge the intentions of our enemies, will, and does. If the Democrats do not do their duty, the wrath of the people may be aimed at them as well as at Bush, after the next attack.

cc:
robert borosage
derrick jackson
charlie savage
barry crimmins
paul hackett
editors of The Nation

Why Bush's Speech is Bullshit

Goddammit you've got to do everything for these guys. Here's what the Democrats' response should be:

"The president does not recognize the reality of what our presence in Iraq is doing to the world. It's not just about Iraq; it's about the entire Middle East, and the world, and that includes us.

"While the president is waiting for Hooterville in Baghdad, Sadr's Mahdi Army is getting the best training in the world and practicing its secret prison and torture chambers like the ones they just found. They have thorougly infiltrated the ranks of the Iraqi police and army, and are waiting only for the day the Americans stop taking bullets for them so they can have a little purge and become the Islamic regime the have always wanted, allied with Iran.

"In addition, the president's "staying the course" is sending shock waves of insurgency throughout the region, into Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Afghanistan, in the form of more frequent and more sophisticated attacks mimicking tactics perfected in Iraq. In Afghanistan, since September there have been at least nine suicide attacks showing unusual levels of coordination and knowledge of explosives.


"The time has come for the president to recognize this reality, and to recognize that our presence in Iraq is having a negative impact on the security of America, which is better served by focusing on its war against it true enemies, the fighters of Al Qaeda still controlling large regions of Aghanistan and the mountain regions of the border. The responsible course in Iraq is an orderly withdrawal to the over-the-horizon presence spoken of by our esteemed colleague, congressman Murtha. This would be accompanied by a rapid reaction force prepared to move in, in strength, should evidence of large-scale atrocities arise. We will ask the nations of the world to assist us in monitoring this.

We will assist the Iraqis in avoiding mass bloodshed as a consequence of ethnic and sectarian strife as they build their new democracy, which may recognize new geographic and political realities. Continuous peace efforts among the parties in Iraq will be brokered by the UN. And rather than place its energy into Jihad, the disaffected and the angry who would become America's enemies may show their true committment by participating in the greatest exercise in human creativity the world has ever seen, to show the world that they are indeed prepared to take control of their own destiny, minus one ruthless dictator which it is the gift of the United States to have removed." -by Polis

Alito: From Plame Distraction to Bush Liabilty?

Note: This was written before today's development: the administration has formally charged Padilla with a crime. This is a tactic to avoid a Supreme Court showdown, which leaves Bush's assertion of his powers over American citizens intact and to be tested on another day. The relevance of Padilla to the nomination of Sam Alito is diminished not one iota, as the administration is sure to revive its claims in the event of another terror attack, when a wave of national hysteria makes the climate more favorable. The question to be put to Alito remains: Do American citizens have the right to a jury trial as described under the Sixth Amendment, whatever the crime or political climate, during this war that may conceivably have no end? Or does the new war effectively abrogate this right indefinitely, thus fundamentally changing forever the rights under which Americans are born?

A strange curtain of silence has descended over the most important decision facing post 9/11 America: the fate of the Constitution and the "freedom" which George Bush claims to champion for the rest of the world. We wonder whether the constitution Bush envisions for Iraq includes a Bill of Rights for its citizens, and whether that Bill of Rights includes "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed" as the Sixth Amendment of our magnificent document reads.

Or will this right in Iraq, as here, depend on the whim of whomever happens to be president?

Jose Padilla, an American by birth, was arrested on American soil and publicly denounced by the administration as having planned to explode a "dirty bomb." Bush claims that, as part of the war on terror, he has the authority to lock up anyone he deems a terrorist suspect, indefinitely, without trial, without a lawyer, without even formal charges. So far, the judicial branch has partially checked these un-American ambitions, and held that, at the least, Padilla is entitled to a lawyer.

In June of last year, just as the Padilla case was about to reach an important point in the appeals process, the administration released fresh allegations that Padilla had planned to use natural gas lines to blow up some apartment buildings. We'll never know if the new allegations were timed to correspond with Padilla's appeal, since Padilla, according to Bush's definition of an "enemy combatant," is not entitled to a trial.

With one hand George positions himself as freedom's ultimate champion (hey I like that fellers, "ultimate champion" thas' me!), with the other hand he directs the Justice Department to think of new ways to deny Americans birthrights which have survived social upheavel and a civil war. One of the most novel creations is the extension of traditional wartime powers to this new, non-traditional war that may never end.

One: I, George Bush, have wartime powers, since I have declared a "war on terror" (a ridiculous name since "terror" is an emotion that will always be with us. More correct would be the political tactic of "terrorism.") Two: this war will last a long, long time," as Bush takes pains to emphasize. Therefore: any citizen can be locked up by Bush forever, incommunicado, for the "protection" of the American people. This unlimited power has been challenged by, of all people, Justice Antonin Scalia. Dissenting from the majority which upheld the Bush position in the related case of Yaser Hamdi, another American "enemy combatant," Scalia said that such power "meet[s] the current emergency in a manner the Constitution does not envision..."

The nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court provides Democrats with their best opportunity to show they will defend their countrymen against the rapacious appetite for power that is the hallmark of the Bush administration. As the Padilla case stands now, the courts are hinting that Padilla only has the right to a military tribunal, in which he must prove his innocence rather than the government having to prove his guilt.

The question of how he stands on the Sixth Amendment was never asked of Judge Roberts, before he was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Another fight thrown by the Democrats? If the Democrats have truly found their backbone, the Borking of Alito over insufficient or ambiguous answers regarding the Padilla case can only make them heroes across a swath of the political spectrum that will frighten King George. Whose primary duty, contrary to what he is fond of saying, is not to "protect the American people," (this is nowhere in the Constitution; look it up) but "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This is the oath of office required of all presidents according to Article II, section 1 of the US Constitution.

"Spiro" Dick Cheney, More On...

I've been saying this for two years: the impeachment of Dubya leaves us with President Dick Cheney, hardly an improvement. So we take a page from the playbook that drummed Richard Nixon out of office. Remember? Nixon's VP was Spiro Agnew, whom no one wanted to be stuck with either. So they ran him out of town first, on tax evasion charges. The way was then clear to impeach Tricky Dick, who compared to Bush looks like a Great American. After all, even Nixon never accused his opponents of helping kill American troops. This is how we got Gerald Ford, the first vice president confirmed under the 25th Amendment, who then went on to become a mediocre but relatively benign president.

With the Libby indictment, Cheney is in even more immediate peril than Bush. The famed Washington Post article "The Profitable Connections Of Halliburton" states that: "During Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries [Iraq, Iran, Libya.] In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oilservice business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser."

It's all in my new book. If the Dems with their new "spine" ever decide to uncork Dresser Industries, Cheney is gone. The question for impatient Americans is why he wasn't gone long ago.