A Leak, Then a Deluge. Washington Post

[Quixote1818]

A Leak, Then a Deluge
Did a Bush loyalist, trying to protect the case for war in Iraq, obstruct an investigation into who blew the cover of a covert CIA operative?

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A01

Air Force Two arrived in Norfolk on Saturday morning, July 12, 2003, with Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff aboard. They had come "to send forth a great American ship bearing a great American name," as Cheney said from the flag-draped flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

As Cheney returned to Washington with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the two men spoke of the news on Iraq -- the most ambitious use of the war machine Reagan built two decades before. A troublesome critic was undermining a principal rationale for the war: the depiction of Baghdad, most urgently by Cheney, as a nuclear threat to the United States.


Defending the war became the animating priority aboard Air Force Two that day. According to his indictment on Friday, Libby "discussed with other officials aboard the plane" how he should respond to "pending media inquiries" about the critic, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Apart from Libby, only press aide Catherine Martin is known to have accompanied Cheney on that flight.

The crimes alleged in Libby's indictment would come later. But the flight from Norfolk marked a transition in the four-month slide from politics as usual -- close combat in defense of the president's policies -- to what a special prosecutor described as perjury and obstruction of justice. Summer would give way to fall before Libby reached the point of no return, with his first alleged lies to the FBI. But he skirted the line soon after stepping off the aircraft.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478.html?nav=rss_politics

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1. the war machine REAGAN built, TWO DECADES before?

reagan built, primarily, cold war toys like nukes and stealth fighters and bombers, and shrub the elder partially dismantled that as the 'peace dividend'.

it was clinton who built the war machine that shrub the lesser sent to iraq.

[keopeli]

2. Clinton tried to modernize the military and was concerned about the growin

...concerned about the growing threat of terrorism, as was I.

Clinton wasn't putting money into conventional WMDs.

And Bush the Lesser turned our military into crusaders.

[Poiuyt]

3. Reagan and W wanted to put the emphasis on Star Wars

Remember, Condi was supposed to give a speech on the importance of a Star Wars defense system on September 11, 2001

[TahitiNut]

4. "Why some White House officials -- Rove among them -- used Wilson's wife

"Why some White House officials -- Rove among them -- used Wilson's wife in their counterattack has yet to be made entirely clear."

This deserves emphasis. The reputation these people have for vindictiveness is well-known. At the same time, it's very difficult for me to believe this is the core motivation for exposing Plame. After all, how can it erode Wilson's credibility, a successful and trusted diplomat for both Bush41 and Clinton, that his wife has one of the most trusted (and dangerous) positions in US intelligence? If anything, this enhances Wilson's credibility. The false claim that "she sent him" is ludicrous. Even if she did, so what? Again, it enhances his credibility.

No. Wilson wasn't the reason they exposed Plame ... it was the opportunity to expose Plame, Brewster Jennings & Associates, and an uncorrupted source network of (apparently) reliable intelligence regarding nuclear proliferation in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Closely-monitored trade in weapons and technology in those areas of the globe is hugely profitable for the 'right' global corporations. A Bushoilini 'ally' (Pervez Musharraf, a military dictator) has keen appetites for nuclear weapons and technology ... and for the money they'd bring Pakistan if he became a source (to another 'stan) rather than merely a user. There are 'interests' who're probably quite happy to have leaks closed and oversight diminished.

Vindictiveness is a cover story! It doesn't wash. The deliberate exposure and destruction of a covert intelligence network was what they succeeeded in accomplishing.