Monday, March 13, 2006

Some Plame Truths

Prominent Washington attorney Clarice Feldman writes about "Some Plame Truths" in the American Thinker.

3 comments:

cf said...

Captured docs show Saddam was trying to get yellow cake--
"Newly translated Iraqi documents from Saddam Hussein's regime show that President Bush was factually accurate when he told the nation in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq had recently sought uranium from Africa.

Bush's 16-word statement had formed the basis for the claim adopted by administration critics that "Bush lied" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

But according to the Washington Times today, an unnamed U.S. official reports that "newly translated Iraqi documents . . . tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s."

The documents also speak of burying prohibited missiles, a government official familiar with the declassification process told the paper.

In his January 2003 address, Bush told the nation:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The statement prompted former ambassador to Iraq, Joseph Wilson to complain to the New York Times seven months later: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." (more) http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?s=pf&page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/13/115752.shtml?s=ic

flenser said...

Perhaps if the man he was trying so hard to protect, the unidentified government source (UGO), is Armitage, it goes beyond being preposterous to become an attempt to cover up a fatally flawed investigation never designed to ferret out the truth.

I would not go that far. The answers you get always depend on the questions you ask. Fitzgerald is seeking answers to a specific question; did anyone working in the WH divulge Plames name to reporters?

We think that question is ridiculous, but from Fitzgeralds viewpoint it may not be. The entire rationale for appointing a special prosecutor was that there might be wrongdoing in the WH.

If there was wrongdoing in State or the CIA, that is not something for a special prosecutor to deal with; it is an administrative issue for the WH to handle, by firing or disciplining people.

Why the WH opted to cave in to media pressure and appoint a special prosecutor in this matter rather than simply call the offending CIA and State employees into the office, quiz them, fire them, and make public their actions, is a mystery.

What were these people thinking?

cf said...

Perhaps you can refresh my recollection re the referral but I don't recall it was so narrow..