Kidding?

Josh Marshall recommends a post by Kevin Drum which commences thusly:

NUKES AND THE BASE....Step back from Plamegate for a moment and ask yourself a broader question: why did the White House react so violently to Joe Wilson's suggestion that the story about Saddam Hussein trying to procure uranium from Niger was false? After all, as conservative apologists never tire of pointing out, Wilson didn't really debunk George Bush's words in the 2003 State of the Union address. Bush said only that Saddam "sought" uranium from Africa, while Wilson merely provided evidence that no uranium ever changed hands. The fact is, Wilson's report didn't invalidate Bush's statement.

So why did the White House go nuts?  What were they so scared of that they went into full-blown smear-and-destroy mode?

Fortunately, Mr. Drum has an answer to hand, since he is in touch with the Republican base:

One of the advantages of living in Orange County is that I have plenty of centrist and conservative acquaintances, and one thing I've learned from them is that even among Bush's own supporters it was the possibility of Saddam getting hold of nukes that really scared them. Chemical and biological weapons were a bit of a yawn. Without nukes, even Bush sympathizers were skeptical about the whole Iraq adventure.

Since Karl Rove has much more sophisticated means of gauging public opinion than my occasional lunches with friends, he obviously knew this full well...

Mr. Drum is then kind enough to explain that Karl Rove was intent on keeping alive the myth of Saddam's nukes in order to placate the restive base.

Gee.  If I wanted to unravel this puzzle and didn't have any Republican friends, I might go back and see what folks were actually saying at the time.  Since we have a blogosphere, it is almost like having a time machine - extraordinary!  This post by Pejman from July 11, 2003 provides a useful place to start with lots of links; here is more from July 16.

Secondly, and I shudder to ask - does Mr. Drum specifically, or his readership generally, honestly think that all that Joe Wilson reported was that Saddam was not acquiring uranium?  Was that the sum of Wilson's message, and the extent of the controversy he created?

I feel as though I am speaking across a chasm - are we actually having this discussion?  Is there this big a disagreement about what strikes me as basic facts?  When folks on the left say "Bush Lied", what do they think he lied about?  And who is one of the people they mention as having provided evidence of those lies?

And is it possible that "Bush Was Wrong" is a bit less incendiary than "Bush Lied"?  Might it be that "Wrong" is different from "Liar", and the difference is worth tussling over?

These are tough questions - I have a few Democratic friends, but I won't pass on the wisdom I have gleaned from my lunches with them in attempting to answer them.

However, I am inclined to back away slowly while continuing to talk in a calm voice as I wait for the reality based community to re-join us in reality.

MORE:  I don't want to give too many hints, but on the off chance that someone is not just trying out the latest DNC spin, I have a quick reprise of Wilson's charges here.

UPDATE:  We can encapsulate the entire media environment that Jow Wilson had created with this one question from Ari Fleischer's July 7 press briefing, the day after Wilson's Op-Ed:

MR. FLEISCHER:  But, again, the information on [NIger and the forgeries] -- the President did not have that information prior to his giving the State of the Union.

Q       Which gets to the crux of what Ambassador Wilson is now alleging -- that he provided this information to the State Department and the CIA 11 months before the State of the Union and he is amazed that it, nonetheless, made it into the State of the Union address.  He believes that that information was deliberately ignored by the White House.  Your response to that?

MR. FLEISCHER:  And that's way, again, he's making the statement that -- he is saying that surely the Vice President must have known, or the White House must have known.  And that's not the case, prior to the State of the Union.

Q       He's saying that surely people at the decision-making level within the NSC would have known the information which he -- passed on to both the State Department and the CIA.

MR. FLEISCHER:  And the information about the yellow cake and Niger was not specifically known prior to the State of the Union by the White House.

Q       What does that say about communications?

Which is my point.  Now, maybe the press was not reading the caveats in Wilson's Op-Ed carefully enough, but please don't recite those caveats back at me now and tell me that the White House did not have a Wilson problem.

Comments

[SamAm]

Bush's argument was not academic. His words were not spoken to be understood as anything other than a warning of an imminent danger from a nuclear armed Iraq. That there were caveats even at the time ("has learned") isn't a defense; it makes their actions even more deceptive. In the broader context of misleading, Bush lied. And even if he didn't tell a single flagrant, even the GOP admits it lie, the scale and import of his and his administration's deceptions make arguments over lie vs. mistruth vs. wrong pretty academic.

But, again, as a more informed individual once said this is not about a whistle-blower, it is about a potential crime against a whistle-blower.

I look forward to your take on today's top story in the WaPo.

[Martin]

Have any other statements ever been retracted from any other SOTU in the history of the United States?

And "Bush is wrong" is not a great alternative (notwithstanding Republicans wont admit even that). At least "Bush lied" presupposes a certain level of knowledge and gamesmanship, whereas "Bush is wrong" seems to call for a lack of confidence in any future decisions based on our intelligence.

[Swopa]

I have a quick reprise of Wilson's charges here.

Yes, and I see that your "smoking gun" is something that Wilson said on Meet the Press.

If holding people to the absolute precision of things they say on live TV is the standard, what then shall we make of Dick Cheney's infamous "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons"? That would represent a flat-out lie (or evidence of psychosis), wouldn't it?

Unless, of course, you hold the Vice President to a far lower standard than the one you've set up for Joe Wilson.

[Geek, Esq.]

I don't think it's a matter of "Bush lied" so much as "Bush really never cared if what he was saying was true." Do we really think that Bush et al applied 1/8th of an ounce of skepticism to any reports of WMD's coming out of Iraq?

The simple fact was that he felt that Saddam had to go--the cost of containment was too high and the marginal return was decreasing.

But, that's not as effective a marketing slogan for war as "We don't want the next warning sign to be a mushroom cloud."

[Keith]

Tom, in light of Thursday's WP article, could you outline (1) the timeline of the Africa trip where the memo was located, (2) who was on that trip, (3) where Rove was at that time--on the trip, on in DC?--(4) when was the first time Rove could have come in contact with that memo, (5) how all of this relates to when Rove talked to Novak and Cooper.

It would be helpful, I think, to know what information was flying around and when.

[ed]

Oh yeah, that's right. Plame was marked secret.

[AlanDownunder]

on the off chance that someone is not just trying out the latest DNC spin, I have a quick reprise of Wilson's charges here.

How on earth does any of that justify the Plame outing?

(other than to underline its sheer malevolent stupidity in that Wilson could have been neutralised without kneecapping the CIA)

If you really want to bolster the WMD war justification go to work on the leaks from Downing Street instead - they're way more persuasive and authoritative than Wilson.

[jukeboxgrad]

TM: "When folks on the left say 'Bush Lied', what do they think he lied about?"

Obviously there's a long list of things. I'm sure you already know that one very good summary is here (pdf).

My two personal favorites: "We found the weapons of mass destruction," and "he [Saddam] wouldn't let them [UN inspectors] in."

With regard to Wilson, though, I think I addressed your question here (it's a long message, but for the current purpose just look at the first five or six paragraphs).

"I have a quick reprise of Wilson's charges here."

Oddly enough, what I believe to be Wilson's central, original charge ("his [Bush's] conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them") is nowhere to be found in your post that you cite.

I did raise this point in that thread, though, here.

In other words, I've been asking the same question here several times since roughly five days ago. Still no answer.

[Syl]

Is one's paygrade higher if you're NOC status vs Official Cover so you don't mind if your status isn't officially changed? Or is the CIA so mired in bureacracy that they simply don't get around to changing things in a timely manner? Considering what we've read in the amicus brief regarding her previous 'outings' you'd think her status would have been officially changed to reflect that fact.

According to the Vanity Fair article, the CIA didn't start the process of moving Valery Plame's status from NOC to Official Cover until the spring of 2003. By July when it hit the fan, she was probably still technically NOC.

What does that mean? Beats me. But I suspect her usefulness as a NOC had long eroded away and the bureau simply hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it.

However, the fact that she worked for the CIA in and of itself signifies nothing. If her cover name was her maiden name and putting 'Valery Plame' together with 'works at the CIA' means she's been outed, then Wilson did it himself first in his online bio. It's a nit to say 'Valery Plame Wilson' is not the same as 'Valery Plame'.

And if one argues that some people knowing does not equate to the entire world knowing then what does it mean that we don't hear about the other 49 referrals the CIA made to the Justice Department in 2003, nor the 50 in 2004, nor the 25 so far this year? (since the average is about 50 a year).

It means that the possible leak of info may be serious and the press doesn't hear about those other referrals because it shouldn't leak further.

What's different about the Plame affair?

Wilson blasted to the entire world that his wife had been 'outed' (and I posit knowingly) guaranteeing that the entire world would hear about it!

That's not something you do if there's any danger to either your wife or her contacts. You go through official channels.

So, either Wilson is stupid. Or he calculated he could get away with it because no harm would come to her by his shouting through a megaphone to the world that she was undercover.

Wilson purposely made the stink to punish Rove for catching Wilson's lies and misrepresentations. And to make sure she was REALLY outed, and since simply being CIA and working on wmd issues was not enough, he went to Corn and gave more info.

Basically, Wilson outed his own wife to punish Rove.

[Rob Crocker]

jukebox,

You say that Wilson's main charge:
"his [Bush's] conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them"
wasn't covered in TM's summary.

That's probably just as well as we have ample documentation that Wilson neither dealt in facts nor understood what he did have.

His charge about the forged documents was copmletely bogus as he couldn't have had access to them at the time.

His conclusion that his trip completely debunked the "16 words" was completely demolished by the SSCI report. His debriefing was at best neutral to the question and worst actually provided support to some in the intelligence community that Saddam was trying to acquire more Yellow Cake.

Finally, why did Wilson lie about who suggested him for the trip? Why did he work so hard to give the impression that it was Cheney's office that sent him and read the subsequent report?

[TM]

Cheney's misstatement about nuclear weapons was understood at the time to be a misstatement - Tim Russert did not comment, and NO headlines blared the next day that the US was about to launch a war against nuclear aremd Iraq. Months later, Googlers made enough noise to prompt a White House clarification.

I suspect Swopa knows this all this. Anyway, I had a long post from May 2003, but it leaves out the bit where Scott McClellan himself addresses the question.

Some folks don't accept that Wilson lied about anything, or exaggerated any of his charges a bit beyond the facts. They could look at Kristof's May 6 column with the ambassador leak; or , which goes beyond Kristof to pick up Pincus of the WaPo and Ackerman at the New Republic; or Susan Schmidt's widely remarked WaPo article following the SSCI report, for starters.

OK, Jukebox, I've followed the link to your answer, and let me summarize - even if Wilson lied about Cheney knowing and ignoring the news that the uranium info was phony, its OK, because everyone knows Cheney wasn't interested in the truth anyway. Compelling.

[Dwilkers]

"Bush lied" never did make sense, and the sad part is being wrong on the fundamental justification for a major foreign war is bad enough. There was never a need to exaggerate it and the broader electorate didn't buy it.

I've always thought that was the dumbest thing the Dems did in the last campaign. Dems didn't make the pro-National Security case that could have been made and instead tried to inflate it into something people weren't going to buy. Instead of going after Bush for what actually happened Dems attacked his personal integrity and that wasn't going to fly.

As a result Bush never had his ears pinned back on the simple fact that on the fundamental justification for a war our intelligence agencies were absolutely, catastrophically, wrong and it happened on his watch.

I'm still aghast that we could have been so wrong, and nothing that has happened since has restored any prior confidence I had in our intelligence capability. From what I can tell though the Democratic party still doesn't much care about that.

[kim]

On his watch. Oh yes, he had plenty of time to develop intelligence capability that would not have gotten it wrong.
==============================================

[TM]

From today's WaPo:

Karl Rove, President Bush's deputy chief of staff, has testified that he learned Plame's name from Novak a few days before telling another reporter she worked at the CIA and played a role in her husband's mission, according to a lawyer familiar with Rove's account. Rove has also testified that the first time he saw the State Department memo was when "people in the special prosecutor's office" showed it to him, said Robert Luskin, his attorney.

"He had not seen it or heard about it before that time," Luskin said.

Several other administration officials were on the trip to Africa, including senior adviser Dan Bartlett, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and others. Bartlett's attorney has refused to discuss the case, citing requests by the special counsel. Fleischer could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Tea-leaf readers will laugh out loud at those paragraphs (set aside Luskin's duboius credibility).

We have long argued that the press probably knows who leaked, and ought to start giving us some hints - in the current example, out of the many officials on the trip, the WaPo just happens to mention Bartlett and Flesicher. Concidence? Maybe...

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Questions the WaPo did not address - how many other paragraphs in the memo were marked "S" (I prefer the "STFU" designation, but hey).

In the fateful paragraph, Ms. Wilson appeared in two of the seven sentences. Could the other five been the "S" sentences, and did they hold that status through July 7? For example, suppose they were the sentences saying "The CIA organized a trip to Niger". That was not much of a secret after the CIA allowed Wilson to run his op-ed.

And bring back original intent! A key question will be, what did the author of the memo mean with his "S" - did he have any knowledge that Ms. Plame was covert, or was he classifying something else, or what?

And for the lawyers - if the memo autheor did not know she was covert but marked it "S" anyway, can Rove go down on a lucky guess?

Bonus - in an earlier thread, Cecil Turner, whio has handled classified docs, assures us that covert names (first and last!) do not appear in memos.

My guess - the reailty is not as bad as the headline. But I guess that a lot.

[TM]

Sidebar - Drudge has the heat wave and the Supreme Court, but not this.

[Slartibartfast]

In the fateful paragraph, Ms. Wilson appeared in two of the seven sentences. Could the other five been the "S" sentences, and did they hold that status through July 7?

Plame's name appearing in a paragraph portion-marked (S) is in no way testimony to the classification level of her name. There's a really easy way to determine what information in that paragraph was classified Secret, and why: go to the "Classified By" stamp, find out who the classification authority is, and ask them. This really isn't all that difficult, folks. You'd think Washington never saw a classified document before.

[Cecil Turner]

"A key question will be, what did the author of the memo mean with his "S" - did he have any knowledge that Ms. Plame was covert, or was he classifying something else, or what?"

Yes. The entire memo is key, but that paragraph--and the author's intent--is critical to understanding what happened.

"Bonus - in an earlier thread, Cecil Turner, whio has handled classified docs, assures us that covert names (first and last!) do not appear in memos."

Perhaps a slight overstatement: I worked with lots of classified defense docs, and can't be considered an expert on CIA classifications. OTOH, I don't for a minute buy the contention that a NOC's status is only "Secret," nor that the CIA intended for it to be in the INR memo. (And it certainly ought to be "STFU" ;)

[Jim E.]

TM wrote: "Cheney's misstatement about nuclear weapons was understood at the time to be a misstatement - Tim Russert did not comment, and NO headlines blared the next day that the US was about to launch a war against nuclear aremd Iraq."

Wow, that's not how I remember it. Let's take a source -- seemingly respected by the right wing -- and see how they remember that Cheney interview. (And the fact that Russert did not comment is one example of many that shows the media was NOT antiwar.)

Here's the Washington Times on Sept. 9, 2002, on pg A1. Headline: "U.S. reprisal on Iraq to be 'annihilation'"

“Vice President Richard B. Cheney said yesterday [on Meet the Press] that Saddam Hussein is "actively and aggressively" trying to build a nuclear bomb. . . . Mr. Cheney and others yesterday raised the specter of Iraq attacking this country with his deadly weapons. The United States "may well become the target," the vice president said. . . . Mr. Cheney said that based on intelligence acquired in the past 12 to 14 months, the United States can conclude that Saddam has ‘stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capacity.’

And here's the first line of E.J. Dionne's column after that weekend: "IT'S NOW CLEAR: President Bush is resting his case for war against Saddam Hussein on nukes."

Cheney's comments got more attention than you are spinning.

[Truzenzuzex]

TM:

"A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials."

Umm, not too sure about this, but wouldn't a document containing the name of a "covert" CIA agent be classified higher than secret (i.e. top secret)? My best guess is it should be. Hell, I had a secret security classification as a nuclear RO on a submarine, and I sure wouldn't have been able to know something like the name of a "covert" CIA agent.

This is not to suggest Rove or anyone else in government is off the hook if they disclosed information based on a secret document - they are definitely not. It just seems passing strange to me.

[Geek, Esq.]

TM:

"And for the lawyers - if the memo autheor did not know she was covert but marked it "S" anyway, can Rove go down on a lucky guess?"
Only if she wasn't really considered covert.

It definitely won't help him--or Scooter Libby--under prosecutions for violations of the Espionage Act or for perjury.

[Cecil Turner]

"Wow, that's not how I remember it. . . . Cheney's comments got more attention than you are spinning."

Jim, he's referring to the particular comment where Cheney says: "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons"--which some claim was designed to give the impression Saddam already possessed nuclear weapons--not the several others about a reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

[Martin]

So Cecil Turner-you've worked with classified docs. You read a paragraph marked "Secret" in one of them. What are your obligations vis a vis the information in the paragraph?

[Walter]

Put yourself in the President's shoes. America was attacked once on his watch and he is absolutely determined not to let it happen again. He knows that few Americans blame him for the faulty intelligence and lack of preparedness prior to 9/11, but there is a risk of another incident for which he would undoutedly be held accountable.

Cheney is already in Feb 2002 building a case for taking out Saddam. Cheney's office is coordinating intelligence on Iraq, dishing out the bad stuff. Cheney is prodding the President to move, pointing out the WMD's, mentioning the risk of wimping out on Iraq like Bush 41.

Wilson's op-ed piece drew attention to the already-disproven yellowcake story, but more importantly to the fact that Cheney's office was running the intelligence on Iraq. This was too much of an embarrassment. The White House had to destroy Wilson.

[Slartibartfast]

What are your obligations vis a vis the information in the paragraph?

I'm not Cecil, but more than two decades of working with classified information may serve in his stead. My take on this is, which information in the paragraph that made it worthy of portion-marking (S) can be determined by consulting with:

1) The author, and
2) The classifying agency.

In the world of defense, Secret information is always defined by the classification guide, which is in turn derived from the form DD 254. I have no idea if there's an analogue in the world of intelligence, but I'd guess there's something similar, or you couldn't have subcontractors.

[BumperStickerist]

corroborating what Cecil said, I also worked several years with classified material, primarily material which required TS-codeword clearance. (This included writing, reviewing, commenting on, and using the

I don't get how any specifics involving the source or means of collection for that information got into that report. That's one thing that turns regular 'classified' into classified w/ codeword.

My point being that the presence of Plame's name in a report marked only 'secret' gives lie to the notion that she was a NOC.

For those that haven't worked with the material that are interested in learning about it- a material marked 'secret' isn't particularly valuable. Top Secret, Top Secret-CW (with any of a number of code words) would be much more worrisome. Sandy Berger, for a quick example, pulled Top Secret-Codeword material out of the Archive - that's a gross breach of security. (and the fact that a former NSA used scissors for document destruction rather than an office shredder just irks me to no end.)

Did Karl have a security violation? Maybe. But given the classification of the material and the nature of the offense, this isn't a 'pull the clearance' sort of offense.

This is the security equivalent of "Karl, take a refresher course on handling classified' -- though I'm sure other people will hold a different opinion :)

What's funny, in a way, is Wilson's reaction - it's like one those scene where the suspect mentions a detail that hadn't been brought up by the detective.

Detective: "She was murdered."
Suspect: "Do you know who stabbed her?"
Detective: How did you know she was stabbed?

Wilson did the equivalent thing once Novak mentioned the simple fact that Plame worked for the CIA.

By mentioning his wife's former NOC status w/i the CIA along with the specific types of covert work she did Wilson gave out more classified info than Novak (or Rove) ever did. Ooops.

[Steven R. Gerber]

There is no word "thusly." The correct word is "thus."

[J Mann]

I'm a Bush partisan, but I don't get the argument that Corn or Wilson really outed Plame, but Novak didn't. (On the other hand, I do agree that if there was any real danger to Plame or her contacts, they did increase the danger by publicizing Novak's leak).

I mean, let's say that Austin Powers puts on a mustache and introduces himself to Dr. Evil as Dick Smalls, master geologist and sits down to a sumptous dinner. Suddenly, Fat Bastard says: "Dr. Evil! That man works for British Intelligence!" Yes, Fat Bastard didn't use Austin's name, and he didn't say Austin was covert, but there's no question that he has blown Austin's cover.

[SteveMG]

TM:
Shouting across a chasm? How about across several galaxies.

Note: When we cite the Butler Report or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report to support Bush against Wilson for example, the response from the other side is that those reports aren't worth anything. They're biased, or hollow, or tendentious, or something.

How can one have a dialogue with people who immediately say that all of our evidence is tainted - fruit of the poison tree and all that - or worthless?

You can't. I've given up.

The reality-based community is convinced that Bush lied, lied, lied and nothing will convince them otherwise. The fact that Blair and Berlusconi and Chirac and Schroeder and Mubarak and Clinton (both of them) and Daschle and Leahy and Kerry and on and on and on were saying similar things is just dismissed with a wave of the hand or a punch of the keyboard.

What is amazing to me, however, is that any evidence inculpating Bush et al. in any wrongdoing is immediately seized upon as the truth or worthy of investigation. Reports, however, showing connections between Saddam and OBL are tossed aside as meaningless charges. After all the secular Hussein would never associated with Bin Laden. The greater benefit of the doubt is assigned to OBL and Saddam then Bush.

And when you're at that stage of a debate, it's time to end the whole game.

SMG

[overtaxed]

Further to Walter's point, the most interesting thing to come out of the whole Wilson/Plame circus is that Cheney's office was already zeroing in on Saddam in February 2002. This was only 5 months afer 9/11, and 4 months after the campaign in Afghanistan.

Already, bad guy bin Laden was making way for bad guy Saddam.

[Joe]

Another thing that is strange about the memo, is that, generally, mention of a US citizen in a report is kind of a big deal because there has to be some accountability at the producing agency's level that the US citizen is not the target of actual collection. Unless it's something that's already in the public domain or common knowledge. I know that's not too clear, too early for me but I'm sure the intel smart guys can probably elaborate for me (Cecil? Slarti?) You know what I'm saying?

[Jim E.]

"A key question will be, what did the author of the memo mean with his 'S' - did he have any knowledge that Ms. Plame was covert, or was he classifying something else,"

Seems that this would be irrelevant. The designation was for the entire paragraph. It seems the whole protocol would be moot if the recipient would be allowed to guess what was REALLY secret and what was not.

[Jim E.]

This was my favorite sentence of the WP story. Remember, this is one year before the 16 words in the speech:

"It records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger."

They already knew what Wilson reported before his trip. And yet others -- like Stephen Hayes -- still think the yellowcake story works.

[DW West]

Jim E. When you argue that some parts of paragraphs can be secret and some not, that at least suggests that the reader should enquire before passing along any part if it to someone without security clearance.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

"why did the White House react so violently..."

Error of fact 1. The White House hardly said 'boo' about Wilson. It was Wilson who had the 'violent' reaction.

"...to Joe Wilson's suggestion..."

Error of fact 2. Wilson came out, in the beginning of his Op-ed, claiming that Bush manipulated intelligence to gin up support for war.

"...that the story about Saddam Hussein trying to procure uranium from Niger was false? After all, as conservative apologists never tire of pointing out, Wilson didn't really debunk George Bush's words in the 2003 State of the Union address."

I'm glad to see that Kevin has at least learned something from his own comments section, even if most of his commenters haven't.

"Bush said only that Saddam "sought" uranium from Africa, while Wilson merely provided evidence that no uranium ever changed hands."

Error of fact 3. Wilson provided no such information, and it would be impossible to provide such information. Not to mention, that the existence of 'forged documents' is consistent with clandestine sales of uranium.

" The fact is, Wilson's report didn't invalidate Bush's statement.

"So why did the White House go nuts? "

Error #1 repeated. They didn't.

"What were they so scared of that they went into full-blown smear-and-destroy mode?"

Error #1 repeated for the third time. The White House merely told the truth about Wilson and his mission. It's Wilson's reaction that is odd, and suggests he has a guilty conscience.

[Slartibartfast]

I have no experiences regarding the identity of intel sources. The WNINTEL (Warning Notice - Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved) briefing is as close as I got, which is a category of SECRET that if exposed, could compromise that we have intel assets in place but may not compromise the identity of a particular asset. So, for instance, we may have data on Weapon X that we don't want Adversary Y to know that we know. I've never, ever seen the name of a person classified at the level of Secret (or even Confidential), although I've seen the name of agencies protected under SAR.

But in the Defense world, our dealings with sources would tend to be minimal; any information from said sources would get filtered and made source-neutral, as much as possible, by the CIA. I'm thinking that you're going to need someone who's ex-CIA or ex-State to get a more representative answer.

[IceCold]

At least Drum has stumbled across the key point -- Wilson's "charges" WRT to the substantive issues, even if true (which they weren't), didn't really prove anything one way or the other. Which was clear from the outset, and confirmed in detail by the subsequent SSCI investigation (i.e. the CIA didn't consider Wilson's report conclusive or even particularly important). As TM may vaguely recall, that's why I posted comments in the immediate aftermath of the op-ed to the effect that the whole contretemps was silly, it was the Seinfeld scandal, or the "scandal about nothing".

Of course the whole Plame thing is separate and separable, but that hadn't occurred yet. I'm content to leave the parsing of that complex matter to others, and to pay all of that little attention on the assumption that Fitzgerald will provide answers.

But back to Drum. He's far closer to making sense than he or his ilk normally are. He's off by just a small, crucial degree. Nuclear capability was indeed the most important potential threat from Iraq, though in the post-9/11 context the breezy dismissal of all bio/chem threats is an exaggeration -- those issues mattered as well.

But it wasn't the imminence of any nuclear threat from Iraq, it was the basic possibility that mattered. And absolutely no "intelligence" was required to assess the potential Iraqi threat -- that was simply a matter of common sense, based on Iraq's economic and technical capacity, record of reckless behavior, malevolence towards the US, and longstanding extensive contact with international terror groups to include AQ. (In an eerie parallel to post- Gulf War discoveries of UNSCOM, the post-Iraq uncovering of the AQ Khan network rendered all notional timelines of Iraqi nuclear potential moot -- precisely the sort of thing that makes the pre-emptive option, in some cases, the safer one)

It's certainly possible to argue over the judgment call that pre-emption of Iraq without much delay was required. But in 2+ years I have yet to see that (one reason may be that the other side of the argument isn't very persuasive, in a 2003 environment). Instead we have had a tiresome, even bizarre, series of illogical and counter-factual goat-ropes by "critics", of which the Wilson affair is simply the purest and silliest in its illogic. So Drum, sort of, stumbles onto that point, even if he inevitably squanders the insight by trying to build an implausible political edifice on top.

The question posed by one commenter, as to why the WH reacted to the Wilson stuff with a retraction of an SOTU line and then the background commentary (though it hardly seems like the WH was desperate to address the matter, and the reporters usually intiated the exchange on this topic), is interesting.

From the outset, many of us have been stumped by the retraction -- some may recall that the Brits angrily rejected the implicit snub from Tenet and Co. this represented, and subsequent British investigations (actually two, though only the Butler committee gets any mention by most) stood by the assessment. The retraction of the SOTU language remains a mystery to this day -- that is, either a mystery, or an example of incompetence by the WH, since there does not appear to be any good reason for them to have retracted the line.

The WH and the CIA made huge mistakes in not publicly connecting the logic dots of pre-emption from the beginning. Most people would/will default to the better-safe-than-sorry logical side of the question, but they need to understand that's what's being decided. In an era of global terror and proliferated WMD capability, pre-emption is not inhibited by unavoidably imperfect intelligence assessments - to the contrary, such uncertainty is what DRIVES pre-emption. David Kay, in his weird and fairly dubious final congressional appearance, got things precisely backwards on this point. Yet even this did not move the administration to educate, and put the discussion on a logical basis.

Soon enough we'll know all we need to about the Plame matter, but that will count for little. The inability or unwillingness of a clear-headed and courageous administration to simply lay out the logic of its very pragmatic pre-emptive tactical approach is the real scandal, from the standpoint of longer term national interests.

[Jim E.]

DW West,
I totally agree with you. In fact, it was TM -- not me -- who was speculating that Rove or others might be in the clear if they happened to leak the not-really-classified stuff. The entire paragraph was designated 'S.' I never argued parts of the paragraph were NOT secret.

[trrll]

I'd actually be more happier if I could convince myself that Bush lied, because when it comes to a President, I am more comfortable with dishonesty than with incompetence. But it just doesn't make sense. Surely, if the Administration were committed to a fraud, then they would have arranged to "find" clear evidence of WMD.

What the Wilson affair reveals is an administration that was already convinced that it knew the answer, and didn't want to be bothered with troublesome facts. They were cherry-picking nuggets of "intelligence" that supported their blame-Iraq mindset, and ignoring anything that didn't. And the attack on Wilson is just the most public example of the displeasure that was communicated to anybody who brought them data that challenged their views. As a result, they ended up with a self-referencing loop in which evidence against WMD was either suppressed or given a negative "spin," further reinforcing their pro-WMD bias.

It is likely that similar distortions underlie the other failures of intelligence and policy in Iraq.

[Jim E.]

"The White House hardly said 'boo' about Wilson."

Then why did one of the appellate court judges refer -- in the affirmative -- to the "war on Wilson" in one of his rulings? That judge, who has seen way more info than you and me, disagrees with you.

[BumperStickerist]

mean, let's say that Austin Powers puts on a mustache and introduces himself to Dr. Evil as Dick Smalls, master geologist and sits down to a sumptous dinner. Suddenly, Fat Bastard says: "Dr. Evil! That man works for British Intelligence!" Yes, Fat Bastard didn't use Austin's name, and he didn't say Austin was covert, but there's no question that he has blown Austin's cover.

To revise and correct the analogy -

Austin Powers shows up at a dinner as Austin Powers who is known (by some, if not every human on the planet) to work at British Intelligence.

Fat Bastard says "Say, Austin, don't you work for British intelligence?" Austin's wife then says "How did you know that Austin Powers was a top secret undercover agent who worked with covert sources overseas for many years?"

Fat Bastard: " I didn't .. until now."
----------------------------------

btw - the article about how the CIA uses 'secret' to classify sections containing agent names brings into question the overall classification of the report.

Was the paragraph in a document marked 'Secret' 'Secret-Codeword' (which is possible, if unlikely) Top Secret or 'TS- Codeword' with paragraph classifications marked within the overall classification?

[Slartibartfast]

As far as I'm aware, there is no "Secret-Codeword" level of classification.

[Miller]

Wilson's report really was a minor contribution to the body of evidence supporting or refuting the uranium claims. But Wilson also knew (but not through his own enquiries) that the report he was sent to investigate in Feb 2002 was known by that March to be based on forged documents.

But the President in Jan 2003 cited that debunked intelligence. The CIA and State knew that it was a false story but neither could openly discussed it. Wilson spoke up. No wonder that the White House reacted so forcefully.

[BumperStickerist]

There is - but the presence of a codeword makes the report SCI material.

This is an overview of security and classifications along with some overview on types of clearances.

Public infor - On the Web

...

4.1 SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE
SI is one of several categories of SCI that deals specifically with
communications or signals intelligence (SIGINT). There used to be various
levels of sensitivity in SI, UMBRA being the most sensitive, SPOKE being
less sensitive, and MORAY being the least sensitive compartment. To express
the sensitivity the level was stamped along with the primary classification.
For example, a document page containing UMBRA SCI information would have
been stamped TOP SECRET UMBRA and SPOKE SCI would be stamped SECRET SPOKE.

This should not imply that having a Secret or Top Secret clearance would
give access to SECRET SPOKE documents however. The consumer must possess the
appropriate SCI clearance and be a part of the appropriate Special Access
Program in order to access the information. It should be noted that UMBRA
information was always Top Secret and SPOKE and MORAY always at least
Secret, with SPOKE being "more secret" then MORAY.

This has recently changed however, and UMBRA, SPOKE, and MORAY are no longer
authorized for use. Instead such documents are classified as SECRET COMINT
or TOP SECRET COMINT.
----------------------------------------

fwiw, my job required TS-SCI.

The article gets into different agency markings.

It was written up in 2000 so the info would be contemporaneous with the events we're discussing.

[Davis]

Liar? No. The American people should give the President the benefit of the doubt as to whether he "lied". The real issue is the intelligence and analysis that he received. Obviously some things should never have been stated as facts. The blame for this has fallen on the CIA, but the Vice President's office was also handling intelligence. We need to know more about who was pushing the yellowcake story and where those forged documents originated. The President needs to consider where he got his information and get rid of those who misinformed him. Loyalty is one thing, but it shouldn't trump national security.

[Cecil Turner]

"You read a paragraph marked "Secret" in one of them. What are your obligations vis a vis the information in the paragraph?"

The general obligation is to safeguard the classified information contained therein. But it's not always that simple, especially when discussing long paragraphs. In this case we're talking about Wilson being assigned to an Africa trip after a CIA meeting at Langley attended by his wife. Is the fact that Wilson went to Africa a secret? (Not according to Wilson.) Is the fact that CIA headquarters is at Langley a secret? (Obviously not.) Is the deliberative process that led to Wilson being sent a secret? (Probably yes.) Is Wilson's wife being there a secret? (In this case, yes, but can you tell that from reading the memo?) Now try reading a hundred memos and see if you can keep the information straight. There's a reason for the IIPA requirement for the information to be "clearly marked."

Moreover, the real problem is what happens once people start talking about it (which, after Wilson's NYT article, they certainly would). I doubt the first guy reading the INR memo would think Plame's identity was classified. But there's no way a person getting it second-hand would know. (And if it just related to some random analyst's identity, AFAICT, there's no reason to think it would be.) There may be some nefarious plot on the part of the "Bushies" to out Plame as a retaliatory personnel policy, but this doesn't prove it. In fact, it tends to support Novak's characterization as an "offhand" remark by someone who apparently didn't think it was very important. And if this turns out to be an unintentional leak (concerning a mission Wilson had already penned a NYT editorial about) . . .

[Jim E.]

"Loyalty is one thing, but it shouldn't trump national security."

That's crazy talk. Republican Party first, U.S. security second. Why do you support the terrorists?

[Mac]

Sometimes I worry about Mr. Drum.

"So why did the White House go nuts?"

Besides the fact that there is no evidence to support this assertion, it ignores the people actually going nuts in July of 2003.

[Jim E.]

"it ignores the people actually going nuts in July of 2003."

That's true. That's the same month Bush encouraged the insurgents, in a Ward Connerlly-like fashion, to attack U.S. troops (a line even Ari Fleischer has since admitted was not helpful).

[Jeff]

SMG - It's actually pretty hilarious the way you do precisely what you accuse your adversaries of doing: you sweepingly discount without argument what might be valid. Sure, some people might dismiss the evidence of the SSCI and the Butler report. But other people can and do argue on the basis of specific textual and contextual interpretation that certain specific and general features of those reports are, in fact, tainted -- again, in specifiable ways. I believe, for instance, that there is all sorts of useful and reliable information in those two reports -- but 1)it is often placed in an unreliable intepretive and argumentative context by the authors of the report and 2)some of the information in there is misleading at best -- again, this judgment being based, among other things, on claims to that effect made by other relevant parties.

I truly find it strange that we are expected to take, say, the SSCI report as gospel because it was, after all, produced by the government. Or because the Democrats signed off on it, except for the parts they didn't.

The same goes for connections between Saddam and OBL -- charges are not "tossed aside" (though by some people they undoubtedly are), they are refuted. Though on this count at a certain point when you see the source of those claims, and that source has proven to be consistently unreliable in the past, then you have a certain right to toss them aside. We can't spend the day, every day, in explanation.

That said, I will be happy if you will acknowledge to begin with that the Bush administration was wrong in all sorts of crucial judgments leading to war -- and then we can talk about whether they knew it at the time later.

Which brings me to Ice Cold, who says,

But it wasn't the imminence of any nuclear threat from Iraq, it was the basic possibility that mattered. And absolutely no "intelligence" was required to assess the potential Iraqi threat

But that's not the way the war was publically justified, was it? If it were, fair enough - we the American people could then have debated whether we shared the Bush administration's judgment, whether it was worth spending lots of money and risking lots of lives to address that through war, and so on. But that's not what happened -- and that's part of what bothers some of us, and lead us to see a very deep betrayal of democracy here. If the other side of the argument wasn't persuasive in 2003, why on earth did the Bush administration feel the need to make all sorts of other justifications for the war -- which turned out to be wrong, and based on what could have and by some was seen as a weak evidentiary basis at the time. You seem to acknowledge the latter point. If you accept the possibility that the Bush administration was unwilling to make the argument you want them to make, which does not depend on intelligence, it seems to me you have to acknowledge at least the possibility that the Bush administration was deliberately misleading in its public justifications for war.

[DW West]

Did the White House go nuts as per Drum? They obviously took this seriously, with senior officials like Libby and Rove passing inside information to reporters and coordinating the pushback. And it wasn't just answering questions - Rove is known to have contacted at least 6 reporters after Novak's article (for which Rove was one source) appeared.

[Davis]

Give the President some credit. He did retract the "16 words". He doesn't mind admitting that one detail in his speech was wrong. And you've got to believe him when he says he would rather err on the side of our security.

[Jim E.]

Regarding the "UPDATE"--

Strange you'd call a "Wilson problem"?

It's not a "Wilson problem," but a White House problem.

[Jim E.]

Regarding the "UPDATE"--

Strange you'd call a "Wilson problem."

It's not a "Wilson problem," but a White House problem.

[TM]

Here's the Washington Times on Sept. 9, 2002, on pg A1. Headline: "U.S. reprisal on Iraq to be 'annihilation'"

Gee, Cheney misspoke in March 2003 - might be worth following the links.

And a point made by others - Fitz surely knows what the author of the memo had in mind when he marked it "S", and what he knew about Ms. Plame's status.

And *unless* he made some follow-up phone calls after that meeting, he should not have known she had been covert in the past.

I have no time today, and its kiling me...

[Marianne]

Sure the White House retracted the 16 words the day after the story came out. They knew 16 months earlier that it was bogus. And they only retracted it in order to contain the story, a strategy that was unsuccessful.

[j]

"Gee, Cheney misspoke in March 2003 - might be worth following the links."

Gee, he "misspoke" so many times, it's hard to keep track.

[Jeff]

TM - regarding the update, I just can't quite get what your point is. The press appears to have attended quite closely in the passage you cite to what you call Wilson's caveats. And Fleischer gives an appropriate response, which is that WIlson was wrong in his assumption that the White House saw the intelligence report from his trip. The follow-up question is then the appropriate one: then what the hell went wrong? Because, and here's the crucial point, something went wrong in the administration. Now, the fact that the administration didn't want to address that and instead, subsequently, went after Wilson with everything they had, including apparently inappropriate and irrelevant national security stuff, is a black mark for the administration, not for Wilson or the press.

What's more, there is continually accumulating evidence of things going wrong in the Bush administration, and that, in fact, the President and the VP should have known better about Niger-Iraq and other features of their justification for war. Today's WaPo, for instance, says that the INR memo

records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

In other words, there appear to have been plenty of well-informed people in important posts within the government who felt quite confident that there was nothing to the Niger-Iraq business. Surely this makes it more plausible that those driving policy were not interested in impartially judging the facts, or presenting actual best judgments to the American people by way of justifying the war.

As I read that July 7 exchange and what happened next, the administration judged that their apparently truthful response -- no, the results of Wilson's trip were not known by us -- was not effective, and so they smeared Wilson. But the explanation for that is not simply that the press didn't get it and missed Wilson's caveats. It's that the press reaosnably said, well, why didn't the President and the VP know about the results of Wilson's trip? And that is not a question the Bush administration was prepared to deal with.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.'

This is preposterous. As a matter of logic, you can't 'disprove' this, you could only fail to find evidence of it being so.

And, in fact, there was such evidence, including some Wilson himself reported. Why the aversion to reading the Senate Intelligence Committee report? It's all in there.

[TexasToast]

Apparently, the State Department had looked at the "evidence" and decided that it "disproved" the Iraq uranium allegation to their satisfaction. Only those pushing for war insisted upon an Iraqi "reconstituted WMD program." I guess State wasn't in on "fixing" the evidence.

[Jeff]

Patrick - you raise an important point. You seem to be doing something I've seen a number of Bush defenders do: you're adopting a pre-modern, pre-scientific notion of proof and disproof. In the modern world, with its modern science, it's possible to disprove a factual allegation, even though you can't disprove it with logical certainty. That is, it will always remain possible that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, in two senses. One, it's clear that the State Department was referring to specific allegations, which it had disproven -- in its own best judgment, of course. It's possible there were other bases for other allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Two, it always remains logically possible that these very allegations are in fact accurate. But that is consistent with the claim by the State Department to have disproven them.

Maybe it would be better to have said that the allegations had been falsified, rather than disproven. But I take it that's what they're talking about. Would that have satisfied you more?

[t-bold]

"In fact, it tends to support Novak's characterization as an "offhand" remark by someone who apparently didn't think it was very important."

No that's Novak's characterization after the brouhaha started.

His first characterization-a week after his original column: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Nothing very "offhand" there.

[Cecil Turner]

"One, it's clear that the State Department was referring to specific allegations, which it had disproven -- in its own best judgment, of course."

I'm not sure what specific allegations you're talking about, but the "16 words" refer to British Intelligence's contention Iraq sought uranium in Africa, the source for which was never shared with the US, and which was summed up in the Butler report as follows:

In early 1999, Iraqi officials visited a number of African countries, including Niger. The visit was detected by intelligence, and some details were subsequently confirmed by Iraq. The purpose of the visit was not immediately known. But uranium ore accounts for almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports . . .

There was further and separate intelligence that in 1999 the Iraqi regime had also made inquiries about the purchase of uranium ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this case, there was some evidence that by 2002 an agreement for a sale had been reached.

During 2002, the UK received further intelligence from additional sources which identified the purpose of the visit to Niger as having been to negotiate the purchase of uranium ore, though there was disagreement as to whether a sale had been agreed and uranium shipped.

They concluded the information (and "16 words") was "well-founded." Tenet said it "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches." Obviously we don't have any good method for corroborating British Intelligence sources, but concluding it was "false" or "disproven" by INR--who hadn't even seen the raw data--is not on.

[Jeff]

Cecil Turner - You seem to have missed my point. I'm not claiming that INR disproved anything in my response to Patrick. I'm explaining what the claim by INR could plausibly have meant.

That said, I am skeptical of the Butler report's conclusion you refer to -- not because I dismiss it from the getgo, but for several reasons, some of which can be found here:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap4.html#sect4

and here:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/000930.html

I find it odd that so many people take the Butler Report's conclusions on this matter as authoritative with so little evidence to stand on. But maybe my skepticism is unwarranted. Let me put a question this way: do you take the Butler Report to have been a purely truth-seeking document? if so, why?

[Cecil Turner]

"I'm explaining what the claim by INR could plausibly have meant."

Whatever it meant, they obviously could not disprove the British reports.

"That said, I am skeptical of the Butler report's conclusion you refer to -- not because I dismiss it from the getgo, but for several reasons . . ."

They claim to have sources, the links you cite have negative information. (The second is not very impressive, BTW--she ignores the Congo, and seems to think it odd that British Intelligence refused to make its source public, even after they had previously declined to share it with US intelligence.)

"Let me put a question this way: do you take the Butler Report to have been a purely truth-seeking document? if so, why?"

Why not? The members seemed qualified and with varied political backgrounds, the results seem pretty balanced (uranium from Africa was one of the few points they substantiated), and the Brits seem to accept it. Do you have evidence it's not?

[Jeff]

Cecil Turner - This would require a long discussion, I suspect, but real quickly: 1) the Niger-Iraq thing was a loaded issue in Britain, not because of a U.S. domestic political fight, but because of Britain's central implication in it by Bush in the SOTU. 2) The extreme vagueness of the references in the Butler Report (e.g. para 494, 495) to the intelligence/evidentiary basis is not required, I strongly suspect, by the protection of sources and methods. I base this suspicion on, among other things, the way the SSCI was able to indicate sources of its info to a variety of extents much more concretely than the Butler Report without compromising sources and methods. 3) The seeming weaseliness of important claims such as "We have been told that it was not until early 2003 that the British Government became aware that the US (and other states) had received from a journalistic source a number of documents alleged to cover the Iraqi procurement of uranium from Niger." (p. 123) Told by whom? Did they try to verify or falsify? What about other than journalistic sources all around? 4) Look at the role that the fact that uranium constituted almost three-quarters of Niger's exports plays in rendering intelligence credible. (cf. para 493 and 503.) Now, that suggests that without that piece of the puzzle, the intelligence is less credible. Yet that fact, in my judgment, makes it very hard to see how a claim to knowledge, such as Blair's, could be well-founded. "Strongly believe," "Strongly suspect" or something like that, okay. But Blair claimed to know that Saddam was etc etc. I'm talking here about the reasoning of the Butler Report itself, so DR Congo does not change things here. 5) Why wouldn't the British be more forthcoming with the U.S., if not the IAEA, with its intelligence -- it has not been, to the extent that I can tell?

[SteveMG]

Jeff:
"It's actually pretty hilarious the way you do precisely what you accuse your adversaries of doing: you sweepingly discount without argument what might be valid"

And the citations for me doing this are?

I've NEVER dismissed original source material cited here or elsewhere. Never. You're the one repeating that exercise.

You just dismiss - as you did above - with a wave of the hand the Butler report or the SCSI report. These are original source documents based on classified material and interviews.

And then you risibly require that those citing those reports have to prove the authenticity of the documents. Great comedy act there, Jeff. You should open for Wayne Newton in Vegas.

This is an impossible standard, of course. We can't conduct interviews with the intelligence analysts or review classified interviews with defectors. How are we to prove - as if you'd accept it anyway - the accuracy of the Butler Report?

No, it's up to you to show where those reports are wrong. And that you have not - and cannot do.

Enough. As TM noted, we're shouting across a chasm.

SMG

[SteveMG]

Jeff:
You want us to provide the names and sources of intelligence used by the Butler Report showing that the Iraq-sought-nuclear-material claim was valid?

And how the hell are we supposed to do that? You cite sections of the Report and then demand that you won't accept its pronouncements unless they indicate who the sources were/are and what their analysis was based upon?

This is absurd. It's so absurd I can't believe I'm pointing out its absurdity.

SMG

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'...you're adopting a pre-modern, pre-scientific notion of proof and disproof. In the modern world, with its modern science, it's possible to disprove a factual allegation...'

Great. Please explain, scientifically, how you can disprove that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa in February 2002.

[SteveMG]

Okay, we've had the Butler Report, the Sentate Select Committee on Intelligence's Report and the Silberman Commission.

All investigated pre-war intelligence and claims by the Blair and Bush governments re Iraq's WMD programs and other weapons systems or capabilities.

To my knowledge, not ONE single case of falsified intelligence or cooked intelligence or manipulated intelligence was uncovered by those various bodies.

And yet critics here demand that we provide the source intelligence investigated by those three commissions. It's not enough that those entities issued reports exonerating Bush and Blair of charges of falsified intelligence. No, we must show the actual intelligence, the actual analysts reports, the actual agents interviewed in order for us to use those sources as authoritative ones.

If we don't do that (and of course we can't) then those sources have no credibility.

This ladies and gentleman is what is called a bad faith argument.

At the very least.

SMG

[Jeff]

Ok, here we go.

SMG - You say you refuse to engage with those who disagree with you because they -- evidently all -- don't listen to evidence and argument. That looks like "tossing aside" to me.

You just dismiss - as you did above - with a wave of the hand the Butler report or the SCSI report. These are original source documents based on classified material and interviews.

To express skepticism for identifiable reasons is not to dismiss with a wave of the hand. In a number of posts here I have used facts from the SSCI, and I have stated that it contains useful information. I have no idea what you mean by "original source documents."

And then you risibly require that those citing those reports have to prove the authenticity of the documents.

Show me where I've made such a requirement. (I'll leave aside the fact that you seem to have changed what you are referring to as "original source documents." In this passage, it appears no to be the reports themselves, as in the previous paragraph, but the material the reports drew on.) You won't be able to. What I expressed was skepticism of the Butler report's extremely and, I suggested, unnecessarily vague references to the evidentiary basis for a very specific set of claims. I gave specific textual references for the passages I was referring to, and offered some reasons for that skepticism, including an unfavorable comparison with the SSCI report. Note: there is no specificity whatsoever that I can see given to the evidence adduced by the Butler report in support of its conclusions about Niger. And the weakness of the factual basis, as I argued, is suggested by the fact that the reasoning that evidently led to their conclusions required the addition of the fact that 3/4 of NIger's trade or whatever was in Niger. That suggests to me the unspecified intelligence was not on such a good footing on its own.

So you are truly constructing a strawman when you say

This is an impossible standard, of course. We can't conduct interviews with the intelligence analysts or review classified interviews with defectors.

Similarly, you are constructing a strawman when you say

You want us to provide the names and sources of intelligence used by the Butler Report showing that the Iraq-sought-nuclear-material claim was valid?

And how the hell are we supposed to do that? You cite sections of the Report and then demand that you won't accept its pronouncements unless they indicate who the sources were/are and what their analysis was based upon?

Believe it or not, I foresaw such strawman-construction and tried to forestall it with my 2), with the comparison to the SSCI, which provided not "names and sources" etc etc, but some more solid indications of what was coming from where. Oh well, nice try.

Similarly, you construct a straw-man here:

And yet critics here demand that we provide the source intelligence investigated by those three commissions. It's not enough that those entities issued reports exonerating Bush and Blair of charges of falsified intelligence. No, we must show the actual intelligence, the actual analysts reports, the actual agents interviewed in order for us to use those sources as authoritative ones.

If we don't do that (and of course we can't) then those sources have no credibility.

Show me where I said that those sources have no credibility. You can't, because I didn't. I expressed skepticism, yes. But that's different from all those things you say.

By the way, you say

To my knowledge, not ONE single case of falsified intelligence or cooked intelligence or manipulated intelligence was uncovered by those various bodies.

I was under the impression that the SSCI report was actually only the first of two reports, and didn't address directly that question, except in small part. I'm under that impression from p. 2 of the SSCI report, which states that the second report will address, among other things, "whether public statements, reports, and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information (phase II)." My current understanding is that there will now be no second report. Oh well. I wonder why.

Anyway, moving on, you say

No, it's up to you to show where those reports are wrong. And that you have not - and cannot do.

Interesting you should put it that way. It's probably true that I myself can't show where those reports are wrong anymore than you can show where they're right. There are probably others who can do so better. But I do think that I can show -- again, by interpreting, with as much specificity as possible, the text of the Butler report, both by means of internal attention to the text and contextual considerations -- that there is some grounds for skepticism of, say, the Butler Report with regard to what it says and what it concludes about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, and Africa more generally. You seem dangerously close to suggesting the only alternative to such skepticism -- redescribed in strawman terms -- is to take the Report on faith, as you seem to rule out the very possibility of assessing it one way or the other. I doubt that's what you really mean to do.

One last question for you, SMG: if it turned out that the "further intelligence from additional sources which identified the purpose of the visit to Niger as having been to negotiate the purchase of uranium ore" that the UK received during 2002, relied on by the Butler Report (para 494), was in fact substantially the same as already falsified intelligence, then would you think it pretty unlikely that Iraq actually did seek to purchase uranium from Niger in the late 1990s or early 2000s? (Yes, yes, I realize I am leaving out the DR Congo here.)

Patrick - Two points in response to this:

Please explain, scientifically, how you can disprove that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa in February 2002.

First, note that the claim was that allegations, presumably specific allegations, were disproved. That seems straightforward enough. Second, though, I think it's fair to say that if you look at all the available evidence from February 2002, and you are confident that it's all the relevant evidence, and there is none that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa, you've pretty much disproven the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa in February 2002.

[Joe Mealyus]

PRS: "Please explain, scientifically, how you can disprove...."

Jeff: "....it's fair to say that if you look at all the available evidence ... and you are confident that it's all the relevant evidence ... you've pretty much disproven...."

Speaking scientifically myself, isn't it fair to say that once you become confident that the available evidence is the relevant evidence, you can pretty much disprove ice to the eskimos?

[jukeboxgrad]

SYL: "Considering what we've read in the amicus brief regarding her previous 'outings'"

The judges apparently didn't find those arguments convincing, so it's hard to understand why anyone else would, like you, for example.

"then Wilson did it himself first [outed Plame] in his online bio"

No, because that bio didn't, as Novak did, draw a connection between CIA and Plame.

"the press doesn't hear about those other referrals because it shouldn't leak further."

You're making an assumption about why "the press doesn't hear about those other referrals." I think another very simple explanation is that those other referrals might pertain to all sorts of matters that are much more trivial than the very public (as in, pages of a major magazine) outing of an agent.

"Wilson blasted to the entire world that his wife had been 'outed'"

You're creating the impression he did that right away. On the contrary. In the early stages, he seemed to make an effort to not compound the damage that had already been done by Novak et al. Here's what he said to Blitzer on 8/3/03: "with respect to my wife, I don't answer any questions. And anything that I say with respect to that, the allegations about her are all hypothetical. I would not confirm or deny her place of employment. To do so would be, if she were, a breach of national security; and if she were not, at a minimum, what they have done is they have forced her to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions from neighbors and friends and whatnot."

[jukeboxgrad]

ROB: "His conclusion that his trip completely debunked the '16 words'"

He never made a claim such as "completely debunked." However, his trip cast a great deal of doubt on some of the most important of those 16 words: "recently," and "significant quantities." I notice you have ignored my question: show me where SSCI and/or Butler provide support for "recently" and "significant quantities."

"why did Wilson lie about who suggested him for the trip"

Why are you lying about who suggested him for the trip?

Please explain why the sources for the SSCI report are more credible than this source: "A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.'"

Also note this: "At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help."

"Why did he work so hard to give the impression that it was Cheney's office that sent him and read the subsequent report?"

He never said "it was Cheney's office that sent him." His description of Cheney's role is essentially the same description you can find in SSCI. Neverless, we still see outright lies such as this: "Wilson Falsely Claimed That It Was Vice President Cheney Who Sent Him To Niger."

[jukeboxgrad]

TM: "Susan Schmidt's widely remarked WaPo article"

You mean the article where she proved she can't tell the difference between Iraq and Iran (see the sidebar correction). Which might have more than a little to do with the fact that her article is "widely remarked" in certain quarters.

More on this here. You also recently touted Lindgren touting Schmidt, in a recent update somewhere around these parts. To his credit, Lindgren finally ran a correction, but you and Glenn were touting him before he did this.

"even if Wilson lied about Cheney knowing"

As far as I know, Wilson said "would have been distributed [to Cheney's office]," not "was distributed." If you can show that he said the latter, or if you can show that these different phrases have identical meanings, then you might have some kind of point.

In other words, despite many claims (such as yours) to the contrary, Wilson didn't lie "about Cheney knowing."

[jukeboxgrad]

CECIL: "I don't for a minute buy the contention that a NOC's status is only 'Secret,' nor that the CIA intended for it to be in the INR memo."

As you know, the memo was written by someone from State, not CIA. Someone from State might not know or care exactly what the CIA "intended."

"There's a reason for the IIPA requirement for the information to be 'clearly marked.'"

You persist in suggesting that Rove is off the hook because the memo didn't proclaim in blinking neon, "don't talk with reporters and tell them stuff about people who work for the CIA, unless you know for sure you're not passing classified information." One would think this is just a matter of common sense, and not something that needs to be "clearly marked."

This sort of reminds me of how the famous PDB is often dismissed as not being specific enough, I guess because it didn't specify flight numbers and seat numbers that the 9/11 folks were going to use.

"In fact, it tends to support Novak's characterization as an 'offhand' remark"

Novak is all over the map on this, since, as t-bold pointed out, Novak also said: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

[jukeboxgrad]

JIM E: "Cheney's comments ['reconstituted nuclear weapon'] got more attention than you are spinning."

Indeed. Another example is here. And I think Tom is aware of this example, since I cited it here.

Tom said "Cheney's misstatement about nuclear weapons was understood at the time to be a misstatement." Funny thing how a couple of days later WaPo has a headline "Bush Clings To Dubious Allegations About Iraq," and Cheney's "reconstituted nuclear weapons" is the first example cited in the article.

Yes, in paragraph 6, WaPo notes that Cheney apparently contradicted himself, but it doesn't attempt to interpret or resolve the contradiction. There is certainly no indication that WaPo is suggesting it understands that "reconstituted nuclear weapons" is a "misstatement;" the "misstatement" could equally have been the statement on the other side of contradiction: "only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons." In fact, WaPo hints that both of these statements by Cheney are simply wrong.

In other words, one can fairly claim that WaPo understood "reconstituted nuclear weapons" to "be a misstatement" only if one also acknowledges that WaPo understood "only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons" to also be a mistatement, i.e., a statement not supported by the available facts.

Cecil said "Jim, he's referring to the particular comment where Cheney says: 'We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons'--which some claim was designed to give the impression Saddam already possessed nuclear weapons--not the several others about a reconstituted nuclear weapons program."

Cecil, it's possible Jim misunderstood TM in the way you point out, but I didn't. And I've shown that Tom is wrong: WaPo did indeed promptly notice "reconstituted nuclear weapons," and they did not blithely dismiss it as an innocent slip of the tongue, in the manner TM and you suggest. And despite this, it was apparently months before Cheney lifted a finger to correct his ostensibly innocent misstatement.

[jukeboxgrad]

BUMPER: "By mentioning his wife's former NOC status w/i the CIA along with the specific types of covert work she did Wilson gave out more classified info than Novak (or Rove) ever did. Ooops."

Like many, you imply that Wilson ran right along behind Novak, helping the latter out Plame. That's nonsense. On the contrary. In the early stages, Wilson made an effort to not compound the damage that had already been done by Novak et al. Here's what Wilson said to Blitzer on 8/3/03: "with respect to my wife, I don't answer any questions. And anything that I say with respect to that, the allegations about her are all hypothetical. I would not confirm or deny her place of employment. To do so would be, if she were, a breach of national security; and if she were not, at a minimum, what they have done is they have forced her to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions from neighbors and friends and whatnot."

So please provide an example of early on (when the cat was perhaps not yet fully out of the bag), where Wilson mentioned "his wife's former NOC status w/i the CIA along with the specific types of covert work she did."

OVERTAXED: "the most interesting thing to come out of the whole Wilson/Plame circus is that Cheney's office was already zeroing in on Saddam in February 2002 ... Already, bad guy bin Laden was making way for bad guy Saddam."

Indeed, as is indicated here: "resources were diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq before we accomplished our mission there. How can I be so sure? General Franks told me" (link).

J MANN: "I don't get the argument that Corn or Wilson really outed Plame, but Novak didn't."

Indeed. It is often overlooked that Novak used the word "operative," which is commonly defined as "a secret agent; a spy."

[jukeboxgrad]

STEVE MG: "When we cite the Butler Report or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report to support Bush against Wilson for example, the response from the other side is that those reports aren't worth anything."

There are indeed reasons to question those reports. However, let's put that aside for a moment. Even if I assume those reports are not tainted, they still do not (as far as I can tell) back up Bush's assertion regarding "recently" and "significant quantities." I have raised this challenge many, many times, and I think the lack of response is highly revealing.

"The fact that Blair and Berlusconi and Chirac and Schroeder and Mubarak and Clinton (both of them) and Daschle and Leahy and Kerry and on and on and on were saying similar things"

With the exception of Blair, I don't believe any of those folks made a uranium statement regarding "recently" and "significant quantities." And this is critical. WMD hype was central to the Bush case for war. And "nukular" hype was, in turn, central to the WMD case (recall "mushroom cloud"). And the Niger-uranium claim was, in turn, central to the nuclear case. And the words "recently" and "significant quantities" were, in turn, central to the Niger-uranium claim. (In other words, it's no accident that the White House took Wilson's efforts very, very seriously. By the way, an indication of how upset they were is that they acted with great haste, bad judgment and indiscretion, in a manner which was obviously self-destructive, ultimately.)

Therefore, to focus attention on the 16 words, and, in particular, on "recently" and "significant quantities," is highly appropriate.

[jukeboxgrad]

PATRICK: "The White House hardly said 'boo' about Wilson."

Yup. I guess that's why "two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife" (link). I guess that's what you call hardly saying "boo." (I realize DW West has made a similar point.)

"Wilson came out, in the beginning of his Op-ed, claiming that Bush manipulated intelligence to gin up support for war"

In the absence of an answer to the question I raised regarding "recently" and "significant quantities," Wilson's allegation appears to be correct. Actually, "manipulated intelligence" is an understatement. This appears to be an example of simply making stuff up.

"The White House merely told the truth about Wilson and his mission."

In order to accept that talking point, you have to overlook this: "A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.'"

And this: "At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help."

By the way, Rove apparently told Cooper that Plame "authorized" Wilson's trip. There is no apparent basis for this statement, outside of Rove's imagination. Speaking of "telling the truth."

Also let us know why Plame's role (whatever you think it was) was relevant. As I've said, it was a WSJ reporter, oddly enough, who said: "That Ms. Plame recommended her husband doesn't undercut Mr. Wilson's credentials for the job of trying to figure out whether Saddam Hussein was seeking the raw material for a nuclear weapon in Africa."

So please explain why it was impossible for the White House to tell "the truth about Wilson and his mission" without also outing an agent in the process. Also, if Rove was simply telling "the truth about Wilson and his mission," why did Rove have to hide behind "double super secret background?" And then why did he lie about his behavior for a couple of years, if he was merely pursuing the noble enterprise of telling "the truth about Wilson and his mission?"

Finally, why was telling "the truth about Wilson and his mission" a higher priority than being careful with classified information (or, at least, information that Rove had reason to suspect _might be_ classified), regarding a WMD-related matter, during wartime?

"Why the aversion to reading the Senate Intelligence Committee report? It's all in there."

"All" is a bit of an exaggeration. What's in there supports the idea that once a upon a time, there are signs that Saddam tried to get uranium from Niger. What's not in there is any meaningful basis for "recently" and "significant quantities." If you can demonstrate I'm wrong, please do so.

[jukeboxgrad]

ICECOLD: "the CIA didn't consider Wilson's report conclusive or even particularly important"

One very legitimate reason to consider Wilson's report not "particularly important" was that we already knew what it told us: "the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger" (link). (Thanks for Jim E for also pointing this out.)

"no 'intelligence' was required to assess the potential Iraqi threat"

Trouble is, Bush didn't hype the prewar hysteria by telling us about a "potential Iraqi threat." He hyped the prewar hysteria by telling us Saddam had massive stockpiles tucked under his arm, ready to go at a moment's notice. Important difference.

"It's certainly possible to argue over the judgment call that pre-emption of Iraq without much delay was required."

Indeed. Trouble is, we didn't have a chance to have an honest and serious public discussion along those lines, because we were fed lies (one example of many: NYT, Miller and Chalabi).

"subsequent British investigations (actually two, though only the Butler committee gets any mention by most) stood by the assessment"

Trouble is, even though Butler says "well-founded," it doesn't really provide a basis for this (especially with regard to "recently" and "significant quantities").

"The retraction of the SOTU language remains a mystery to this day"

The "mystery" is why you still defend that language even though there was no basis for the heart of the statement: "recently" and "significant quantities."

"The inability or unwillingness of a clear-headed and courageous administration to simply lay out the logic of its very pragmatic pre-emptive tactical approach is the real scandal"

You have some kind of a point. In my opinion, Bush didn't trust us to come up with the answer he wanted. That's why he didn't frame the question in the honest way you suggest.

In a way I think you're saying, as some people do, that the war was proper even sans WMD. Trouble is, Bush didn't sell the war that way: "we're not sure about WMD, but we must invade anyway." Bush said: "we're sure about WMD, therefore we must invade."

I realize Jeff also has argued this important point quite cogently.

[jukeboxgrad]

BUMPER: "Austin's wife then says 'How did you know that Austin Powers was a top secret undercover agent who worked with covert sources overseas for many years?'"

You're ignoring the fact that Novak said "operative," and you're ignoring the fact that (as I've shown) Wilson tried to get the cat back into the bag, even after Novak let it out.

SLART: "any information from said sources would get filtered and made source-neutral, as much as possible, by the CIA"

One more reminder: FWIW, the memo we're discussing was written by someone from State, not CIA.

DAVIS: "The President needs to consider where he got his information and get rid of those who misinformed him."

Exactly. How peculiar that George "slam-dunk" Tenet got a medal. The reason is apparent to me: Tenet, like many people, told the boss exactly what they knew the boss wanted to hear. Those folks get medals from Bush. And then there are folks like Wilson.

[jukeboxgrad]

JEFF: "why didn't the President and the VP know about the results of Wilson's trip?"

Indeed. As I've mentioned, if Wilson had returned with the "right" answer (the answer Cheney wanted), news of this would have quickly traveled up the chain, and Cheney would have promptly dispatched a personal limo to fetch Wilson and stand him up in a prime-time news conference.

"I find it odd that so many people take the Butler Report's conclusions on this matter as authoritative with so little evidence to stand on."

Indeed. But I think it's important to go a step further. What I think is often overlooked (and that's why I insist on beating this drum) is that even if you accept Butler as gospel, it does not support "recently" and "significant quantities." Cecil conveniently quoted Butler here, and I think the passage quoted does a nice job of proving my point: there's nothing in there to support "recently" and "significant quantities" (especially with regard to Niger, which is at the heart of Wilson's responsibly delineated complaint: "_if the president had been referring to Niger_, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them;" emphasis added, of course).

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Pre-Aristotlean Jeff responds to my question:

'Please explain, scientifically, how you can disprove that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa in February 2002.'

First with circular reasoning:

'First, note that the claim was that allegations, presumably specific allegations, were disproved. That seems straightforward enough.'

Straightforwardly illogical, as I pointed out. Your mission, which you chose not to accept, was to bolster your claim that there were scientific ways in this non-pre-modern age, to 'disprove' an allegation. All I get is:

'Second, though, I think it's fair to say...'

If I don't think it is, 'fair to say', you've got no claim to 'science'.

'... that if you look at all the available evidence from February 2002, and you are confident that it's all the relevant evidence...'

You couldn't possibly know that.

'...and there is none that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa, you've pretty much disproven the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa in February 2002.'

Congratulations on a textbook example of the ad ignorantum fallacy.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

jukebox, Kevin Drum had claimed that the White House had a 'violent' reaction. That they'd gone 'nuts' on a 'smear and destroy' mission. They simply hadn't done any such thing. It's a complete creation of Joe Wilson and his allies (David Corn comes to mind immediately) illogically accepted as dogma by idiots like Drum, pgl at Angry Bear, and you and your ilk here.

'So please explain why it was impossible for the White House to tell "the truth about Wilson and his mission" without also outing an agent in the process.'

Because Wilson had given the impression that he went at the request of Dick Cheney, and had come back with the relevant information for Cheney. I've already quoted the exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Condi on July 13, 2003 in which it is clear that that is believed widely. That makes Valerie Plame 'fair game' in defending against Wilson's months long partisan political attack.

It was inevitable that her name would surface. It's Joe Wilson and his Bolivia-sized ego that caused it. Now he's crying about it.

[jukeboxgrad]

PATRICK: "Kevin Drum had claimed that the White House had a 'violent' reaction. That they'd gone 'nuts' on a 'smear and destroy' mission. They simply hadn't done any such thing."

I pointed out this: "two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife" (link).

Just a point of clarification. Are you claiming that this citation is crap, or are you claiming it's unfair to refer to such as thing as "smear and destroy" etc? Just curious.

"Wilson had given the impression that he went at the request of Dick Cheney"

The way you word that is kind of ambiguous. The RNC throws out the ambiguity and uses an outright lie: "Wilson Falsely Claimed That It Was Vice President Cheney Who Sent Him To Niger."

The fact is that Wilson's description of Cheney's role is essentially identical to the SSCI description of Cheney's role. Rice's, oddly enough, is not.

Here's what Wilson said: " ... I was informed by officials at the CIA that ... Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report [which] referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium ... The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."

Here's what SSCI said (pdf, p.38-39): " ... the DIA wrote a finished intelligence product titled 'Niamey signed an agreement' ... After reading the DIA report, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue ... Officials from the CIA's DO Counterproliferation Division (CPD) told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President's Office ... CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information. [portion redacted] who could make immediate inquiries into the reporting, CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon who had a posting early in his career in Niger."

(By the way, here's my guess about the redacted portion: "After determining that there were no qualified regular officers ... ")

Do you see any meaningful difference? I don't.

Here's part of what Rice said: "The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger." True. But Cheney made a request which led to Wilson being asked to go to Niger. SSCI explains this. Wilson explains this. Rice doesn't bother. And you're claiming that Rice is honest, and Wilson is the liar? How odd. Wilson's words are more honest (i.e., closer to the SSCI account) than Rice's words.

"I've already quoted the exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Condi on July 13, 2003 in which it is clear that that is believed widely."

I'm obviously familiar with the exchange, although I can't find anyplace in this thread where you quoted it.

Anyway, Wilson's account of Cheney's role seems more truthful than Rice's account, since she creates the false impression that Cheney had no role whatsoever. Anyway, I'm at a loss to understand why Wilson would be responsible for something Rice said, and I'm also at a loss to understand why Wilson would be responsible for what you claim "is believed widely." Wilson is accountable for his own words, not some vague notion of what you claim was "believed widely." If you want to claim Wilson is a liar, you need to make reference to his own statements, not some vague notion of what was allegedly "believed widely."

Something I've discovered around these parts recently is that Bush isn't responsible for what's said by his own spokesman, whereas Wilson is responsible for some vague notion of what is "believed widely." What an interesting double-standard.

"That makes Valerie Plame 'fair game' in defending against Wilson's months long partisan political attack."

If the message Rove wanted to deliver was "Wilson was not sent by Cheney; rather, he was sent by slimy traitorous insignificant low-level operatives who might actually be members of the Democrat party," let me suggest the following way he could have said that, which would not have posed any threat to our national security: "Wilson was not sent by Cheney; rather, he was sent by slimy traitorous insignificant low-level operatives who might actually be members of the Democrat party." Please explain the critical importance of Rove using words such as "Wilson's wife" as part of that sentence.

Also, let me know why the political task of "defending against Wilson's months long partisan political attack" was a higher priority than using care with classified information. Also, if Plame was really "fair game," then why did Rove hide behind "double super secret background?" And then why did he lie about his behavior for a couple of years, if he was merely pursuing the noble enterprise of "defending against Wilson's months long partisan political attack?"

If Rove did nothing wrong, why didn't he act openly? And if he did do something wrong, why are you defending him?

By the way, the underlying facts show that it's the White House that's obscuring Cheney's role and inflating Plame's role, whereas Wilson's accounts are supported by the facts.

[Jeff]

Patrick - Sorry, I can't really follow your latest response. I think there may be a misunderstanding here. My point was not that it is through science that you disprove the allegations about Iraq and Niger, and I certainly didn't mean to lay claim to science. My point was that you seem to be equating proof and disproof with logical certainty; and that modern standards of proof and disproof don't do that, accepting that there will always be some level of uncertainty in any claim, while still talking in terms of proof and disproof; and that that made sense of the original claim we were examining.

So Joe Mealyus asks

Speaking scientifically myself, isn't it fair to say that once you become confident that the available evidence is the relevant evidence, you can pretty much disprove ice to the eskimos?

I'm not sure what disproving ice even means, but I can't imagine a situation like the one you describe. I can, however, imagine a situation where every member of a group of human beings says, "We've proved that water cannot exist as a solid," and then, when confronted with a piece of ice, which melts into water, some of them say, "You know what, whaddya know, turns out that when we said we'd proved that water can't exist as solid, we were wrong." I can also imagine a situation where someone had wrongly convinced themselves that they had access to all the relevant evidence regarding Iraq and Niger on uranium and on that basis claimed to have disproven the allegations that in 1999 or whatever Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. Luckily, there are other people in the world who would show them the relevant evidence they were missing, and show that their conclusions rested on incorrect assumptions. Maybe that's what happened. Then those people would end up drawing different conclusions, and the process would continue.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'Patrick - Sorry, I can't really follow your latest response.'

No kidding.

jukebox, you've a real flair for circular reasoning and selective quotation.

The most important part of the Blitzer-Rice exchange is:

---------quote---------
BLITZER: But 11 months earlier, you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Niger....

RICE: Well, first of all, I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger. And if you look at Director Tenet's statement, it says that counterproliferation experts on their own initiative sent Joe Wilson, so I don't know...

BLITZER: Who sent him?

RICE: Well, it was certainly not a level that had anything to do with the White House, and I do not believe at a level that had anything to do with the leadership of the CIA.

BLITZER: Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.

RICE: No, this is simply not true, and this is something that's been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out.
---------endquote---------

Blitzer clearly thinks that Cheney had Wilson sent to Niger, he came back with information debunking the reports, and Cheney ignored that information. Which is, in fact, what Wilson was hoping for with his disinformation campaign.

Rice is aware of this. Note her: 'this is something that's been perpetuated'.

I suppose it's possible for Blitzer to have read Wilson's Op-ed and drawn his conclusions above, but I doubt that that's all he was going on. Much liklier is that Wilson was giving background briefings to reporters along the lines of Blitzer's line in the above. He certainly told that to Nick Kristoff, for his infamous May 6, 2003 column:

'I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. ....

'.... The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.'

[jukeboxgrad]

"Blitzer clearly thinks that Cheney had Wilson sent to Niger"

Really? "you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson." The CIA sent him. The CIA is part of the Bush administration. This kind of simplification is commonplace in the media, especially on TV.

"Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president."

It did. Cheney asked some questions. The CIA decided that a mission by Wilson would be a way to get some answers. "It came at the request of the vice president" is a reasonable simplification of that.

Aside from all that, tell me why Wilson is responsible for what Blitzer thinks, or says.

By the way, the liar in that conversation is Rice, who says "No, this is simply not true [that 'it came at the request of the VP']." An honest answer would have been "Cheney did not send him, but he was sent by the CIA as a result of a request by Cheney."

"Which is, in fact, what Wilson was hoping for"

I'd like to see your credentials as a psychic.

"Much liklier is that Wilson was giving background briefings to reporters along the lines of Blitzer's line in the above"

I get it now. If Blitzer can't follow the simple truth that Wilson wrote clearly in his oped, this means that evil Wilson has been whispering in Blitzer's ear, to confuse him.

It's pretty astonishing that your proof that Wilson is a liar consists entirely of your analysis of statements by others, rather than statements by him. Let me know when we can start applying that technique to Bush. I can share all sorts of expertise regarding my knowledge of what Bush "was hoping for."

By the way, you've failed to demonstrate that Kristof lied, either.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'The CIA is part of the Bush administration.'

No it isn't. Have a clue. It's a government agency. Like Social Security.

'It's pretty astonishing that your proof that Wilson is a liar consists entirely of your analysis of statements by others...'

Those statements are the unanimous product of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

'By the way, you've failed to demonstrate that Kristof lied, either.'

I didn't say Kristoff lied. Wilson lied to Kristoff about the forged memos, and Kristoff passed that on in his column. That for certain. Unless Kristoff misunderstood Wilson about Cheney having him sent to Niger, that's another lie.

[kim]

Wilson is the one and only Truthteller, and Grad is his preceptee.
====================================================

[Cecil Turner]

Sorry Jeff, I missed this one:

"1) the Niger-Iraq thing was a loaded issue in Britain, not because of a U.S. domestic political fight, but because of Britain's central implication in it by Bush in the SOTU."

I suspect it was more of a loaded issue because of the whole Kelley suicide/Hutton Report thing, and the allegations by BBC's Gilligan of a "sexed up" dossier (from whence the bulk of the "16 words" were taken).

"2) The extreme vagueness of the references in the Butler Report (e.g. para 494, 495) to the intelligence/evidentiary basis is not required, I strongly suspect, by the protection of sources and methods."

Here's the nub of our disagreement. I'm clueless on the subject, but just about every book on it says protecting sources is an absolutely essential part of HUMINT. Agencies rarely share them, and the cardinal rule is that you never burn a source. (Unless, of course, he lied to you--then, like "Curveball," he's fair game.) There's an obvious requirement for vagueness, to avoid narrowing the field (and tricks like "canary traps"), and it's exactly what you'd expect if the Brits thought their source worth protecting.

Yes, they aren't sharing, and there's no way to verify it independently. But the guys with a clue say their sources are good--and the Butler report wasn't shy about calling BS on much of their other intel--so I see no good reason to disbelieve them on this point.

[jukeboxgrad]

We were talking about what Blitzer said: "you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson."

I said "The CIA is part of the Bush administration."

Patrick said: "No it isn't. Have a clue. It's a government agency. Like Social Security."

It's true that the CIA is an independent agency. In other words, it's jointly overseen by the executive branch and Congress, rather than being strictly under the control of the executive branch. However, it reports to the president, and the president exerts a great deal of control over its activities (especially when Congress is controlled by his party).

That's probably why Blitzer thought it was reasonable to treat the CIA as part of the "Bush administration." Anyway, if you don't like that, take it up with Blitzer. What Blitzer said is not Wilson's fault.

I said: "It's pretty astonishing that your proof that Wilson is a liar consists entirely of your analysis of statements by others..."

You replied: "Those statements are the unanimous product of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you? Nowhere in this thread do you quote any statements from SSCI. You did recently refer to Blitzer interviewing Rice. So what are you talking about when you say "those statements?" I wonder if you know yourself.

Speaking of spreading confusion, here you said "I've already quoted the exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Condi on July 13, 2003 in which it is clear that that is believed widely." Trouble is, you didn't (at least not in this thread) quote from that exchange until later on, here. Does time run backwards in your universe?

As I said, so far your entire argument that Wilson lied is based on citing statements by others, not by him. This is not a good sign for the quality of your argument.

Let me know when we can start applying this standard to Bush: that he is responsible not only for what he personally says, but also for the way every journalist and talking head interprets and repeats his words, and for everything "that is believed widely" about his words (a standard you applied to Wilson).

You wouldn't have a double-standard about this sort of thing, would you?

By the way, since you think Wilson is responsible for what Blitzer says, let me know if you think Bush is responsible for this outright lie: "Wilson Falsely Claimed That It Was Vice President Cheney Who Sent Him To Niger."

Daily Howler is not known as a lefty blog, but even they acknowledged: "No, Joe Wilson didn’t really say that Dick Cheney sent him to Africa."

Wilson isn't in control of CNN and Blitzer, but obviously Bush is ultimately in control of the RNC. So presumably you're prepared to hold Bush responsible for this lie told by the RNC.