It’s garbage either way.

j.west given up on trying to argue with eRiposte I see :P

Do yourself a favor and go readthe post. Particularly enlightening is the apendix 1 of post 1. The selective declassification by the administration is downright hilarious.

The Niger operation went better than hoped exposing a bad CIA agent, some Russian games in Iraq, and treason.

So, can we hire those two operations officers?

This statement would be just fine if you actually didn’t understand what the facts were, but apparently that is not the case.

You must be aware that the SSIC and even Joe Wilson (admittedly, only while under oath) state that Bush’s 16 words were accurate. Iraq was “seeking†uranium from Africa as evidenced by the Nigerien Prime Minister’s statement that he interpreted the Iraqi envoy’s overtures as an attempt to trade in uranium. However, whenever you touch on the subject you conflate it with the “forged documents†subject, which was not the basis of the SOTU passage.

This mixing of separate issues seems to be a favorite tactic of the left, as we have just witnessed with the declassification of NIE information. By willfully distorting the image of the administration releasing facts to correct the lies Wilson told into some fantasy about Bush directing Scooter to “out†Plame, the boundary between being confused and outright misleading for partisan purposes is crossed.

If the overarching theme of this blog is to make people feel better about being democrats regardless of the actual facts, then at least let your readers know that you are substituting your version of “facts†and that reality may not apply.

I think Fitzgerald was much more interested in whether or not Libby actually showed the documents to Miller. Leaking classified information is practically a daily occurrence in Washington, but handing over (or showing) actual documents is a much more serious matter (at least in the eyes of the FBI). Look at what happened to Larry Franklin. I think most everyone is missing this fundamental point. Take away the leaking of Plame’s identity and there’s really nothing in what Libby did that’s out of the ordinary for this administration. As morally reprehensible as his other actions were, Fitzgerald is quite correct in not prosecuting them. All you have to do is compare these leaks (again excepting Plame’s identity) to the veritable waterfall from Woodward’s books to see how trivial they were. Which, to my mind, makes it all the more interesting the extent to which Libby gratuitously lied about his actions in this regard.

Part 1 has several points, but here main one can simply be boiled down. One of the key judgements of the NIE stated:

Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them.

Many people, including Sommerby are interpreting this as “Saddam is intent on acquiring “materials,” when in actuallity it means “intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.”

It’s there, on p. 20:

Defendant further testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson. Defendant was instructed to provide what was for him an extremely rare “on the record” statement, and to provide “background” and “deep background” statements, and to provide information contained in a document defendant understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12, defendant discussed Ms. Wilson’s employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time).

Three comments: it’s worth noting that Fitzgerald does not specify whether the information from the CIA trip report that Libby testified he was instructed by Cheney to disclose on July 12 was at that moment in time classified or not – and I would bet in fact that Libby testified that the information he revealed that day did not go beyond what had been declassified for Tenet’s statement the day before. (Both the Times and the Post reports on this episode suggest as much about Libby’s testimony.) It is a further question whether Libby’s testimony on this point was accurate. That’s part of why Cathie Martin’s apparent presence on AF2 that day may prove so fateful. Second, Fitzgerald seems to suggest that Libby failed to acknowledge leaking classified information from the CIA trip report to Miller on July 8. In this regard, I suspect Fitzgerald suspects Libby’s story on the CIA report is just another aspect of the web of falsehoods Libby spun after the fact to cover his inappropriate or even illegal actions, and Cheney’s role, in July 2003. In any case, obviously, then, Libby would not have testified that the presidential authorization to leak otherwise classified information conveyed from Cheney for the July 8 Miller interview covered the CIA trip report as well as the NIE.

Third, and most important, all of this points to the need to clarify Cheney’s role — and I take it the ultimate gist of Waas’ article is to sharpen the question of Cheney’s role, as Waas just follows up on Fitzgerald’s hint, in the passage I cited, that it looks pretty unlikely that Cheney did not instruct Libby on talking about WIlson’s wife at least on July 12. Does Fitzgerald have Cathie Martin’s testimony on this point? Or was she just aboard AF2 but not privy to the strategy session? Finally, if Fitzgerald is convinced that Libby was lying about a lot of this stuff, why not indict him on it?

Howell, as she demonstrated when she peddled the lie that Abramoff had contributed to democrats (and then whined about being called out on it), is about as much an ombudsman as I’m an astronaut. The women is an incorrigible hack.

Readers of the Post detected various factual misrepresentations in Hiatt’s pathetic editorial, including (i) Hiatt’s claim that there was nothing unusual about the way Libby was granted a limited authorization to disclose certain portions of the NIE (in fact Libby testified before the grand jury that the arrangement was “unique in his recollection”), (ii) Hiatt’s contention that Fitzpatrick had not presented any evidence in support of Joe Wilson’s claim that the White House had sought to punish him for his criticism of the Administrations claims about yellowcake and Niger (in fact Fitzpatrick referred specifically in his court filing last week that the White House had engaged in precisely such an attempt to punish Wilson), and (iii) Hiatt’s claim that Wilson had asserted he’d been sent to Niger by Cheney (Wilson never made any such claim).

Howell never addresses any of these issues, and instead characterizes the controversy thusly: “The passage in the Post editorial that sent war critics round the bend was this one: ‘ . . . Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.’”

Were critics of Hiatt’s editorial “outraged” or “concerned” or “critical”? No, they were “around the bend.” Deb again overtly demonstrates a shocking hostility towards her paper’s readers. Even worse, however, she absurdly mischaracterizes the response to Hiatt’s editorial. There were over 600 comments posted at the post.blog on Hiatt’s crap editorial, and they touched on various factual misrepresentations by Hiatt, including the ones I cited above. To reduce these detailed and informed criticisms to a single sentence of Hiatt’s editorial, as Howell has done, is egregiously misleading. But it obviously served Deb’s purpose to divert the controversy from Hiatt’s various factual trespasses.

Howell turns her column on the controversy into a technical discussion of the wall between the editorial and news departments by quoting a letter from a reader that asked “Do the Post editorial writers read the Post articles before publishing their opinions?” She then proceeds to argue that Hiatt’s editorial had been written before Gellman and Linzer’s front page story that debunked various of Hiatt’s claims in the editorial. There are two very big problems with Deb’s approach: first, the bigget problem with Hiatt’s editorial is not that it contradicted the Post’s reporting, but that it contradicted various statements made by Fitzpatrick in his court filings (the fact that Hiatt’s editorial got it so wrong while the Post’s reporters were accurately reporting these matters was merely irony); and second, the reader inquiry asking whether “Post editorial writers read the Post articles before publishing their opinions” WAS NOT MADE. Deb just made it up. I know because I’m the guy she cites as asking the question. Here is the e-mail I sent to Howell, which she requested she be able to cite in her column:

“Are we to believe Geller and Linzer’s reporting or the Post’s lead editorial? They are irreconcilable. The Post’s already dwindling reputation for credibility is seeping away with the continued silence from the editorial board and the Post’s ombudsman. I hope you appreciate how
grave this situation is for the Post.”

But Deb wanted to write a column that avoided the factual deficiencies of Hiatt’s Bush propaganda and focus instead on details regarding the Post’s internal housekeeping and so she fabricated a reader inquiry!

This woman has absolutely no shame. I urge everyone to read her ombudsman column and ask yourself: is this the job of an ombudsman, to denigrate her readers by suggesting they are “around the bend”, and then to neatly sidestep numerous misstatements of fact in a Post editorial in order to rationalize brazen pro-war propaganda?