Very, very few people, including at the CIA itself, would have been privy to this information, especially since Valerie Plame was a covert CIA NOC agent operating undercover in a highly sensitive Cold War field…nuclear proliferation.

Thus, I’d like to offer an analogy of the seriousness of disclosing Valerie Plame’s identity.

Remember when Geraldo Rivera, embedded with an advancing U.S. military unit in 2003, was kicked out of Iraq after he drew some lines in the sand, which may have given Saddam Hussein’s retreating army critical tactical intelligence about U.S. military operations? At the worst, Geraldo Rivera could have been charged with aiding and abetting the enemy. However, he was slapped on the hand and sent packing.

Now, imagine if Geraldo Rivera had written “Valerie Plame – CIA operative” in the sand instead of roughly sketching out military deployment positions inside Iraq while on national television.

Or maybe someone wrote in the sand “Joe Wilson’s wife – CIA operative” and instead of Geraldo Rivera it was Robert Novak? And Robert Novak got his little “scoop” about Joe Wilson’s wife being a CIA operative from top officials in the Bush administration, who violated their national security oath in the process?

Now, compare the penalties for each of these security breaches. Not much difference is there?

Geraldo Rivera was sent packing for his little indiscretion in Iraq, told his embedding days were over, but otherwise no punishment has ever been assessed for what he did.

In the case of the betrayal of Valerie Plame’s covert CIA identity (and the further disclosure of her covert CIA network), no Bush administration official has ever been specifically punished for this serious breach of our national security. And most of the top Bush officials complicit in this major security breach are still in place, not having been given their walking papers and sent packing.

(Scooter Libby is the one exception, but he still has not been held accountable for his complicity in betraying the identity of a covert CIA operative for purely political reasons. And no matter what the outcome of Scooter’s appeal’s process, he’ll always have a cushie job waiting for him in the “culture of corruption” Republican Party…and probably someday even get a security clearance again).

Thus, I’m not ready to make nice either.

None of the Bush officals responsible were sent packing immediately after July 14, 2003, nor did they have their security clearance stripped from them. One Bush official resigned only after federal charges were filed that he lied and obstructed justice, but he was not charged with the much more serious crime of endangering our national security and betraying his public trust. Furthermore, no internal investigation was initiated immediately after the leak occurred in July 2003, and apparently none has occurred since.

Anyway, can you imagine what Geraldo Rivera’s punishment would have been if he had written “Joe Wilson’s wife – CIA operative” in the sands of Iraq instead of what he did scrawl? The Bush administration would have left no stone unturned to discover how Geraldo had learned of such sensitive information, and he would have been punished to the maximum extent of the law, as well as anyone else found complicit in outing a covert CIA operative and betraying our national security.

The culpable Bush administration officials should not be treated any less.

Nope. Not ready to make nice. Justice must be served first before any thought of making nice can ever be entertained. But even then, no neo-con Republican can ever be trusted again in matters of national security.

I don’t speak for FDL (merely a commenter), but IIRC each open thread poses a real demand on servers, so the capacity to keep old threads “open” has finite limits.

As for why it would matter (to those who wished to stay on an old thread) to know of a new thread: to thos ewho wish to stay, it would not matter. The request for the “new thread announcemetns” came from commenters who DID wish to know of the next thread. Neither is better – they are merely different.

Refreshing the page (as opposed to “refresh comments”) also eats more server resources, so folks refrain in order not to swamp the Lake’s servers.

[When I want to let folks know of good stuff on old threads, I just post a “pointer” comment on the most active thread(s)…..]

Hope this helps!

Kirk

Motive, who knows? Cheney and the old Regean hawks and their neocon fellow travelers always had a lot of contempt for the CIA.

There is no outward evidence that they take non prolifertaion at all seriously. They are begging India to build up. The don’t seem to have a care in the world about Pakistans very well proven weapons and delivery systems. They bungled N Korea so badly one might guess that they wanted them to go ahead and make some bombs. They are not doing a very good job defusing Russias nukes and I don’t even know if that program of decommssioning them is still going on. It never gets talked about by them, and thus nobody does. They have abrograted nuke related missle defense treaty. (A move absolutely and unquestionably unconstituional) They are dying to test again but won’t be there long enough to pull it off.

Add it all up and you have a de facto pro proliferation agenda.

I’ll repeat. They outed Palme because she was working on non proliferation. If she had been directly invovled in anti terrorism it would never have happend. People understand that. I don’t have a single doubt that what she was working on motivated them to out her.

Valerie Plame was the CIA’s operational officer in charge of counter-proliferation. Which means she tracked loose nukes. So, when Bush said, as he once did, that his absolute, number-one priority was preventing terrorists from getting loose nukes, okay, that’s what she worked on. That’s what she devoted her life to, staying undercover for 20 years, maintaining two identities every goddamn day. This is extraordinary service to your country.

Bill Maher isn’t ready to make nice

I believe John Prine has resurrected a few of his songs from the ’60s and ’70s. Especially “Flag Decal”.

“Well, your Flag Decal won’t get you into heaven anymore
It’s already overcrowded by your dity little war”.

Ah, John Prine!

There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm, where all the money goes;. . .

One of the saddest songs I know.

Bob in HI

kirk murphy @
68

RT, I very much regret that you or anyone was told off for EPUing. I can’t understand anyone’s reson for doing that, and I apologize you were treated that way.

Over the last year, the Lake has made a deliberate effort to let “epu’d” threads know a new thread had started. [This began when those unknowingly “left” on an epu’d thread asked to me informed of new threads.]

I do see commenters observing a new thread has started and invited folks “up”.

When this happens, I sure hope it doen’t send the message that sharing on EPU’s threads is somehow not OK.

I do admit I’m not neutral hers – I like being able topost comments on epu’d threads. With comments as wordy a smine can be, I fear putting them on current thread would be rude – too much text!

Thanks for letting folks know of your experience – hope you might consider stayin about and continuing to play inou public policy discussions.

Kirk – thanks, I appreciate. But there’s just a lot about this place I don’t ‘get.’ For instance, I can’t respond to you in yesterday afternoon’s thread, which is less than 18 hours old. And why would it matter to people that there’s a new thread started if they wanted to address the points raised in the old one? And why can’t they find out there’s a new thread by refreshing the main page, like I just did?

And what does ‘EPU’ stand for, anyway?

I share your frustration with this. For example, some excellent comments were posted near the end of the Plenary Powers thread, long after looseheadprop had retired from the scene, that are now lost in EPU-land, the black hole of FDL blogspace. Those comments would have been out of place on any of the subsequent threads. And now they languish, unread and unanswered.

BTW, “EPU” stands for Evil Parallel Universe, the moniker of a commenter who often found himself (as I often do) posting a comment that few people will read on an old thread, after the herd has moved up top to a new thread. It has even become a glossary item in some Internet dictionaries. It is a a frustrating experience.

My problem with this is exacerbated by living in Hawaii, so that by the time I get to reading some comments, the writer has long since gone to bed, and everyone who has not retired has moved onto a new thread. By the time I’m having my first cuppacoffee in the morning, we’re already 3-4 threads into the new day, so if there’s an interesting comment on the first thread of the day, by the time I get to it, no one will read it if I reply because the herd is already gone upstairs and is 2-3 threads ahead of me.
Bob in HI

Thanks – if anyone is still here!