Time for the Bushbots to come up with some new talking points to shoot down. The role of Rove in
Robert Novak's article is getting harder and harder to explain away. As the leaks come and the truth comes out,
The GoOPer talking points are becoming stale (and in most cases) pointless.
As someone who frequently comments on David Corn's web site, I've been exposed to the next level of idiocy. It wasn't the Novak-Cooper-Rove cabal that exposed Mr. Wilson's wife as a covert CIA operative (gotta be careful not to use her name lest you figure out who she actually is, dontcha know).
Cliff May at the National Review sez: it was Mr. Wilson himself and David Corn in his article in The Nation who outed Valerie Plame.
The old talking points are rather easily dispatched.
Talking point #1: the Dems are behind this
The Actual truth: Fitzgerald is behind this all. He's slowly squeezing this administration and they can't take the pressure.
Talking point #2: Karl Rove tried to discourage a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise.
The Actual truth:: He talked to more than 1 reporter and he didn't try to dissuade Novak from writing anything.
Talking point #3: The false premise that he was after was that the Vice President had sent him (Wilson) to Niger.
The Actual truth:: The Vice President didn't need to send anyone to Niger because the Uranium in Niger is controlled by a French Consortium. There were many people sent to Niger to find out Iraq's intent. They all found the same thing: radioactive bullshit. The Butler report and the Senate Whitewash committee carefully avoid saying Iraq "tried to procure Uranium" only that the Nigerian Foreign Minister "believed" that they were interested. This was all that was in question, since the documents were forged and the IAEA had documents to show that Iraq was not trying to get Uranium. See the Butler Report pages 124 and 125.
According to the Senate Whitewash Committee:
"On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, "Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." The INR analyst who drafted the assessment told Committee staff that he had been told that the piece was in response to interest from the Vice President's office in the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal." Wilson says he was told that the Vice President had requested that the CIA look into the trip.
Talking point #4: The Senate Whitewash committee proves that the Vice President didn't send Mr. Wilson to Africa.
The Actual truth:: This is the only thing that the GoOPers have right. But that bit of trivia is only important if it is proven that the White House was fixing intel to justify the war. It works to Mr. Fitzgerald's advantage.
Talking point #5: CIA found assessments by Wilson were wrong.
The Actual truth:: Wilson's report was given a grade of "good" mostly because "it added to the IC's body of understanding on the issue." Some folks (Bolton's fixers) thought it proved that Iraq was up to no good. Everyone else thought that it proved that this was just a red herring. If Mr. Pat Roberts kept his promised, I'm sure that he would find that it was all a boondoggle because "someone" forged both sets of Niger documents (the ones that prompted visits to Niger and the Panorama magazine forgeries).
Talking point #6: Mr. Rove has cooperated with investigators and has cleared all reporters to talk about what he told them.
The Actual truth:: He also said that he never talked to reporters and had nothing to do with leaks. "Ridiculous" was the word used to describe his possible involvement. Rovie has testified. So has President Cheney. So has Junior.
Talking point #7: Wilson hates Junior.
The Actual truth:: He didn't vote for him but voted for his father. He's not a Democratic hack. He's just not as gullible or pliable as the Cheney administration would like.
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Via a link from Instapundit, the wingnuts found their way to Mr. Corn's web site and brought Mr. May's article to my attention. Mr. May tries to diminish Mr. Novak's role in the crime and nail Mr. Corn in his stead.
Mr. May makes some clearly ridiculous claims. First he defends Novak by pleading ignorance:
Novak has said repeatedly that he was not told, and that he did not know, that Plame was -- or had ever been -- a NOC, an agent with Non-Official Cover. He has emphatically said that had he understood that she was any sort of secret agent, he would never have named her.
Mr. Novak may not have known that Mr. Wilson's wife was a NOC operative, but he was told by the CIA not to use her name. He took it upon himself to use it anyway:
They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else
Had Mr. Novak heeded the CIA's instructions, things may have turned out differently. Maybe.
Mr. May goes on to parse the phrase "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He clearly understands that the word "operative" could be interpreted to mean "under cover." But he dismisses it as the "sexiest" term that Novak could think of, as in "Pandemoniac is known to be a Liberal operative from Texas" (muy, muy sexy, no?).
He completely ignores the fact that this designation may not be what everyone else knew her as, thus blowing her cover.
He goes on to minimize the intent of Mr. Novak's article:
Reread Novak's article, and you'll also see that Novak in no way denigrates Wilson. On the contrary, he talks of Wilson's 'heroism' in Iraq in 1991.
This completely misses the point that it wasn't Novak that was trying to smear the Wilsons, it was the black-ops in the White House that was doing it. Also, Novak later disavowed the claim of Wilson's "heroism" by citing it as the view of his partner, Rowland Evans.
Mr. May also plays cute with the "nepotism" charge by deflating Novak's words:
And nowhere in his column does he say -- or even imply -- that Wilson was unqualified to conduct the Niger investigation or that Plame was responsible for getting him the assignment -- merely that she "suggested sending him."
Again, Novak isn't the source of the smear; he is merely the vehicle (and a rather pitiful one at that). But I think it is worth noting that he felt he had to defend the nepotism smear. If it wasn't an issue, why bother?
"Is this splitting hairs?" Mr. Mays asks, then proceeds to split a wig-full to discount the possibility that laws may have been broken.
In the end, satisfied with his own pile of hokum, he asks:
So if Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was a secret agent, who did? The evidence strongly suggests it was none other than Joe Wilson himself . . . .
The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak's column appeared. It carried this lead: "Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security -- and break the law -- in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?"
Mr. Corn's article is clearly blowing the lid off of Mr. Rove's crimes.
Mr. May's article, on the other hand, is a fine examples of the intellectual dog chow that Republicans have been driven to as a result of the constant barrage of lies coming out of the White House.