Via MAL Contends
The truth won, if your scoreboard is reality.
When the Bush rightwingers betrayed national security and blew the cover of a non-official cover CIA officer involved in keeping nuclear weapons technology out of the hands of countries like Iran, The Nation's (07/16/2003) David Corn (that crazy leftist, bring back HUAC) sounded the alarm.
As the first journalist to point out what amounts to treason, Corn deserves a few I-told-you-sos. And Corn sets the record straight in his piece, Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong:
Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong
MAL Contends
From the start, neocons and conservative backers of the war dismissed the Plame leak and subsequent scandal as a big nothing. Some even claimed that somehow former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and I had cooked up the episode to ensnare the White House. (Oh, to be so devilishly clever--and to be so competent.) But these attempts to belittle the affair (and to belittle Valerie Wilson) were based on nothing but baseless spin. As was--no coincidence--the Iraq war. In fact, the Wilson imbroglio was something of a proxy war for the debate over the war itself. In the summer of 2003, when the Plame affair broke, those in and out of government who had misled the nation into the war saw the need to spin their way out of the Wilson controversy in order to protect the false sales pitch they had used to win public support for the invasion of Iraq.
Corn could add Wisconsin writer Jim Wigderson who is representative of the flacking that attempted to belittle the affair to the list of neocons. Writes Wigderson:
So to sum it up: we have a case of obstruction (under appeal) of a needless investigation to determine facts already known in a case where no crime has been found to have been committed where the dispute centers on two different recollections of one phone conversation which took place after the possible crime was committed, a reasonable chance of getting the conviction overturned, and an arguably excessive sentence which was to be imposed immediately while the appeal was pending. Under the circumstances President Bush’s decision (to commute), and the timing of it, are completely understandable
Bad flacking, Jim. Valerie Wilson was undercover; blowing her cover is against the law; and obstructing justice in federal investigations is no little crime.
That's the detestable thing about Republican flacks' political logic: It's so Soviet. Protect and lie first, and never admit a crime. If lies obstruct and cover up crimes, then the crimes did not occur, and the lies and obstruction are just politics against the enemies of the state anyway.
Corn asks:
So is anyone apologizing? For ruining Valerie Wilson's career? For perhaps endangering operations and agents? For lying about the leak? For misleading the public about Rove's role? For placing spin above the truth? Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons. But no one else involved has. And no one--not Bush, not Cheney, not their aides, not their neocon confederates--has admitted any wrongdoing in this saga.It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to.
So why not say (if you're a Republican), the hell with the Republicans' corruption? Many progressives have at numerous points dumped the Democrats for far less.
In the meantime, the flacks such as the Toensings, Novaks, Wigdersons, and Jonah Goldbergs and the like can be counted on to lie and slime until their hearts are content. It's their way.
And give yourself a treat and buy: Plame-Wilson's brand new "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House."
Corn's Summer of 2003
Wisconsin's Jim Wigderson's
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House