Novakula and the Traitors

Traitors Watch

Long time readers of the Watch will already have heard of the CIA leak story which is now threatening the White House. In a nutshell, Ex-Ambassador Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times saying that Bush's uranium from Africa claim in the State of the Union address was probably bogus (actually, what Bush claimed in his speech can never be proven false definitely. He used weasel words and made a claim that cannot possibly be refuted. What Wilson wrote was that Iraq was unlikely to be able to get uranium from Niger (not Africa), and of course he couldn't say whether Iraq had tried to get it from there or not. ) Then, people in the White House, acting like classic gangsters, decided to "get" Wilson for speaking out. This was a warning to other potential whistleblowers. They had learned that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, was a CIA agent, possibly still undercover, and they decided to hurt Wilson by blowing his wife's cover.

These two people (rumor has it that they are Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby in Dick Cheney's organization) began phoning reporters, trashing Wilson and dropping the information about Plame. They supposedly called six reporters in all, and Bob Novak (formerly the "Prince of Darkness" (currently that title is Cheney's)) wrote an article on it.

The potential fallout from this release of information is very serious. First, Valerie Plame is in danger. I don't know anything about her or her work, but the potential is that she is a citizen who has served her country under very dangerous, life-threatening situations, and now she is rewarded with this. Second, all of Valerie Plame's contacts in every country she has worked in are in danger. The foreign governments where Wilson and Plame represented the US will now go back over his and her travel records with a fine tooth comb, and discover who they might have talked with. Third, it will be MUCH harder for US operatives to find other people who are willing to work with them, since everyone now knows that

The story raises a number of questions that I can't answer. Why, for example, did it ever occur to anyone that blowing a CIA agent's cover would be the best way to get back at Wilson? Why, if this is as serious as it seems, isn't Novak behind bars right now? If Novak isn't behind bars now, does that mean that this isn't as serious as it seems to be? Why, if Bush is serious about "cooperating" with the Justice Department, didn't he just ask his staff who made the leaks 11 weeks ago, when the story appeared, instead of letting Justice give them all lie-detector tests now? (Actually, that one is easy to answer).

The irony in all of this is that apparently Plame was working to find out about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (TM) in other countries, and so she was on the front line of gathering information that could actually keep us safe from harm. Dubya and his minions have once again shown that they don't care about keeping us safe, especially if the alternative is being able to harm their political enemies.

Crony Watch

Some people are starting to wake up to the fact that the "Iraq war against Terra" is really just a big giveaway to big corporations with ties to the Bushies, like Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. Here is a good summary piece on where that stands from Mother Jones.

Another headline on that topic is "Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq", in which we learn that

A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.

Isn't that lovely? "Taxpayer-financed" means out of all of our pockets, directly into Cheney's and Cheney's friends'. As someone once said, "War is a racket.":