Comprehensive Story on the Wilson Affair.
Stephen Hayes writes a long and detailed article for The Weekly Standard that basically retells the whole story behind the so-called outing of Valerie Plame. The story is long, clicking on the print version button & printing it off, and then read the article. Here is the ending of it:
Read the whole story and remember things are not as simple as what the Mainstream Mastadons are making them out to be. The story is much more complicated and so too is the law. Unfortunately, this is yet another leftist fairy tale that will never go away.
Of course critics may say this is distracting from the issue at hand. No it isn't. The Plame investigation is a sideshow and it is Wilson and the Mainstream Mastadon's who have played a wonderful game of distraction.
ON JULY 22, 2005, the New York Times published a lengthy, front-page article detailing the work of two senior Bush administration officials, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, on the Niger-uranium story. A seemingly exhaustive timeline ran alongside the piece. In 19 bullet points, the Times provided its readers in considerable detail with what it regarded as the highlights of the story. The timeline traces events from the initial request for more information on the alleged Iraqi inquiries in Africa to Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger; from the now-famous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union to the details of White House telephone logs; from Bush administration claims that Karl Rove was not involved in the leak to the naming of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and on from there to the dates that White House officials testified before the grand jury.
As I say, seemingly exhaustive. But there is one curious omission: July 7, 2004. On that date, the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on the intelligence that served as the foundation for the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq. The Senate report includes a 48-page section on Wilson that demonstrates, in painstaking detail, that virtually everything Joseph Wilson said publicly about his trip, from its origins to his conclusions, was false.
This is not a minor detail. The Senate report, which served as the source for much of the chronology in this article, is the definitive study of the events leading up to the compromising of Valerie Plame. The committee staff, both Democrats and Republicans, read all of the intelligence. They saw all of the documents. They interviewed all of the characters. And every member of the committee from both parties signed the report.
It is certainly the case that the media narrative is much more sensational than the Senate report. A story about malfeasance is perhaps more interesting than a story about incompetence. A story about deliberate White House deception is perhaps more interesting than a story about bureaucratic miscommunication. A story about retaliation is perhaps more interesting than a story about clarification.
But sometimes the boring stories have an additional virtue. They're true.
Source: The Weekly Standard - The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons ( The chain of events that gave rise to a grand jury investigation.) [page 2 of 2]As I say, seemingly exhaustive. But there is one curious omission: July 7, 2004. On that date, the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on the intelligence that served as the foundation for the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq. The Senate report includes a 48-page section on Wilson that demonstrates, in painstaking detail, that virtually everything Joseph Wilson said publicly about his trip, from its origins to his conclusions, was false.
This is not a minor detail. The Senate report, which served as the source for much of the chronology in this article, is the definitive study of the events leading up to the compromising of Valerie Plame. The committee staff, both Democrats and Republicans, read all of the intelligence. They saw all of the documents. They interviewed all of the characters. And every member of the committee from both parties signed the report.
It is certainly the case that the media narrative is much more sensational than the Senate report. A story about malfeasance is perhaps more interesting than a story about incompetence. A story about deliberate White House deception is perhaps more interesting than a story about bureaucratic miscommunication. A story about retaliation is perhaps more interesting than a story about clarification.
But sometimes the boring stories have an additional virtue. They're true.
Read the whole story and remember things are not as simple as what the Mainstream Mastadons are making them out to be. The story is much more complicated and so too is the law. Unfortunately, this is yet another leftist fairy tale that will never go away.
Of course critics may say this is distracting from the issue at hand. No it isn't. The Plame investigation is a sideshow and it is Wilson and the Mainstream Mastadon's who have played a wonderful game of distraction.
posted by Marcus Aurelius at 4:46 PM
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