Lies Dominate Third Republican Debate
All the Republican Candidates Except Ron Paul Either Dodged or Lied About Valerie Plame Scandal
by James Buchanan
No less than George Bush’s father, a former CIA chief, stated that exposing the identity of a CIA agent was the most “insidious” form of treason. Too bad no one in Junior’s administration takes those words seriously. In fact, relatively few people in the Republican Party are stepping up to the plate and denouncing the treason that took place when COVERT agent Valerie Plame’s identity was exposed thanks to a whisper campaign by top officials in the Bush administration.
There was not just one person responsible for exposing Valerie Plame’s identity as some GOP candidates claim. Both Dick Cheney and Karl Rove fed Valerie Plame’s name to the media. They deserve to be put on trial for treason even more than the mindless reporters who published her name. These reporters definitely should go on trial for leaking classified information along with their editors. What the hell were they thinking? Would these folks publish the plans for an A-bomb if that were leaked too?? Some things require common sense. Perhaps a few convictions of reporters AND editors would be a wake up call to the media not to leak classified information.
Valerie Plame was doing covert work at the CIA at least until Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby dug up her name, passed it around and published it. She was the head of a covert company set up to do covert work employing covert agents operating in foreign lands. Despite all this, some neocon talk show hacks are still trying to claim that she had nothing to do with classified work.
This lie was repeated whole-heartedly by various Republican presidential candidates. Only Ron Paul broke through the dishonesty pointing out that Scooter Libby had played a key role in lying the United States into the Iraq War and casting a little cloud of doubt over Mr. Libby’s head, which is currently occupying a prison cell for the crime of perjury.
One of the many lies passed around is that “she boasted about her CIA job at cocktail parties.” If there were any truth to that “Karl Rove” rumor, Ms. Plame would have been subject to discipline within the CIA for talking too much. Some neocon lawyers have jumped into the mix trying to nitpick the definition of “covert.” The one fig leaf that various portly neocons are trying to hide behind is that to be convicted it must be proven that the offending individual knew that Ms. Plame was covert.
Well, that was the whole point of outing her wasn’t it? Valerie Plame’s husband Joe Wilson embarrassed the Bush administration when he exposed the fact that Iraq was not seeking uranium from Niger, contrary to what Bush said in his State of the Union speech. The neocons wanted to punish Wilson so they went after his wife, exposing her identity as a CIA agent and ruining her career. If Valerie Plame worked at Bank of America, would the neocons have told Robert Novak about her? Of course, not. (more…)