who is better at national security the rep.or the dem.

[BLUEHAWK]

Hold on here fellers -

My beloved and trusted brothers, especially Scout and Gimp:

Like any other military man I will keep the peace until it cannot be kept, and then I get mean as hell... as many of our bretheren (no offense meant ladies :-) have constantly reminded me over many years, ya gotta deal with what is, and I do know the meaning of "is" as well as any of us.

There are a few folks here with whom I would go to certain death smiling and yelling... including you two CROSSFIRE experts, Pho, Scamp, Boats, Tamaroa, Bones, Doc, Beau, Razz, DMZ, Keith, Humper, David, Recon and some others. So, to you, on my heart of honor I say these words:

> Karl Rove is a cancer growing on the presidency.

[Gimpy]

You DON't have to convince ME. I have said the same thing for a good while now. I am in TOTAL agreement with you.

Now...............get ready for the "barrage" from Rio Linda!

[BLUEHAWK]

That's okay Gimper, we're all on the same team, and when it comes to fire time and weapons free I have NO doubt whatsoever who will do their very best to win the day.

[Gimpy]

Seems like George Tenet may be getting tired of having to "bite the bullet"..so to speak,huh??

##################################
Inquiry Into Leak Divides Spy World
By JAMES RISEN The New York Times
Published: Oct 2, 2003




WASHINGTON - The inquiry into whether senior Bush administration officials illegally exposed the identity of a CIA officer is an outgrowth of a bitter civil war that continues to rage inside the administration over the handling of prewar intelligence concerning Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, current and former intelligence officials say.
The battle pits intelligence professionals, especially CIA analysts and operations officers who say data about Iraq's weapons programs deliberately was hyped and distorted by the Bush administration in the months before the war, against officials at the White House and Pentagon who long have been dismissive of what they see as an overly cautious culture at the CIA.

For the intelligence analysts and officers, the conflict revolves around principles they consider central to their work, including the need to produce independent assessments of foreign threats that are uncontaminated by the policy views of top officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

``I think what is going on is that the career intelligence officers, the operators and the analysts, are fighting to preserve their special status as professional nonpartisan intelligence officers,'' one former senior CIA official said.

``I think a lot of them are very angry at the way the Pentagon has tried to bully them and pressure them into reaching certain conclusions on Iraq. This leak case is symptomatic; it is another episode in this cultural war.''

Specific disagreements over intelligence information about Baghdad's efforts to develop nuclear weapons appear to have set the stage for the events that led to the current Justice Department investigation into who told syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists in July that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV was an undercover CIA officer.


Interest Began In 2002

Wilson has accused White House officials of disclosing the information about his wife, Valerie Plame, as a way of punishing the couple for Wilson's findings while on a special mission for the CIA that Iraq probably was not trying to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. On July 6, The New York Times published an op-ed article by Wilson, describing his trip to Niger and his findings.

A CIA official said Wednesday that proliferation experts at the CIA were skeptical of reports early in 2002 that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program. Not long after the reports were received, Vice President Dick Cheney's office asked the agency to pursue the lead.

Officials said the CIA's decision to dispatch Wilson to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the reports reflected a belief that the uranium claim was not serious enough to warrant the launching of a more ambitious, clandestine information-gathering operation.

``The D.O. thought this smelled,'' said one official, referring to the Directorate of Operations, the agency's espionage arm. ``This was a way to find out quickly if it merited more effort.''

The CIA turned to Wilson because of his contacts in Niger, where he previously had served. He has said the CIA's decision to turn to him was not made by his wife.

Plame is an operations officer in the Counter-Proliferation Division of the Directorate of Operations. The Counter- Proliferation Division conducts the CIA's clandestine operations related to weapons of mass destruction involving countries such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran.


Analysts Complain Of Pressure

For months before the war with Iraq, CIA analysts and other intelligence officials quietly complained that they felt pressure from senior Bush administration officials, all the way up to Cheney, to tailor their intelligence reports on Iraq to the administration's agenda.

In particular, the analysts charged that White House and Pentagon officials were pressing them to accept their premise that there were strong connections between Iraq and al- Qaida.

The analysts felt less high- level pressure on the issue of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs because the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not disagree with White House descriptions of the programs.

In their reports, most analysts said Baghdad was hiding some weapons of mass destruction, most likely stockpiles of chemical munitions. Many analysts, however, were skeptical of evidence that Saddam Hussein had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.

Wilson returned from Niger and reported that the evidence of the Iraqi connection didn't seem to hold up, and that seemed to be the end of the matter. Months later, the Iraq- Niger connection found its way into the intelligence bloodstream when it was mentioned in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs.

President Bush then referred to Iraqi interest in African uranium in his State of the Union address, which eventually forced the debate over the evidence into the open.

In the weeks between the president's speech and the start of the war in March, CIA analysts said they were appalled that such bogus information had been used by the president.

Finally, after Wilson went public with his skepticism, someone leaked Plame's covert identity to the media.

For CIA officers, the idea that the White House would compromise the identity of an officer under cover in order to silence a political critic goes to the heart of their sense of institutional independence. Many are watching CIA Director George Tenet carefully to see how well he tries to protect them from political assaults.

#########################

Looks like a "pattern" of misadventure and misinformation are inherent with this Whitehouse, huh??

[Gimpy]

'Slime and Defend'
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 3, 2003

On July 14, Robert Novak published the now-famous column in which he identified Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a C.I.A. "operative on weapons of mass destruction," and said "two senior administration officials" had told him that she was responsible for her husband's mission to Niger. On that mission, Mr. Wilson concluded ? correctly ? that reports of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium were bogus.

An outraged President Bush immediately demanded the names of those responsible for exposing Ms. Plame. He repeated his father's statement that "those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources" are "the most insidious of traitors." There are limits to politics, Mr. Bush declared; Mr. Wilson's decision to go public about his mission had embarrassed him, but that was no excuse for actions that were both felonious and unpatriotic.

Everything in the previous paragraph is, of course, false. It's what should have happened, but didn't. Mr. Bush took no action after the Novak column. Before we get bogged down in the details ? which is what the administration hopes will happen ? let's be clear: we already know what the president knew, and when he knew it. Mr. Bush knew, 11 weeks ago, that some of his senior aides had done something utterly inexcusable. But as long as the media were willing to let the story lie ? which, with a few honorable exceptions, like David Corn at The Nation and Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps at Newsday, they were ? he didn't think this outrage required any action.

And now that the C.I.A. has demanded a Justice Department inquiry, the White House's strategy isn't just to stonewall, Nixon-style; as one Republican Congressional aide told The New York Times, it will "slime and defend."

The right-wing media slime machine, which tries to assassinate the character of anyone who opposes the right's goals ? hey, I know all about it ? has already swung into action. For example, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page calls Mr. Wilson an "open opponent of the U.S. war on terror." We've grown accustomed to this sort of slur ? and they accuse liberals of lacking civility? ? but let's take a minute to walk through it.

Mr. Wilson never opposed the "war on terror" ? he opposed the war in Iraq precisely because it had no obvious relevance to the campaign against terror. He feared that invading a country with no role in 9/11, and no meaningful Al Qaeda links, would divert resources from the pursuit of those who actually attacked America. Many patriots in the military and the intelligence community agreed with him then; even more agree now.

Unlike the self-described patriots now running America, Mr. Wilson has taken personal risks for the sake of his country. In the months before the first gulf war, he stayed on in Baghdad, helping to rescue hundreds of Americans who might otherwise have been held as hostages. The first President Bush lauded him as a "truly inspiring diplomat" who exhibited "courageous leadership."

In any case, Mr. Wilson's views and character are irrelevant. Someone high in the administration committed a felony and, in the view of the elder Mr. Bush, treason. End of story.

The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Republicans have repeatedly impugned their opponents' patriotism. Last year Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said Democrats "don't want to protect the American people. . . . They will do anything, spend all the time and resources they can, to avoid confronting evil."

But the true test of patriotism isn't whether you are willing to wave the flag, or agree with whatever the president says. It's whether you are willing to take risks and make sacrifices, including political sacrifices, for the sake of your country. This episode is a test for Mr. Bush and his inner circle: a true patriot wouldn't hesitate about doing the right thing in the Plame affair, whatever the political costs.

Mr. Bush is failing that test.

?................................................

###################

Yes,...........He is!!

[BLUEHAWK]

Scout -

I think what the Dems are asking for is a special counsel, not a special prosecutor per se... the former has been within the perview of Justice Dept. for many decades as an internal administrative policy, the latter of course BOTH sides were eager to rid themselves of. It is plainly false that, as some are claiming, Ashcroft will be running the investigation. He assigned some in-house lawyers to go after it, as is the FBI, and so his role will be mainly supervisorial in a buck-stops-here sense, but I doubt he'll have much day to day involvement outside of receiving periodic status reports. I've seen the Repubs make mountains out of similar molehills for as long as anyone else has. Much ado about nothing, yes indeed, on this facet of the matter anyhow.

Watching the Dem pols go after this, they WAY they are, is embarassingly blatant and overwrought. The matter is certainly a potentially serious one, no doubt, but it is not required of anyone to come at it as if it's a scandal of monumental proportions. One need not reduce an entire administration to the level of negligent criminals in order to find out who zealously overstepped their loyalties in so dangerous a way. Fact is, Novak and others have some responsibility they are not accepting either by having carelessly printed information that, for example, the Washington Post purposefully/wisely saw fit to omit as irrelevant in their version of the story.

About Wilson himself I know almost nothing, and am not highly motivated to look into it. Tenet, however, I still believe is serving our country well in that role... whatever that role actually consists of in the end. Over several administrations of both ilks, it seems to me that the CIA Director is usually a person from whom we get precious little actual information that can be a basis for discussion, no matter what their political persuasion.

Having myself been chief administrator of a few rather large, by no means comparable, organizations I have a very difficult time blaming the President to the degree others seem to in this regard and others, however. Loose cannons are just that, and they are present everywhere... especially in so competitive an environment as the White House.

The fact that our President's advisors allowed him to use the yellow cake/Niger matter AND a threat of other WMD as part of the government's rationale for the invasion, especially when "regime change" alone would have been more than sufficient, is very troubling. No doubt there must be some relationship to their recent efforts to discredit, or to parse, the Niger issue as a way of covering themselves for their ill-made suggestions to the commander in chief which resulted, also, in a fictitious sallying of strength in our alliance with Britain. All of which seems pretty much SOP in a highly volatile political climate.

If Wilson did return from Niger with a skeptical report on findings, and since the administration (and Britain) bulled ahead with it anyway, then I would say they are at least guilty of falsifying intelligence... for what purpose will be a topic of discussion, and propaganda in school text books, indefinitely. Much the same should be said of WMD thusfar in this context. It is, at minimum, very implausible that our intelligence community, with such enormous resources at its command, could have been so far off their estimate of imminent danger in Iraq pre-invasion.

Some of us recall how despotic regimes in other eras have deployed senseless and truly false national security claims to justify factually illegal and inhumane military incursions... and what the results have been with which so many still must live. Whether the current American regime is despotic in total I very much doubt... however, a few little Himmler wannabes running around in windowless offices can create a lot of havoc in excess of their authority.

[SuperScout]

Diversionary tactics have been refined to an art form in the DC area, and the latest pseudo-brouhaha of "Oh my gosh, my wife's name got published" is just one of them. As indicated elsewhere, I question the decision to send Wilson anywhere on a government mission, when instead, he should have been sent into the unemployment line long ago. And wasn't it he that sang the blues about how he was sent to find yellow cake, and all he could find was a teashop with poor service? Wasn't he under some type of secrecy mandate, having been sent on a mission by the CIA? How many others have we ever heard about where the "end-of-mission" report is broadcast over the airwaves? Perhaps a larger question is what gave this genius the authority to run to the press about his mission? Maybe the special prosecutor the Democrats are wailing for needs to be re-directed to this blabbermouth.

[BLUEHAWK]

Emperor Scout -
Points well taken, all.

I, too, have wondered silently how and by what cause Wilson's report was ever made public to start with? If the Dems, or special counsel, will be doing their job, then that question will be looked into as well.

Last evening a former CIA Main Desk official claimed that the outing of the wife was probably felonious violation of the law, and due to her NOC status also undoubtedly a very serious branching out of danger for other intel contacts in places she had worked over a twenty-year period.

[BLUEHAWK]

p.s.
Dems are today making a major issue out of the White House counsel reviewing all requested documents handed in by staffers in compliance with the President's order... I fail to see why that would necessarily infer any kind of complicity. If it were anyone else's job to do, I am certain the principle legal advisor would be obliged to know the content of all legal papers that were being forwarded BEFORE they left the premises, no?