Joe Wilson Ends His own Wife’s (Valerie Plame) CIA Career
Just under the headline from the article, "End of an Affair", in today's Washington Post (H/T: Powerline):
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
It turns out that the person most responsible for ending Valerie Plame's career at the CIA was her own husband, Joe Wilson. Moreover, it wasn't Bush, Cheney or Karl Rove who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. It was Richard Armitage.
I won't hold my breath waiting for an apology from the Bush-Deranged appeasement junkies at the Daily Kos. But I'll take this article from the Washington post as an apology (of sorts) from left-leaning mainstream media.
Here's what it all boils down to:
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
Perhaps my favorite passage:
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.
And last, but not least:
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
I guess this means the recent lawsuit filed by Wilson and Plame against high-level administration officials isn't going to gain any more momentum. In fact, I said before, that lawsuit won't amount to anything.
So how are left-wing democrats reacting to the news? Below are some highlights from Democratic Underground forum:
Mugsy: Armitage source of Plame leak??? Deafeningly silent bombshell? (excerpt)
So what is the story here? I know there's more too it, and the fact regarding the way the Bush Administration *used* this information to discredit Wilson and justify their war can not be disputed, but the deafening silence around here on the subject bothers me.
The deafening silence is a result of the fact that these people were wrong to accuse the administration of a conspiracy in the first-place.
A comment from a DU member with some sense:
AValdoux: Outing Armitage…
…vindicates Rove. The Libby trial will (sic) a "legal technicality driven by partisan politics".
Case closed.
Yet another Bush-Deranged comment:
librechik: wake me up when the fat lady sings
I'm sick of their jury poisoning crapola.
And I don't believe Armitage is the end of the story–but I do believe he is a "nice enough guy" to fall on his sword for the cause–especially if there are no punishments involved in a "silly booboo."
Read the entire article: End of an Affair