Excellent commentary on Rove’s whistle-blowing:
Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize–perhaps the next iteration of the “Truth-Telling” award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.
For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
Media chants aside, there’s no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband’s selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he’d obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn’t even know Ms. Plame’s name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.
Wilson was sent to Niger to see if Saddam had been trying to buy uranium, and found that he had indeed attempted to on several occasions. But Wilson lied, and people died so he could promote himself and sell books.
Wilson was unqualified to gather intel for the CIA and never should have been sent.
You’re getting more and more hysterical; anybody can see from Wilson’s own bio why he was picked for the job: who would you have selected that had diplomatic experience in both Northern Africa and Iraq?
An actual agent would have been nice; you know, a spy rather than a political hack looking to sell a book.
Well, evidently those at the CIA thought he was qualified; but I’m sure you know much more about the situation than they do.
His wife thought him qualified, but his performance showed otherwise.
His wife thought him qualified, but his performance showed otherwise.
Uh, where are those WMDs.
You remember them? They’re those imaginary reasons why we went into Iraq.
Wilson wasn’t sent to Niger to buy WMDs, he was looking for attempts to buy uranium, which he did. But then he claimed to have proved that Saddam never had any uranium, which was false.
And then he wrote a book and went to work for the Kerry campaign, no doubt helping him lose.
Didn’t the CIA–a spy angency, after all, have anyone on the payroll who could do the job? What do the people who work there do? Just asking.
Apparently there was a faction inside the CIA that wanted to make Saddm out to be a paper tiger, and they hired Wilson to do the job. Since he had argued strongly against taking Saddam out after the Gulf War, and was married to one of the pro-Saddam people in the CIA, he was the perfect man for the job.
They weren’t looking for the truth, they wanted a whitewash.