Everyone's national disaster

I've been quite busy this week, and if you're like me then now, finally, it might be safe for us to breathe again. Through all those Clinton years we were treated to one smear incident after another, Travelgate, Watergate, Monicagate... all these inconsequential scandals with one special prosecutor after another.

And now this Administration, with its 'crown jewels' of 'credibility and integrity' or whatever they call it, now finally has that unmistakeable tarnish of a real political disease upon it. The schism between the government agencies (the CIA never really bought this bullshit all along) has exploded all over the cable news, months after it should have...

Actually that's one interesting aspect. Novak wrote his column back in mid-July, and Bush only publically said anything about this national security crisis a few days ago. One guy points out that's 75 days of sitting on his ass. True.

What to make of this? What damage? Who's spinning?

FOX News has been hilarious the last few days. First, they didn't want to talk about it. They avoided noting the Justice investigation for quite a while. Brit Hume disparaged the whole thing, anchors noted that 'nothing ever comes of these things, why bother?' Silliest of all, one rightie after another has said Wilson was some partisan peacenik yahoo, who existed to hassle the Bush administration. This doesn't quite fit with Wilson's work around the first Gulf war, where he was the US unofficial ambassador to Iraq, and the last American to meet with him prior to the war. He received much praise from Poppa Bush for his work. He also has given money to Republican candidates recently. No one's partisan, really.

I also like the line of reasoning which claims that because 'all he did was sip tea' in Niger rather than, I don't know, break into offices and kidnap officials, he could never have done a thorough job investigating the uranium story. (this is what Brit Hume and resident AEI Neo-con bitch Reuel Marc Gerecht talked about, because they didn't want to talk about the leak itself) But these fools don't know how the uranium business works. The mine is run by a large European conglomerate licensed under the IAEA. It's on the level. Really.

Novak himself is putting out all kinds of nonsense, but it's like he's compelled to share national security secrets with the public. for one thing, he said that she was known as an agent to insiders and "well known" in Washington, so it's not a big deal that he ran her name. What the hell is he talking about? So just now he decided to tell the name of her CIA front company. Good, that will help destroy their cover overseas. On CNN he said:

"Joe Wilson, the -- everybody knows he has given campaign contributions in 2000 to both Ford -- I mean to both Gore and to Bush. He gave twice as much to Gore, $2,000, $1,000 over the limit. The government -- the campaign had to give him back $1,000. That very day, according to his records, his wife, the CIA employee gave $1,000 to Gore, and she listed herself as an employee of Bruster, Jennings and Associates (ph).

There is there no such firm, I'm convinced. CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're a deep cover. They're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. So it adds to the little mystery."

The Washington Post now reports

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front... The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

Thanks, Novak! You're a great journalist! These clips come via DailyKos.

There is one piece of fallout from the crime we can't deny: whoever was ever associated with agent Plame overseas is in danger. What remains in question is what, exactly, Plame did. Calpundit piles up the public facts so far. It seems to be emerging that Plame ran networks of foreign informers who passed on information about biological, chemical, and nuclear material. Let me say that again: Plame's job was to collect intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, to monitor and prevent them from being used against the United States. Now anyone who can be tied to her can be compromised.

That's something that is really a disaster for everyone. That's the central point. Politics don't enter into calculating this.

Yet it is political. The leaker went after Wilson to intimidate anyone else who might attack the Bush folks falsification of war intelligence.

Let me offer a prediction about who was probably behind the leak: the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. There have been insiders saying that the bad guy works in the Executive Office Building, where Cheney's people are. If I'm right about this, I definitely win a cookie.

On a related topic, you need to see this report which says that FOX News watchers were the most likely to believe in misinformation about the war, namely that WMD have already been found, and Saddam was acively engaged with Al-Qaeda. Fair and Balanced!

In following these developments, naturally the Internet is the best source. Lately my reliable wisdom has come from the Daily Kos, Eschaton and The Agonist. If you keep an eye on these then you'll probably catch most of what's going on. Also much respect is due to Washington reporter Josh Marshall, who writes the Talking Points Memo, and kept the story alive since July. Marshall also has recently interviewed Wilson and Wesley Clark.

Actually, Clark told Marshall something important about neoconservatives:

TPM: I noticed that Doug Feith, who's obviously the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, had a statement a while back saying that the connection between terrorist organizations and state sponsors was, I think he said, the principal strategic thought behind the administration's policy.

CLARK: It's the principal strategic mistake behind the administration's policy. If you look at all the states that were named as the principal adversaries, they're on the periphery of international terrorism today. Syria -- OK, supporting Hezbollah and Hamas -- yeah, they're terrorist organizations. They're focused on Israel. They're getting support from Iran. It's wrong. Shouldn't be there. But they're there. What about Saudi Arabia? There's a source of the funding, the source of the ideology, the source of the recruits. What about Pakistan? With thousands of madrassas churning out ideologically-driven foot soldiers for the war on terror. Neither of those are at the front of the military operations. ...

The ability to conduct foreign policy draws not only on the president himself but on the leadership of the administration. If you were to start here and work backwards, you'd say this administration was doctrinaire. You'd say that it didn't have a real vision in foreign policy. It was reactive. Hobbled by its right-wing constituency from using the full tools that are available -- the full kit-bag of tools that's available to help Americans be in there and protect their interests in the world.

Clinton administration: broad minded, visionary, lots of engagement. Did a lot of work. Had difficulty with two houses in congress that [it] didn't control. And in an odd replay of the Carter administration, found itself chained to the Iraqi policy -- promoted by the Project for a New American Century -- much the same way that in the Carter administration some of the same people formed the Committee on the Present Danger which cut out from the Carter administration the ability to move forward on SALT II.

TPM: This being the same neo-conservatives that people hear about in the press today?

CLARK: Right, some of the same people. And then, you know, if you go back to the Bush administration, they were there when the Berlin Wall fell.

This whole statement that the neo-cons actually used the PNAC to undercut the administration's options is a kind of inverted view of issue advocacy (and it's fun to tie them to Carter). Marshall strongly agrees with the idea, and it got a bunch of nasty feedback from neocons. Very interesting. I am happy Clark is on the right page with neo-con deviousness, because that would be so fun to see him go off about in the democratic debates.

I suggest everyone sit back and watch the fireworks. This mess has just begun to unfold.