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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Josh Marshall has pointed out an interesting new article on the Plame investigation. There are several points of interest, but what most strikes me is that it does reveal new information about Plame's role in arranging for Wilson's trip. The keyy portion quotes one Bill Harlow who was, in July 2003, in press relations in the CIA. Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed. THere has been a lot of speculation on what role Plame played in arranging the trip, most of it uninformed. This is what happens when you're dealing with the CIA; plenty of people are willing to speculate, but they don't know what they're talking about. This seems by far the best evidence we have on the question; it comes from a named source, who was actually in the CIA in a position to know what went on, and he is stating on the record that what he says in this interview largely repeats statements he has already made under oath. Harlow clearly says that the White House spin on the trip was false. He, "warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission", then, "called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong". The story Novak related to him was, presumably, the story he had gotten from the White House and printed a few days later in his infamous column: "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report." That Plame instigated the Wilson trip was and remains the official Bush spin. To find it in its purest form we go as usual to noted spokesperson for untreated mental illness, Ann Coulter: "Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, not by the CIA and certainly not by Dick Cheney." What was Plame's role in the trip? We still don't know the answer. There appears to have been some, which was probably minimal. We should remember that this question is not and never really has been relevant. It's one of many quite unimportant talking points that have been tossed out by Bush surrogates to hide the basic reality of their indefensible conduct. What happened was that Wilson's article launched a White House offensive, "the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech". The Bush media strategy violated truth and common decency; that was just another day at the office. In this case it probably also violated the law due to carelessness with vital national security information. The point was to hide the underlying lie that was used to bring us into Iraq in the first place. Ari Fleischer illustrated it well in one of his last gaggles before he left Washington to spend more time lying to his wife: "A greater, more important truth is being lost in the flap over whether or not Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. The greater truth is that nobody, but nobody, denies that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. He was pursuing numerous ways to obtain nuclear weapons." Saturday, July 23, 2005
And Speaking of Voldemort The new Harry Potter is looking so far like a mild disappointment. Not that it's actually bad by any means, but it does seem to be a step down from Rowling's extremely high standards. The start was quite slow and, if I weren't already committed to the series, I would probably have given up on it. In general it's been quite easy to put the book aside for a few hours and focus on something else, a feat that required absolutely heroic efforts for the last few volumes. Although I've only read about 1/2 so far, I've already figured out (over 100 pages ago) the pretty obvious answer to what Rowling presumably intends to be a major mystery: [almost certainly correct spoiler alert] the 'Half Blood Prince' must be Voldemort. A brilliant sorcerer, a half blood obsessed with pure blood lines, an expert in hexes and jinxes, plus Harry's father, who is already known to have known Voldemort at Hogwarts, used the spell he invented - it all fits. And since Hermoine is supposed to be very smart, she already suspects the Prince, and Harry is telling her about his sessions with Dumbledore, why doesn't she have at least an inkling of this? Has obsessing over Ron knocked down her IQ by that much? [/spoiler alert] The rumor line has it that Dumbledore will be killed off in this book, and that is looking plausible. Harry has identified himself so much with Dumbledore that to follow the classic arc of a hero's development, he has to lose his mentor so he can face Voldemort alone in the final battle of volume 7. The other plausible candidate for the big sleep is Snape. An early chapter gives the appearance that he has gone back to the Death Eaters and is secretly working against Dumbledore. I think that's a red herring and Snape will give final proof of his loyalty, either in this book or the next, with a heroic death. But if Rowling is following the pattern from the last book, she'll have Harry go through a loss that will be genuinely painful for him, and that could hardly be Snape. Read the book anyway, not that the 20 million or so who read the last one need me to tell them that. A below average book by Rowling is still better than most fantasy writers can manage at their very best. Global warming has been a recorded reality for a few decades now, and a very strong one just lately across almost the entire country. Las Vegas and Denver have, in the past few days, tied their records for highest temperature ever recorded. The recent heat wave has been remarkable in its duration, but even moreso in scope, stretching from Boston through the Southeast and Southwest (the hardest hit area) to the Pacific coast. But one part of the US remains untouched by global warming: the SCLM. I don't have either the resources or the inclination to fully monitor the nightly broadcasts, but I heard at least 4 heat wave stories last week with global warming not mentioned once. And stories like these on the network news sites follow the same pattern. The networks also note as an interesting coincidence that, after one of the worst years for hurricanes on record in 2004, 2005 may well be worse. Publication of a recent study indicating that global warming will increase the strength of hurricanes led to a few stories, but on the whole, warming seemingly is becoming the Voldemort of climate coverage, the plan to deal with increasingly obvious affects apparently being to never mention it and hope it goes away. Saturday, July 16, 2005
One of the odder excuses used the GOP smearstorm to defend Karl Rove has been the name defense: supposedly Rove simply said that Joe WIlson's wife worked for the CIA, without specifying her name. This is a rather weak claim logically, and, as Matthew and others have pointed out, it doesn't seem to be a defense at all under either the IIPA or the Espionage Act. So why make such a fuss over it? My guess is that it's really pre-emptively establishing a defense against charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, or both. Rove probably made statements to either the Grand Jury or to investigators than can be parsed as truthful if you pretend that there's some significant distinction between identifying Plame and using her name. |
