Who really "outed" Valerie Plame and...

[Yonivore]

...Joseph Wilson's "French Connections."

I do believe it is beginning to unravel.

Analyst says Wilson 'outed' wife in 2002 (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47242)

Joseph A. Wilson IV: The French Connection (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4970)

The, of course, there's the whole matter of what the French and Joseph Wilson were trying to mislead everyone over...

About that Iraq 'deception' (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05310/600991.stm)

I know that Nbadan and ChumpDumper and the like will all claim that the MSM finally "drank the Koolaid" when they can no longer ignore the facts and are forced to start reporting the truth about Iraq, the war on Terrorism, and the nefarious purposes of many who tried to subvert the United States.

That's fine. Nbadan and ChumpDumper can go live in Franco-Arabia. I would, however, wait until the fires are extinguished.

[ChumpDumper]

Let's see, two tin-foil hat net articles rivalling DU and another that does nothing to refute yesterday's Times article.

If Plame wasn't covert then Scooter shouldn't have lied about her. What an idiot.

And the Franco-Arabia thing is stupid. You can simply go to hell. I won't put any conditions on that one.

[RandomGuy]

Another sad attempt to frame the debate in a way that makes Bush look like less of an idiot.

"But Clinton attacked Iraq on the same intelligence, so you bad old democrats are silly for opposing an invasion and prolonged occupation."

pfft.

Clinton was smart enough to be able to weigh possible outcomes. I would have felt a hell of a lot better about his administration's ability to plan for the post-war, even had he led an invasion. There is no substitute for an informed and mentally sharp commander-in-chief.

[mookie2001]

TRO you got dumped chump!

[Marcus Bryant]

Clinton was smart enough to do nothing and send the problem on down the line.

[RandomGuy]

Clinton was smart enough to do nothing and send the problem on down the line.


Heh, kind of like Bush/Reagan with the national debt...

[Marcus Bryant]

Did the debt go up or down under Billy Jeff?

[RandomGuy]

Did the debt go up or down under Billy Jeff?


http://mwhodges.home.att.net/debtfull.gif


Down. You will notice the levelling off and decline under Clinton.

[Vashner]

Subject Wilson is an anti american ass wipe. Not debit.

[Marcus Bryant]

It went up. You'll notice that the pic you googled is in relation to GDP.

[RandomGuy]

It went up. You'll notice that the pic you googled is in relation to GDP.

Relation to GDP is the only way that particular information is meaningful.

If one sticks to pure numbers, one ignores the
TIME VALUE OF MONEY (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/082703.asp).

[RandomGuy]

Subject Wilson is an anti american ass wipe. Not debit.


???????????????????????????

[Marcus Bryant]

Relation to GDP is the only way that particular information is meaningful.

Doesn't mean that my statement was any less accurate.




If one sticks to pure numbers, one ignores the
TIME VALUE OF MONEY (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/082703.asp).

One also ignores the fact that the nominal value of the debt has increased.

[Extra Stout]

Subject Wilson is an anti american ass wipe. Not debit.
ducks would be proud.

[RandomGuy]

Doesn't mean that my statement was any less accurate.

One also ignores the fact that the nominal value of the debt has increased.


Yes, both of the above statements are technically accurate.

BUT

The debt's importance is more in the ability of the economy to pay for it.

If a person making $100,000 per year borrows $1000 dollars, that person is much more able to pay that back than someone who borrows the same $1000, but only earns $10,000 per year.

Once again, it boils down to the time value of money. If the economy is expanding faster than the debt, then our ability to pay that debt back is growing. THAT is the important bit of information.

Nominal dollars don't mean much. (I would that recommend anybody interested in investing should read the link, it is a very important concept in finance)

[Yonivore]

Let's see, two tin-foil hat net articles rivalling DU and another that does nothing to refute yesterday's Times article.
Who's talking about refutine the Times? If you just wait, they'll run a correction on pay 36...maybe they already have.


If Plame wasn't covert then Scooter shouldn't have lied about her. What an idiot.
Well, first that's yet to be established. From what I read, the indictments are based on the fact that his recollections differed from those of reporters. They could be lying. But, that's what trials are for, eh? Nice that you have him convicted already.


And the Franco-Arabia thing is stupid. You can simply go to hell. I won't put any conditions on that one.
Alrighty, Chumpy...what every blows your veil.

[Oh, Gee!!]

It was probably Rasho

[Marcus Bryant]

So the debt level as a % of GDP is in the same ballpark as it was under Clinton.

Also, what constant dollars are used in that chart? And where is the underlying data at?

[Yonivore]

Hey, Chumpy! You can poo-poo the articles but, the American Thinker article was heavily sourced with links and the Vallely story was based on an interview he did with ABC.

But, it's all good, the longer you're in denial over the true nature of what's going on, the more sweet will be the vindication when you realize the truth...if you ever do.

And, this never happened?


The 4th Infantry Division discovered in an ammo dump near the town of Baiji 55 gallon drums of chemicals which, when mixed together, form nerve gas. They were stored next to surface-to-surface missiles which had been configured to carry a liquid payload.

[RandomGuy]

...Joseph Wilson's "French Connections."

I do believe it is beginning to unravel.

Analyst says Wilson 'outed' wife in 2002 (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47242)

Joseph A. Wilson IV: The French Connection (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4970)

The, of course, there's the whole matter of what the French and Joseph Wilson were trying to mislead everyone over...

About that Iraq 'deception' (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05310/600991.stm)

I know that Nbadan and ChumpDumper and the like will all claim that the MSM finally "drank the Koolaid" when they can no longer ignore the facts and are forced to start reporting the truth about Iraq, the war on Terrorism, and the nefarious purposes of many who tried to subvert the United States.

That's fine. Nbadan and ChumpDumper can go live in Franco-Arabia. I would, however, wait until the fires are extinguished.

Why study fallacies?

Why study how to reason incorrectly; why not just study how to reason correctly? There are two reasons:

1. Even if you could count on reasoning correctly 100% of the time, you cannot count on others doing so. In logical self-defense, you need to be able to spot poor reasoning, and—more importantly—to understand it. To be able to correct others' mistakes, or to refute them convincingly, you need to understand why they are wrong.
2. Studying formal logic and the rules of correct reasoning is like having a road map that shows how to get from point A to point B. However, even the best navigators sometimes get lost, and it helps if the roads that go nowhere are clearly labeled "DEAD END", "WRONG WAY", or "DO NOT ENTER".

That is what fallacy studies is all about: marking the wrong turns that reasoners are likely to take. Thus, studying fallacies is no substitute for studying the positive principles of good reasoning—learning to navigate through logical space, so to speak.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/introtof.html

Hmmmm...


I spotted at least two flaws in Yoni's reasoning.. anybody else get more?

[Nbadan]

In the American-Thinker article, writer James Lewis accuses French intelligence of producing the Niger documents and passing them off the the Italians. In his sources he lists the Wikipedia online free encyclopedia..


In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery) claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man, Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court.

But this is what the Wikipedia free encyclopedia really says about the origin of the Niger documents...


By late 2003, the trail of the documents had been partially uncovered. They were obtained by a "security consultant" (and former agent of the precursor agency to SISMI, the SID), Rocco Martino, from Italian military intelligence (SISMI). An article in The Times (London) quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy, after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004.) Martino later recanted and said he had been misquoted, and that SISMI had not facilitated the meeting where he obtained the documents. It was later revealed that Martino had been invited to serve as the conduit for the documents by Col. Antonio Nucera of SISMI, the head of the counterintelligence and WMD proliferations sections of SISMI's Rome operations center. [8]

Martino, in turn, offered them to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba. On instructions from her editor at Panorama, Burba offered them to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in October, 2002. [9] Burba was dissuaded by the editors of the Berlusconi-owned Panorama from investigating the source of the forgeries.

It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the U.S. In 2005, Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians: "The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein ...." [10]

In an interview published April 7, 2005, Cannistraro was asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the source of the forgery was former National Security Council and State Department consultant Michael Ledeen. (Ledeen had also allegedly been a liaison between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI two decades earlier.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you'd be very close." [11]

In an interview on July 26, 2005, Cannistraro's business partner and columnist for the "American Conservative" magazine, former CIA counter terrorism officer Philip Giraldi, confirmed to Scott Horton that the forgeries were produced by "a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy." When Horton said that must be Ledeen, he confirmed it, and added that the ex-CIA officers, "also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing." [12]

In a second interview with Horton, Giraldi elaborated to say that Ledeen and his former CIA friends worked with Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. "These people did it probably for a couple of reasons, but one of the reasons was that these people were involved, through the neoconservatives, with the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi and had a financial interest in cranking up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and potentially going to war with him." [13]

In an explosive series of articles in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. What may be most significant to American observers, however, is La Repubblica's allegation that the Italians sent the bogus intelligence about Niger and Iraq not only through traditional allied channels such as the CIA, but seemingly directly into the White House. That direct White House channel amplifies questions about the 16-word reference to the uranium from Africa in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address -- which remained in the speech despite warnings from the CIA and the State Department that the allegation was not substantiated. [14]

[Yonivore]

So, if Wilson discussed his wife's CIA employment in a green room conversation with a former Army General in 2002, that's okay? It wouldn't make the whole subject of her outing a moot point?

And, you're not troubled by all the connections between Wilson and the French and Niger? No hint of impropriety there? None?

It doesn't trouble you that an Italian intelligence officer admitted to planting the bogus memos for the French?

Or, that the French control the mining of uranium in Niger?

Or, that Wilson lied to the press and in his op-ed about who sent him to Niger and what he reported back to the CIA?

And, what about the 500 drums of pesticide and catalyst that were stored in camoflaged bunkers next to an ammo dump full of STS missiles capable of carrying a liquid payload?

No, no dots to connect there.

[Nbadan]

In fact, the American-Thinker article leans heavily on acussation made against the French by Rocco Martino, but here is what Juan Cole says about Martino in 2004...


The Sunday Times on Sunday and the Financial Times on Monday report that an Italian businessman and fraudster named Rocco Martino has said that he was the source of the false stories and documents related to Iraq’s alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger. He explained that in 1999, French intelligence sought information about business dealings in Niger. He has met with French intelligence officials in Brussels ever since 1999 on a regular basis and knew about the situation in Niamey.

Highly placed European officials admit that Martino provided the French with documents showing that Iraq may have been planning to expand trade with Niger. In fact, the documents did not refer to uranium, and the trade plans were probably the typical sort of relationship Arab oil states had with a whole range of third world countries.

Martino was surprised when he saw that the French immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that the documents indicated an Iraqi interest in uranium. (We now know that Iraq had no nuclear program and so it is hard to see what it would have done with the uranium, anyway). The FT continues:

It was then that Mr Martino first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger’s uranium exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing "market" in documents. He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency by US diplomats.

Martino may well be the "independent" source that British intelligence maintains it had, apart from the forged documents, for the story of Iraq attempts to purchase Niger uranium. If so, it turns out that his "reports" are no more genuine than his documents. Martino alleged that the forgeries were produced by Italian intelligence, SISMI, and were given to their agent in the Niger embassy in Rome to be passed on to Martino from there. They knew Martino, who had once worked for SISMI, would immediately sell the documents to Western intelligence agencies. The question of why SISMI would produce such bad forgeries, which were falsified within a day of their receipt by the IAEA in early March of 2003, remains a mystery unresolved in Martino’s account.

Juan Cole, Bellaciao (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=2364)

Just goes to show, never trust a guy named Rocco.

:hat

[Marcus Bryant]

Anyways, with regards to the debt, if one wants to read any partisan politics into it, the GOP takeover of Congress was much more important to any reduction in the size of the federal debt relative to GDP than any speech Clinton ever gave. The basic problem as of late is that conservative Congressional Republicans have had a difficult time saying no to a Republican president. From a fiscal sanity perspective, the ideal combination appears to be a Democrat president and a GOP controlled Congress.

[spvrs]

Whatever the reason these guys are spending money like Mark Cuban and Isiah Thomas' loved child -- They deserve to be voted out of office. Spending/Pork has increased even faster than it did under 'the great society'.

The facts are gridlock is the only thing that works doesn't matter if it's Dem. president and Rep. Congress or vice versa.

[Marcus Bryant]

Whatever the reason these guys are spending money like Mark Cuban and Isiah Thomas' loved child -- They deserve to be voted out of office. Spending/Pork has increased even faster than it did under 'the great society'.

The facts are gridlock is the only thing that works doesn't matter if it's Dem. president and Rep. Congress or vice versa.


Problem is, it's the Congress that dominates the budgetary process. The Demo Congress/GOP presidency combo doesn't work as well due to this.

[j-6]

The 4th Infantry Division discovered in an ammo dump near the town of Baiji 55 gallon drums of chemicals which, when mixed together, form nerve gas. They were stored next to surface-to-surface missiles which had been configured to carry a liquid payload.

If this is a fact, why wasn't it a 96 point banner headline when something like two out of three Americans believe there's no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

[Yonivore]

If this is a fact, why wasn't it a 96 point banner headline when something like two out of three Americans believe there's no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
You'd have to ask the MSM that. They've been absent alot.

I knew about this from minor media reports at the time...and, it's referenced in the Duelfer or Kay report, I forget.

[gtownspur]

Patrick Fitzgerald already knows who leaked. If there was a crimek, he would of been charged. Libby lied because the media already portrayed talking about Valerie Plame as a crime and there was a National presidential election. But if Rg would of though about that, then it wont be bad when he blue balls over the fact that this investigation will lead to nowhere.

[Ocotillo]

Crooks and Liars (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/08.html#a5763)

I just talked to Joe Wilson while he was in between airports and he said that he didn't meet Maj. General Paul Vallely until the summer of 02' and not the spring of 02' as Vallely reports. There will be much more information coming out to refute this latest smear campaign.

"Vallely and Lt. General Tom McInerney contends that Joe Wilson more than once in 2002 in the green room at Fox New Channel in Washington D.C. boasted about his wife the "CIA desk officer." McInerney has the same memory and more, since both he and Vallely were on FNC between 150 and 200 times in 2002 each...read on

Anyone believe that for a second raise your hand? For these two to come out now after two years of an investigation is laughable, but you know FOX News. Brit Hume reported this in his Grape Vine segment yesterday. John at AmericaBlog notes that Wilson's attorney, Christopher Wolf, is demanding a retraction. See the letter here. Why did these two upstanding citizens suddenly remember this information now? Why would Joe tell them in a FOX NEWS green room? When all else fails, attack the messenger again. I guess the lie that Wilson said Dick Cheney sent him to Niger didn't get the desired result. I'll have more later....John has more here.

Larry Johnson reponds to these nitwits:..."Sadly, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney have a track record of saying silly things on air and getting their facts flummoxed. What is so pathetic is that both Vallely and McInerney present themselves as military experts on special operations when neither has held any position of any importance with those forces. In fact, neither has ever held compartmented clearances required to know about those special programs

Hmmm.

[Yonivore]

Crooks and Liars (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/08.html#a5763)

I just talked to Joe Wilson while he was in between airports and he said that he didn't meet Maj. General Paul Vallely until the summer of 02' and not the spring of 02' as Vallely reports. There will be much more information coming out to refute this latest smear campaign.

"Vallely and Lt. General Tom McInerney contends that Joe Wilson more than once in 2002 in the green room at Fox New Channel in Washington D.C. boasted about his wife the "CIA desk officer." McInerney has the same memory and more, since both he and Vallely were on FNC between 150 and 200 times in 2002 each...read on

Anyone believe that for a second raise your hand? For these two to come out now after two years of an investigation is laughable, but you know FOX News. Brit Hume reported this in his Grape Vine segment yesterday. John at AmericaBlog notes that Wilson's attorney, Christopher Wolf, is demanding a retraction. See the letter here. Why did these two upstanding citizens suddenly remember this information now? Why would Joe tell them in a FOX NEWS green room? When all else fails, attack the messenger again. I guess the lie that Wilson said Dick Cheney sent him to Niger didn't get the desired result. I'll have more later....John has more here.

Larry Johnson reponds to these nitwits:..."Sadly, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney have a track record of saying silly things on air and getting their facts flummoxed. What is so pathetic is that both Vallely and McInerney present themselves as military experts on special operations when neither has held any position of any importance with those forces. In fact, neither has ever held compartmented clearances required to know about those special programs

Hmmm.
I'd believe Vallely before I'd believe Joe Wilson. Hell, he's already lied to a Senate Committee once, what's a lie between friends at an airport? You do know, of course that Spring and Summer are only separated by a day, right?

And, another thing, you don't know that they just came out now. Maybe they made voluntary statement to Fitzgerald already... Not everything is reported.

Some alibi. :lol

[gtownspur]

^^^ wait, are they telling us that Joe wilson is denying ever talking to Maj. General Vallely. Well that's good enough for me. :rolleyes Let's just bury this post because the Written Inspired Word of Liberalism has spoken. :smokin