Because, Jed; Just Because As my last act of charity before going to bed, I will answer some questions about the "the Joe Wilson matter" that are troubling National Review's Jed Babbin. No, he doesn't want to know who leaked Wilson's wife's name and CIA affiliation to the press--he dismisses that as "unimportant." He advises us that by concentrating on which senior Bush official or officials committed a felony "we are missing the most important elements of the Wilson affair: the anomalies." So, lets by all means review those Anomalies, and clear them up: Jed says:
Well, that's not true, so no wonder you're seeing anomalies, Jed. While all employees and most contractors have to sign a secrecy agreement which includes a clause requiring them to give CIA prepublication review rights to anything they may say or write WHICH MIGHT BE CLASSIFIED before they make it public, not all people doing consulting work for the Agency have to sign these agreements. Especially if they're doing an unpaid favor for the Agency, the matter isn't secret, and it's a one-shot deal. They might sign a modified form of the secrecy agreement with one or more clauses striken out; they might sign nothing at all. It all depends on the circumstances. But lets hear you out, Jed.
Jed, buddy, let's keep in mind that just because YOU haven't heard of something, doesn't mean it's unheard of. My guess is that whatever agreement Wilson signed before undertaking this mission didn't require him to give the Agency prepublication review rights, and so he didn't need to get the NYT piece approved.
Or maybe she thought it was none of your business, that there was an FBI investigation underway that trumped your request, and it was stressing her out have to deal with you, especially in light of your attitude that you already know everything.
While we've already discussed some possible reasons why, I think the key one is found in the passage you quoted from Wilson's article: "The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret." If the mission wasn't secret, and the CIA felt, due to Wilson's track record as an ambassador, that he could be discreet, why bother to make him sign "the usual secrey agreement"? This really isn't the kind of anomaly to keep ME up at night, Jed. Maybe you can do better with your next one.
Because presumably the CIA saw the mission as overtly talking to people in Niger who might know about these things, and asking them if the report about Saddam trying to buy uranium there could be true. Joe was a diplomat. He had contacts there. He was probably liked, and vouched for, by the CIA people who had served with him in the embassies he headed. He agreed to do the job for free. He sounds like a valid choice to me. And as for Wilson's "deeply felt political views," maybe the person in the CIA who chose Wilson for the assignment assumed that anyone, even a Democrat, would want to know the truth about a matter which could affect our nation, and didn't think that donating money to Al Gore was a disqualifier for said mission. But you know, maybe those views DID result from a recent epiphany: it's possible that seeing the President apparently use discredited intelligence as a reason for going to war could do that to a person.
Jed, the reason you keep seeing anomalies is because you don't have your thinking cap on. As everybody else in the class knows, Wilson went to Niger in February 2002. Nobody would have considered the mission all that controversial then, because the CIA had already ruled the report about the yellowcake a fabrication. They had no idea that the President would do anything as risky (i.e., dopey) as to use this discredited claim in his casus belli against Saddam in the January 2003 State of the Union Address. And as to why the CIA might send somebody "devoted to a political agenda antithetical to the president's policy," they probably thought that the "President's policy" was "find out the truth about Saddam and his WMDs," and didn't see Wilson as being antithetical to that. Silly them, huh?
Jed, the CIA probably already did that, using their regular employees and highly classified sources and methods--they just didn't tell you about it. This "mission" seem to me to have one last-ditch effort to assure the Vice President's office that YES, we've checked out this report about yellowcake every way from Sunday, and it's NOT TRUE, now shut up about it.
The Wilson verbal report was presumably taken at face value because it corresponded with everything else the intelligence community already knew about the matter. And all evidence indicates that WILSON WAS RIGHT; SADDAM DIDN'T TRY TO PURCHASE NIGERIAN URANIUM. Everyone accepts this but you, Jed. And while it's not hard to suborn people in Nigeria, it's also not hard to get Iraqi defectors to tell you anything you want to hear. Or for them to tell you, in all sincerity, stuff they heard which actually isn't true. Sources fabricating information or relaying inaccurate information is a basic problem in the intelligence business -- that's why intelligence professionals try to get intelligence reports confirmed from multiple sources (and not just human sources, if possible). I hear responsible journalists are supposed to do the same thing. So, when you have other information (maybe some Nigerian sources, some NSA intercepts, some satellite photos, SOME ACTUAL WEAPONS AND MATERIAL FOUND IN IRAQ) to confim what Hamza told you, we'll take your anomaly a lot more seriously.
So, Jed, you're saying that one might think that Wilson's trip and report were a put-up job, intended to embarrass the President sooner or later, but if you do an an analysis of Wilson's person, politics, and actions, you realize that Wilson was so anti-Bush that it's clear that the trip and report were a CIA put-up job, meant to embarrass the President right then, but the President didn't catch on for nearly a year??? Or are you saying that one MIGHT think that this was a conspiracy, but then when one realized that Wilson's persona of outspoken truth, his loyalty to the United States, and his actions in the past, brave and valiant as they were, indicate that he WAS deemed the best man for the job, and there WAS no conspiracy? Except that you don't believe in coincidences, and so you think if the CIA sent somebody to Niger to investigate something, and he didn't come back with the answer the White House wanted, so it MUST mean that THE CIA IS OUT TO GET THE PRESIDENT? Or what? I'm really not sure I'm following you here, dude.
And if I were the President, I'd ASK the senior members of my administration if they had leaked Plame's name to Novak--heck, I'd probably polygraph them too, because I'd actually want to know who in my inner circle was willing to put some portion of America's security at risk just to score points against somebody who had told an inconvenient truth. And I'd take that action, knowing that it would show the individuals who make up the CIA that I wasn't willing to sacrifice them on the altar of political expediency -- and by doing so would earn their fervent loyalty, like my dad had. And if I were the editor of NRO, I'd demand a higher qualify of professionalism from my pundits. But hey, that's just me. 5:22:18 AM  |
Welcome to the Idiocy Era Now that Arnold has been elected governor, have you noticed a general increase in the level of wordwide stupidity? Well, maybe I'm mixing up cause and effect. In any case, I just seem to be encountering a lot of imbecility tonight. Case in point, NewsMax's Carl Limbacher, who still seems to believe that if only keeps saying that Valerie Plame wasn't undercover, then he has proven that no crime has been committed and a grateful George Bush will be his best friend. Here's his latest variation on that theme ('Leakgate' Accuser Won't Say Whether Wife Was Undercover ):
Geez, I guess the CIA never thought of checking whether she was undercover before they sent a crimes referral to the FBI, and DOJ never thought of asking about it before they opened a criminal investigation into the matter. It's a good thing that we have CARL to see through the smoke and mirrors and point us in the right direction, or people could be in jail before anybody ever asked that crucial question. Oh, Carl, and as to why Wilson wouldn't answer Imus's question, he, unlike SOME Senior Administration Officials, doesn't want to leak classified information -- because even though the cat is already out of the bag, until the info is declassified, it's the CIA's to control. 2:28:34 AM |
Pineapple Parfait Cake Confidential So, Arnold is California's new governor. Or so said a scrawl at the bottom of my TV screen at the beginning of "Law & Order: Sports Utility Vehicle." I think it was appropriate that this announcement came during the most lurid cop show to hit the airwaves since USA's "Silk Stalkings" -- but I guess my L&O gripes are a blog for another day. But that day is coming, and it will be a day of wrath, so you'd better repent now, Dick Wolf! Anyway, now that the election is over, we can focus on more important things than the fact that an actor whose campaign was singularly devoid of substance (sure, we could infer that he was anti-puke politics and pro-breast exams for women, but those aren't the issues that usually drive elections) is now in charge of important, grown-up stuff for the most populous state in the Union. Now that we's accepted that people are stupid, and life just isn't fair, we can reveal the shocking story of. . . Pineapple Parfait Cake of DEATH! It all started Saturday. I was working day shift, out of vice. My partner was Colonel Potter. I carry a can of Spry. I'm a food cop. I started my investigation by grating 1/2 teaspoon of lemon rind. This involved removing all the rind from the fruit, leaving it naked and exposed. It seemed like a real waste of a lemon -- kind of like a criminal who used their talent for evil and not good. The recipe said to combine Spry, salt, lemon rind, and egg yolk and blend. I did. I added sugar. It was creamed, per orders. In another bowl, I combined baking power and flour. Aunt Jenny said to shift it three times, but modern police kitchens aren't equipped with sifters. I just stirred. I added small amounts of flour to the creamed mixture, alternating with the pineapple juice and water. The mixture was thick and hardened, like a prostitute who's been on the street too many years. I thought it needed more liquid, but the taxpayers don't pay me to think, they pay me to enforce the codes and statutes of the California Code of Recipe Jurisprudence. Two egg whites refused to talk, so they were beat until stiff. They were folded carefully into the mixture, but like how maryjane can make a good kid become a heroin addict and die in squalor on the streets, the tough, think mixture just squeezed all of the air and all of the life out of the egg whites, reducing them to its own level of squalor. The suspects were poured into two regulation 9-inch layer pans greased with Spry-Coat and tried in California Superior Court. In a moment, the results of that trial. The cakes pled guilty, and were sentenced to 25-30 minutes in a State Correctional 350 degree oven. When they got out, they were about 1/2 inch high, and now fully resembled like the tough, streetwise goods they were. Apparently they didn't use their time in the slammer to think about their crimes, but just brooded about how they didn't have enough pineapple juice when they were growing up, and how that led them to not use their beaten egg whites to become light and fluffy, like a law-abiding cake would. One layer showed its rebellion against society by refusing to emerge from its pan (despite court-ordered Spry Pan-Coat and advice from its Legal Aid attorney. It was ripped out of the pan anyway, for its own good, but left behind a good chunk of its stomach. It cried police brutality, of course, but that doesn't play in MY city, sister! Now, on to investigating the cake's alleged accomplice, Snow Whirl Frosting. I had a good feeling about Snow Whirl. She came from a good family, and seemed innocent and sweet. But I went by the book with her. I separated two eggs, and put the whites in a pan, along with sugar, pineapple juice, and corn syrup. Thanks to modern police science, as seen on "CSI" and "Martha Stewart's Living a Life of Quiet Desperation," I didn't have to use a rotary beater or a fire to make this frosting. No, nowadays we have "stoves" and cheap electric hand mixers to do our work. But haven't we paid for this with our souls? Isn't this part of the same search for "quick fixes" and "kicks" that have led kids like Snow onto the streets of Hollywood, where they are easy prey for the first pimp who offers them an electric hand mixer. My weary ruminations about how life causes good frostings to go bad were proven to be all too true as I was beating the mixture while cooking it. At first it looked good, white, and pure, like you'd hope your daughter would turn out. But after a few minutes, it developed small black flecks. Flecks of sin. Pieces of the pan's Teflon coating being flaked offt by the mixer beaters. Snow was no longer the sweet, innocent frosting her father thought she was. And even adding the rind of another hapless lemon can't change things. All food cops can guess what happens next. They've seen it a million times before. Yes, the tough, hardened cake managed to get together with the not-so-pure Snow, despite its gaping chest wound. It was a marriage made on the seamy streets where the smalltime hustlers and losers hang out. Snow helped Cake to cover up his crimes, while Cake offered Snow the stability and substance she had always craved. But can they make it in a world where everything is stacked against them? What is to become of the cake who had done time, and the frosting who had seen a little too much of life (and Teflon) to be accepted by decent society? Only time will tell  Epilogue: At first Snow's youth allowed her to be light and fluffy, despite her unfortunate Teflon addiction, and she managed to make Cake look almost edible. But in a couple of days, she deflated--down to nothing in some places. It seemed that Cake was sucking the life right out of her, as it had it's previous egg whites. When will women learn: those bad cakes just take, take, take, and never give anything back! And who do I blame for all of this? I accuse Aunt Jenny! She was the one whose proportions were all wrong, whose values were screwed up, who didn't call for enough liquid in the first place! I remembered the Baking Powder Biscuit Caper, and thought, "I should have known." Bottom line: Jenny should be made to pay. This cake had potential. It COULD have been "a delicate party cake," but thanks to Jenny, it won't be going to any parties. There is no parfait here, as the photos clearly show. And as for it's "temptin' fruity flavor," it's temptin' in the way one is seized by the odd urge, when looking down from a high building, to throw yourself out the window. But it does taste of fruit. Lemon, mostly. But also of the forbidden fruit of greed and ego run amuck. But Jenny can't be touched by the law. She has an alibi (death) for the time the crime was actually committed. But if I had my way, she would be sentenced to doing the 2 sinks full of dishes that her criminal "receipt" caused, to caring for the two naked, rindless lemons and six eggs rendered whiteless because of her, and to eating the cake was the result of her carelessness and greed.  As for me, it's back to patrolling the mean kitchens, trying to make life a little safer for the people in my city. And drinking. Lots of drinking. Well, another Regrettable Food Experiment concluded, and more lessons learned. Namely, never trust Aunt Jenny's proportions of liquid to flour, and never use a mixer inside a nonstick pan. But since this cake ALMOST tasted like something you'd want to eat (if you don't mind a little Teflon), it was probably the best thing I've made for the Regrettable Food Project so far. But then, Magic Meat Pie has probably so skewed my standards that I can no longer tell good from bad, and right from wrong. Tomorrow I'll rip away the fabric of tissues and lies that hold together Aunt Jenny's marriage to Cal when we look a little deeper into the soap opera world of "Aunt Jenny's Favorite Recipes." I'll also look through my vintage cookbooks and find a couple of regrettable recipes you can vote on for our next experiment. So, stay tuned, stay in school, just say no to drugs, and don't hang out with bad cakes. 12:59:00 AM |
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