Monthly Archives: July 2006

Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist, has finally admitted he testified in an investigation about the outing of Valerie Plame.  I have some grudging admiration for Novak, despite his politics.  He’s a little too right wing for my tastes, but he’s thorough and has a pragmatic streak in his suggestions that I can at least appreciate.

Novak admitted to releasing his sources to the investigation.  His sources confirmed that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative.  That Valerie Plame was married to Joe Wilson was immaterial or perhaps not as we will see.

The backstory is important.  Joe Wilson was an ambassador.  Wilson went to Niger before the Iraq war to see if there was any truthiness to rumors that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy nuclear materials on the black market for a weapon of mass destruction.  

The allegations were that Valerie Plame wearing her CIA hat, suggested her partner Joe, go to Niger and get the goods.  Joe did, the goods were bullshite and Joe said so out loud.  

Think back to Dubya and Colin Powell, specifically a State of the Union address and Colin at the UN:  Hell, yeah he’s doing it.  We got proof!  Pictures! Pie Charts! Graphs! Illustrations! Axis of Evil!  Al Qaeda!  Wilson’s comments at the time were emphatically unwanted by the Administration.

The proof, we found out later, was based on unverified and fabricated British and CIA sources.  The evidence fell apart faster than a Wal-Mart dress shirt in the dryer once US soldiers started walking around in Iraq, actually looking for WMD’s.

To slap Joe Wilson, someone decided that outing his wife, Valerie Plame, would be appropriate.  Not only does it blow Wilson away as a credible source of any valid criticism, but it also gives the CIA one up the side of the head for not delivering perfect WMD evidence and botching the discreet overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the 90’s.

Outing a CIA agent is illegal in the US and carries some serious penalties.  Telling nose-stretchers to a Grand Jury is also illegal.  This is why Scooter Libby is in a world of hurt.  Scooter lied to a grand jury about outing Plame to a reporter, Judith Miller, of the NYTimes.  Judith Miller spent 85 days in the can for refusing to reveal her sources.

Novak was one of the other reporters who were told about Valerie Plame.  The sources, according to Novak were Karl Rove and Bill Harlow, an ex-CIA spokesperson.  There was one other human that Novak will not name publicly, as his primary source.  Rove and Harlow confirmed the primary source.

The reason Novak gave up his sources to Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald are easy enough to understand:  Novak was going to get his financial and professional nuts cut off and served back to him on a plate.  Confronted with financial ruin and jail time, Novak reluctantly caved and gave up all three names.

What does this all mean?  It is a chain of things that are suggested or inferred.  

Things point back to the Executive branch of the US Government as the most likely source of the leak:  Clerks and receptionists don’t have that kind of data or are too scared to open their mouths.  Only those who feel they are immune from prosecution would consider leaking that kind of information to a journalist.

It suggests that Joe Wilson might have been right about the WMD/Iraq/Saddam Hussein evidence, as why else would they out his wife, but to muzzle Wilson?  It would also show anyone thinking of varying from the speaking points should think twice about opening their mouths.

Assuming Joe Wilson was right, why wouldn’t a government want the truth to come out?  That’s easy enough:  The decision to fight a war was already taken.  The speaking points were already written.  The public hadn’t quite fully swallowed the meal, but it was in their mouth.  Dissent would cause the American public to spit it out.

Now, the troubling question:  When was the decision taken to start some kind of issue with Iraq and Saddam Hussein that might lead to a war? 

The implied story has logic to it:  Someone wanted to solve the Iraq problem once and for all by getting Saddam Hussein, a loose cannon, off the Baghdad big chair, leaving a legacy of Middle East Peace in Our Time.  The Legacy Someone.

Something was needed to push the Iraqi population into overthrowing Saddam Hussein.  The CIA tried a couple of times in the 90’s to tip it over and failed.  Problem:  Saddam Hussein had layers of secret police burying dissenters and all their relatives in unmarked mass graves.  The population couldn’t rise up.  The Oil for Food sanctions were starving them to death slowly, while the Ba’ath party and the Iraqi army were eating fine.

This Legacy Someone needed a provocation.  The UN weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors said something was smelly in Iraq, but they had nothing that could be pinned to a wall, despite trying hard. 

The UN wasn’t willing to step it up a notch into a police action.  It would take at least two years to pull together a coalition like 1991.  That wouldn’t happen until the UN had exhausted every diplomatic possibility including Rock, Paper, Scissors with Tariq Azziz.

Iraq shooting at Israel might, or might not, do as a reason to invade Iraq.  The implied danger being Saddam Hussein is capable of popping a few at Israel and just to be pissy, adding chemical weapons to the ends of a couple of Scuds, like 1991. 

Israel might respond by turning Iraq into radioactive ashes.  That wouldn’t play in the US homeland:  Too foreign, too dangerous and too abstract the preventing of something that might not happen.  It would position Israel as a bunch of nuclear crazies with itchy trigger fingers.

Defending Israel also opens up the question of who actually supplied weapons to both sides in the Middle East.  It would be very embarrassing for France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and the United States to have it well known that they play all sides against all sides, as long as the cash comes first.

Shooting at US aircraft in the No-Fly zones didn’t play.  A starving Iraqi population, with desperate humanitarian needs, nope.  Afghan drug lords?  Nope. 

Ensuring the US oil supply?  Too Imperialist and it would annoy Saudi Arabia.  The House of Saud is in trouble with local loons who think the Royal family is too cozy with the US as it is.

It had to be something to get the population of the US onside for a short, fast, war against Iraq:  An obvious black and white event that everyone could get behind. 

The calendar turned over to September 11^th 2001. 

The Legacy Someone linked it together:  A Saudi cement-head, Osama Bin Laden (Shhh..He’s not Saudi, he’s a terrorist hiding in caves) is being supported by Afghani Taliban cement heads and (wait for it…) Saddam Hussein who will sell them Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Outing Valerie Plame was nothing more a slap to keep a few people in line.  It is barely a parenthetical footnote that Novak gave up his sources.

The real story, where an unmuzzled Robert Novak should now spend time, is when was the decision to attack Iraq taken and who called it.

This just in from the Associated Press  “(Washington) by Ted Bridis:  The State Department is recovering from large-scale computer break-ins worldwide over the past several weeks that appeared to target its headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, The Associated Press has learned.” 

“Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the widespread intrusions and the resulting investigation.”

Every nation considers information warfare to be a cornerstone of warfighting.  Take away the communications and you take away the ability to react quickly or tactically to something.  In older conflicts it was cutting down telephone and telegraph wires.  Today, the telephone technology is internet-based:  Western Union doesn’t do telegrams anymore.  

So Who Done It?  The list is as long as your arm, but the two areas the hackers wanted to get into was the China and North Korea desks at the State Department.  This makes me think it wasn’t the Jamaican National Security Service.

Since the title of this piece is Vicious Rumors and Lies, I want to enlist your help in spreading a viral rumor, just to see if we can.  Here it is: 

(AB) The Oil Companies are secretly funding terrorist groups to target transit systems worldwide, like Milan, London and now Mumbai.  This puts terrified transit riders in cabs, or on scooters or into cars.  This means drivers have to buy more gasoline, which puts more profits into the pockets of the oil companies.  Haliburton works with the Oil Companies; they’re the key.  Hamid Karzi used to work for Unocal.  Haliburton had a piece of the pie in the Afghan oil and gas pipeline going to Turkey.  The US has a big military base at Incirlik in Turkey. 

OK, is that whacked enough?  As far as I know the rumor is not true.  It is just stupid enough that it might be.  I was considering adding something about werewolves in Panama, but I figured that would be pushing it too close to true to make a good rumor. 

All I ask is that you mail it, post it, set trackbacks into other blogs or do what you can in a few minutes online.

Now, the Why.  We have this wonderous Internet that is supposed to bring us closer together with instantaneous, heartfelt communications between people of all races, creeds, opinions and persuasions.  It hasn’t happened yet.

The cranky and deranged post wild speculation and outright fabrications every day, but we know enough to ignore Fox News.  Various other countries demonize each other as a matter of course.  Facts and reality have no place when you have demented speculation and bile-spitting hatred to crank people up. 

In a week’s time, we’ll do the same with the retraction of the story and find out if good news travels as fast as bad news.  Science is fun!       

Five US soldiers have been charged with serious crimes in Iraq.  Murder and Rape are the two serious ones.  The act happened in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, back in March of this year.  You can search up the particulars at any reputable news source.

The US Military is going about charging and investigating the five with as much transparency as the US Military can scrape up.  They know they have to:  Iraq is watching the whole thing very closely.  I will not excuse the actions of the soldiers, except to say that when you brutalize humans, expect humans to act in a brutal manner.

Which is why the charges are serious:  They speak to how troops are managed in Iraq and what steps the US Military have taken to ensure that normal humans don’t cross that imaginary line from disciplined soldier to murderer. 

Like the rest of the planet, there is a percentage of disturbed people in the military, just as there is a percentage who drink too much, or enjoy needlepoint, or who are gay.  These tend to be fixed percentages.  With the exception of those who like Rickie Lee Jones or Juice Newton, it is in the realm of normal for any large group.

The problem is intrinsic.  Soldiers are given access to weapons and the power to project their will, within certain limits, with the permission of the government.  Fortunately the military 99 times out of 100, finds the unwell early in the process and keeps them away from the weapons.  Unwell people will slip through, because the system is run by humans and is imperfect.

However, the pressure to get and keep soldiers is ever-increasing.  One suggestion is that the US Military in the lower ranks, is made up of kids, right out of high school who have no hope for a job or college education.  This means small-town kids from poor towns, or urban kids with no alternatives.  The military has always been the last refuge of the poor.

A few years ago the US Navy had to rewrite all their manuals, down to a Grade 6 level of reading comprehension.  Recruits didn’t have the educational skills to read the manuals to understand how to operate or troubleshoot things like an aircraft catapult, or the steering gear on a ship.  But the pressure to recruit anything with a pulse didn’t go away.  This puts more pressure on the system to overlook those who are just a little unwell, to keep the warm body in the service and hope that they don’t cross the line.

I’m hoping the atrocities in Mahmoudiya are the work of a couple of unwell people who slipped through the cracks.  I also hope the US Military keeps the whole process transparent, so the population in Iraq can see that the process, although slow, will work to bring justice.  The penalties might not be what some cultures would find acceptable, but as long as justice is seen to be done, then it will be accepted. 

There is an axiom of the military:  Lead by Example.  Here’s a chance for the US Military to do exactly that.

Canada has a big bunch of troops in Afghanistan trying to keep things under control, with the American troops, fighting various groups.  Every day or two a Canadian soldier is either killed or maimed. 

Yesterday, Corporal Anthony Joseph Boneca, was killed near Kandahar City, in a firefight with insurgents.  He was 21 years old, from Thunder Bay and a reservist (sort of like the National Guard) with the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment.

On Friday, Stephen Fernandes apologized for his behavior.  Fernandes was one of the three men photographed pissing on the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Canada Day.    

I don’t know if I am reading this right, but there was more furor in the Canadian media about three drunk twits taking a leak on the War Memorial, than the regular maiming and killing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. 

Yes, pissing on the War Memorial is outrageous.  Yes, our soldiers dying in Afghanistan is outrageous.  At least the piss artistes had the decency to come forward, make a heartfelt apology and take their lumps.  The media covered it extensively. 

The family of Corporal Anthony Joseph Boneca deserve something from us.    Since our media downplays the Afghanistan story, I’ll have to step up. 

I’m sorry your son was killed.  I don’t know if what Canada is doing in Afghanistan is righteous or not, but your son did his duty.  For that and because I am able to write this, in a free country, I thank you as well.