In article ,
says...
for a while.

It's getting pretty bad when people you thought were reasonable
individuals turn into petty partisan ideologues - left and right.

Have fun ****ing on each other's shoes.

I've got better things to do.

What could you possibly do that's more fun or profitable than ****ing on
another's shoes?

I realize it's hard to stay in the middle.

Come back once Karl is indicted and Libby turns on Cheney. I'm sure
that'll calm things down considerably and we'll go back to moderate
conversation, just like a friendly campfire.

Sorry gotta go, flame launcher needs some oiling.

Take care.

jps

"jps" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
for a while.

It's getting pretty bad when people you thought were reasonable
individuals turn into petty partisan ideologues - left and right.

Have fun ****ing on each other's shoes.

I've got better things to do.

What could you possibly do that's more fun or profitable than ****ing on
another's shoes?

I realize it's hard to stay in the middle.

Come back once Karl is indicted and Libby turns on Cheney.

Another "jps prediction"...now archived for future taunting.

"NOYB" wrote in message
nk.net...

"jps" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
for a while.

It's getting pretty bad when people you thought were reasonable
individuals turn into petty partisan ideologues - left and right.

Have fun ****ing on each other's shoes.

I've got better things to do.

What could you possibly do that's more fun or profitable than ****ing on
another's shoes?

I realize it's hard to stay in the middle.

Come back once Karl is indicted and Libby turns on Cheney.

Another "jps prediction"...now archived for future taunting.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/56927.htm
"The story began in February 2002, when CIA staffer Valerie Plame Wilson got
her bosses to send her husband, ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson, to the African
nation of Niger to check if Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake uranium. In
her later statements to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mrs. Wilson left
little doubt she expected him to come back with a "no" when she told him
explore "this crazy report."

For over a year, Wilson and some CIA officials denied that he got the Niger
gig at his wife's behest - but both the bipartisan Senate Intelligence
Committee report and the CIA leak indictment say that's that case.

The taxpayer money spent to send Wilson to Niger didn't produce much. His
report "did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium," CIA
chief Tenet would later say. If anything, CIA analysts thought Wilson's
report backed up the yellowcake story that his wife had billed as "crazy."

Wilson didn't make any claim to have debunked the belief in Iraq weapons for
over a year after his February 2002 trip. But in May 2003, he joined
Democrat John Kerry's campaign - and instantly began blasting Bush, first
through anonymous leaks, then in a New York Times op-ed and on any TV
station that would have him, even posing with his wife for Vanity Fair in
his jaguar.

So why did the CIA let him do it? It sent Wilson on a sensitive mission -
but didn't require him to sign the usual confidentiality agreement. Even
though his wife was a CIA staffer, it let him go loudly public - violating
the most basic precautions, if she truly wanted to protect her identify.

The agency didn't assert a right to vet the New York Times op-ed he wrote
about his trip - even though such review is standard, and even though his
Times account sharply conflicted with what he'd told the CIA. It was if the
agency flashed him a giant green light to blast Bush.

Indeed, the indictment that could send ex-White House aide Scooter Libby to
jail for 30 years also holds clear evidence that the CIA should have stopped
Wilson from going public.

The indictment notes that on June 9, 2003, Libby got CIA documents about
Wilson's trip to Niger that were marked "classified" - even though "they did
not mention Wilson by name" and Libby didn't yet know about the role of
Wilson's wife. That indicates that the trip itself was classified - so CIA
should have ordered Wilson to stop blabbing.

But then, all this came at a time when the CIA division where Wilson's wife
worked had an intense need to cover its rear: Remember - they were the ones
who (along with every other intel agency in the world) had insisted that
Saddam had WMDs - but no WMDs were being found.

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division
where his wife worked - because it served to shift blame for failed "slam
dunk" intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush "twisted"
intelligence was to presume - falsely - that the CIA had gotten it right.

When the White House ineptly tried to counter Wilson's tall tales by
revealing that he wasn't an expert and his wife set up the trip, the CIA
demanded a criminal probe - and then itself broke the law by leaking that
news.

It now appears the CIA's entire referral was dishonest: The agency knew
Plame wasn't a covert agent under the terms of the law, since she hadn't had
an overseas posting in the past five years - and obviously neither she nor
the CIA was taking proper precautions to protect her identity. Call it
disinformation.

That almost certainly is why no charges have been filed against the
mysterious X who first leaked Mrs. Wilson's identity to columnist Robert
Novak, who published it. Since Mrs. Wilson wasn't a covert agent, she
couldn't be outed. And that's why Libby is accused of lying to investigators
but not of outing Wilson's wife.

As Victoria Toensing, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chief counsel,
put it in the Wall Street Journal: "The CIA conduct in this matter is either
a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence
tradecraft."

For her part Toensing - who was Intelligence Committee counsel when Moynihan
was vice-chairman - has no doubt about the answer: "It was a planned CIA
covert action against the White House. It was too clever by half."

Spies, after all, get much better training than White House aides at
double-dealing, leaks, disinformation and cover-ups. Sen. John McCain has
called the CIA a "rogue agency." One can only imagine that Moynihan would
agree. "