Washington Post LIES, WHORES for Bush in the CIA-outing scandal...

NOTHING in the past 100 years is a better argument for BRINGING BACK CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, than the cowardly, lying, traitorous editors and publishers of the Washington Post.

AS we recently laid out in a previous column, IF a John Kerry, Al Gore, or Bill Clinton were president, you could bet that the Cowardly Washington Post would be shouting "CLINTON DEFICITS!" and "VICE PRESIDENT LINKED to HALLIBURTON CORRUPTION!" and "ADMINISTRATION REWARDS KATRINA CONTRACTORS DESPITE ENTIRE REGIONS BURIED IN TRASH in New Orleans!" every damn day of the week.

In fact, it should be remembered that the COWARDLY, LYING editors and publishers of the WASHINGTON POST managed to join with the Rethuglicans into making the Clinton overnight guest list at the White House into a SCANDAL, if not a CRIME: Remember "Lincoln Bedroom 'scandal'"?

Even worse than that was when the COWARDLY, LYING editors of the Washington Post ran with the Karl Rove/Karen Hughes Republican SMEAR of departing Clinton-Gore staffers, ACCUSING THOSE Democratic staffers of "TRASHING THE WHITE HOUSE!" and "DESTROYING FEDERAL PROPERTY" - without one single photograph of evidence.

Of course those "get Clinton" lies, distortions, fabrications, and fabricated SMEARS were just the tip of the iceberg for WASHINGTON POST MENDACITY, the Post would slavishly go along with the Bush administration in COVERING UP GROSS NEGLIGENCE bordering on DERELICTION OF DUTY re the 9-11 attacks (for example, FBI lead counter-terror expert John O'Neill QUIT the FBI in disgust, when his FBI superiors STONEWALLED his investigation into the Al Qaida bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000... a time when the Bush campaign had its ENTIRE BAND OF FOREIGN POLICY and "national security" EXPERTS assembled, including of course not only Condoleeza Rice (Bush's choosen appointee for National Security Advisor) but Collin Powell AND FORMER SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE DICK CHENEY and DON RUMSFELD as well.

As we now know, the WASHINGTON POST were LEAD CONTRIBUTORS to the "MUST WAGE WAR ON IRAQ!" Bush-Cheney narrative, second only in the media to Judy Miller and her editors/publisher at the New York Times. (And it is an open question to ask if Ms. Miller was actually on the CIA payroll, lord knows the CIA loves tossing around money to buy journalists, and the ultimate journalist to buy out are those who get column-inches and bold headlines on the New York Times front page.)

But LYING to SMEAR the Clintons and Democratic staffers of the Clinton White House... LYING to OVERLOOK and BURY the story of criminally DISENFRANCHISED VOTERS in Florida in 2000.... LYING to cover up gross Bush admin. INCOMPETENCE if not criminal negligence leading up to 9-11 (and, at that, helping the Bush admin. BURY the anthrax-terrorist story under a mountain of bogus dead-ends); and LYING TO PUSH THE UNITED STATES INTO THE IRAQ war were only the most evident of the Washington Post's lies and complicity.

NOW we learn that the Post is in full-on SMEAR MODE yet again, this time TRYING TO BLAME AMBASSADOR WILSON for the "OUTING" of his wife as a CIA agent, and "outing" which destroyed the cover of HER ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION (Brewster Jennings Energy Consultants) AND everyone ever associated with that outfit.

Like the NEW YORK TIMES, the cowardly WASHINGTON POST has MUDDIED THE WATERS on the Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/Scooter Libby INTENTIONAL OUTING of Ms. Valerie Plame's identity, as a means of silencing and intimidating her whistle-blower husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who publicly wrote in a New York Times editorial in July of 2003 that not only was the story of "Niger yellowcake uranium for Iraq's WMD program" NOT TRUE, but that President Bush KNEW IT WAS NOT TRUE when he included it in his "IRAQ HAS WMDs!" January 2003 State of the Union speech (SOTU), trying to beat the drums for an American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

That is, Ambassador Wilson told the whole world that President Bush WAS LYING when he included the "Niger yellowcake uranium for Iraq WMDs" story in his Jan. 2003 SOTU speech, and in the days after Mr. Wilson wrote his editorial exposing that lie, SMEARING and SILENCING Ambassador Wilson BECAME JOB #1. in the Cheney-Bush White House.

Which is why Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and possibly the Vice President himself were ALL DISCUSSING Ms. PLAME's STATUS with various reporters outside the White House, including Bob Novak, Time's Matt Cooper, and the aforementioned New York Times 'reporter' Judith Miller.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/

HAVING HELPED the Bush White House MUDDY THE WATERS on the criminal culpability of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney in illegally "shopping" Valerie Plame's identity to these reporters, the WASHINGTON POST is now in the business of DOING KARL ROVE's WORK FOR HIM again: SMEARING Ambassador Wilson and his wife, the VICTIMS of the illegal "outing", as the perpetrators!

AS we said at the top of this column locking the POST editors and publishers up in stocks, or FLOGGING them with 50 lashes, would be a damn good argument for bring corporal punishment back, these cowardly smear-artists having so systematically LIED to the American public and SMEARED innocent officials on behalf of a power-mad, deceitful, unAmerican administration.

Mr. Johnson says "NO QUARTER!" to those who DISABLED a major CIA counter-proliferation organization, to which we add a hearty "AND FLOG and PUT 'em in the STOCKS!" to those who aid and abett those lies and criminal conduct.

Smearing the Wilsons and Sliming America
Larry C. Johnson
09.01.2006

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-c-johnson/smearing-the-wilsons-and-_b_28557.html
How low can they go? I refer of course to the latest vitriol directed at Valerie and Joe Wilson by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, who claim that Joe Wilson, not Bush Administration officials, is responsible for destroying his wife's cover and exposing her as a CIA operative.


Hitchens battle with the bottle may account for his addled thinking, but what is Hiatt's excuse? Both men perform like Cirque du Soleil contortionists in dreaming up excuses for the nutty and destructive policies and actions of the Bush Administration. In watching their behavior we see a parallel with the devotees of Jim Jones who gathered in Guyana almost 30 years ago to drink poisoned kool aid.
Let's focus on the Post's Fred Hiatt. In today's Post editorial page, Hiatt writes:


Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.
The claim that Joe Wilson's op-ed from July of 2003 was a pack of lies and misrepresented the truth is an old rightiwng, White House canard. Here is what Joe Wilson said in the July 2003 op-ed:


Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

False claim? False claim my ass! There were at least four reports. We now know that the National Intelligence officer for Africa in January 2003 briefed the White House that the Iraq/Niger claim was bunk. Even a partisan Senate Intelligence Committe report cites repeated efforts by the intelligence community to warn the President's advisors that reports claiming Iraq was trying to buy uranium, including British reoirts, were not credible.

What is so bizarre is that the White House did admit that it was wrong to put the infamous 16 words into the State of the Union Address (of course, they blamed the CIA), just days after Wilson's op-ed appeared. If, as Hiatt claims, Wilson's op-ed was false, then why did the White House correct the record by confirming the substance of his claim?

Hiatt also portrays an astonishing ignorance of national security affairs. He offers up this goofiness referring to Joe Wilson's "culpability" for exposing his wife's job:


He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife.
Yes, why would the CIA send the former Director of Africa at the National Security Council, a former Ambassador to Gabon, and the last U.S. official to face down Saddam Hussein to Africa? Because Joe Wilson was uniquely qualified to do the job. Moreover, this is (or at least was) a common acitivity by the CIA. My former boss at State Department, Ambassador Morris D. Busby, made at least two trips I know of at the behest of the CIA after leaving government because of his experience in dealing with terrorism, narcotics, and Latin America. There are times when the CIA wants information and does not want to expose its own assets.

There was nothing on the public record or in any public document identifying Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative. That information was classified. Sending Joe on a mission to Africa does not point the finger at her. Moreover, she did not make the decision to send him. That is another of Hiatt's lies and is routinely echoed by rightwing hacks. As Walter Pincus reported in the Washington Post in July 2005:

"They [the White House] said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post." (Washington Post, 27 July 2005)
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. (Washington Post, 27 July 2005)


We are forced to revisit this nonsense because we have now learned that in addition to Libby and Rove, Richard Armitage also was shooting off his mouth about classified information. Regardless of Armitage's role as an initial source for Novak, we are still left with the fact that Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby abused their power and were actively engaged in a coordinated effort to discredit Joe Wilson for his behind the scene efforts to alert the public to the falsehoods in the President's State of the Union address.

While Richard Armitage may have had no malicious intent, the same cannot be said for Cheney, Libby and Rove. They knew exactly what they were doing. According to The Washington Post, during the week of July 6, 2003, "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists." Sometime after Novak's column appeared, Rove called Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball" and told him that Mr. Wilson's wife was "fair game."

And we have the document released by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in United States v. Libby, that provides a copy of notes Cheney had written in the margins of Mr. Wilson's July 6 op-ed. In a court filing, Fitzgerald stated that the notes demonstrated that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of the Niger intelligence. Those notes became the basis for Republican National Committee talking points circulated and repeated by Ken Mehlman and others.

Why is this relevant? Today the Bush Administration is once again trying to manufacture a case for war. They are calling critics of its policies on Iran and Iraq "appeasers" and decrying the lack of intelligence on Iran. It is deja vu all over again to quote Yogi Berra. They whine about a lack of intelligence on Iran but refuse to accept responsibility for their own role in destroying Valerie Plame's undercover work, which was focused on monitoring the flow of nuclear technology to Iran. They may not have fully understood what Val was doing because of her cover status. But that's the point. They don't think these things true. Their only goal is political survival.

Perhpas the new attention on the Plame affair will fuel public support for accountability in government. The gang of political thugs currently in the White House refuse to be held accountable for anything. With the help of enablers like Fred Hiatt and Christopher Hitchens and others in the main stream media, it is no wonder that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld skate from disaster to disaster, oblivious to the field of debris left in their wake.

We must also remember that the Government sanctioned attack on the Wilsons is not an isolated event. Just ask former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill or National Security Advisor Richard Clarke. Add to this list the names of the two CIA Baghdad Chiefs of Station who were savaged for their prescient early warnings that Iraq was moving into a civil war. The Plame/Wilson affair stands as a stark reminder that President Bush and his minions prefer destroying those who call them to account for failed policies rather than admit error and take corrective measures that will serve the longterm interests of the United States. As we move towards a new war with Iran, we should not be surprised that people who know the truth are reluctant to come forward. If you choose to blow the whistle you are choosing career suicide and a full frontal assault on your character. In smearing the Wilsons, Bush and Cheney also are sliming America.

-- No Quarter