Armitage angle in the Plame case is just the latest diversion from the tre

[ProSense]

Missing the Point on CIA Leak Case

By Brent Budowsky
August 31, 2006

Editor's Note: The U.S. news media -- and conservative pundits -- are seeing vindication for the White House in the disclosure that former State Department official Richard Armitage may have been the first official to blurt out Valerie Plame's CIA identity to a reporter. After all, they say, Armitage was not an Iraq War hawk and apparently was not part of any cabal to willfully leak Plame's identity to the news media as a way to undercut her war-critic husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

But this overriding fact remains: other administration officials were intentionally passing on word about Plame's undercover CIA role. The likes of White House aides Lewis Libby and Karl Rove were peddling Plame's identity to some half dozen journalists under the guidance of Vice President Dick Cheney, who was livid when Wilson challenged the White House case for war with Iraq. There's also the question of why political adviser Rove was given access to the sensitive information about Plame; he had no legitimate "need to know."

In this guest essay, political analyst Brent Budowsky argues that the Armitage angle in the Plame case is just the latest diversion from the treachery and corrupt partisanship that implicates some of the top officials in George W. Bush's White House:

With the latest "news" on this case, several points should be clearly understood at the outset. First, Dick Armitage's role was widely and publicly discussed as early as March, and second, Dick Armitage clearly screwed up but was NOT the primary source of the leak. While he does share moral culpability, the driving force behind the leak came from the neocon and partisan wings of the White House.

It is their spin, and nothing more, to try to defend themselves by shifting blame to the anti-Iraq war Armitage, and to the anti-Iraq war State Department, who they believe "needs an American desk." If Armitage never existed the leaks would have happened exactly the same way. If the White House-neocon axis never existed the leaks would never have happened. Whatever the shortcomings of Armitage and State, the real culpability for the identity disclosures reside elsewhere and progressives should be very careful to avoid unknowingly pushing the neocon line.

Snip...

This business about leaking identities is not only about partisan and political vendettas. It is about how and when we go to war, how and when we should not go to war, and why it is so fundamentally important that intelligence should be based on facts and truth, and not twisted and distorted for the ideology of going to war, or the partisanship of exploiting war.

What went wrong in Iraq, is that the democratic process of making the decision to wage war was corrupted and warped from the beginning.

Snip...

In my view, whatever the legalities, there is a special place in hell on this issue for Bob Novak, who named the name, and for the Washington Post Editorial Page, which then published the name, and for Bob Woodward, who attacked the prosecutor without disclosing to his readers or the nation his private interest in the case. Though I will give Woodward credit for this: he never published the Plame story, and neither did Judy Miller, by the way.

more...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/083006b.html

The media is off to the spin:

Ex-Colleague Says Armitage Was Source of CIA Leak

Armitage's involvement in the matter does not fit neatly into the assertions of Bush administration critics that Plame's employment was disclosed as part of a White House conspiracy to besmirch Wilson by suggesting his Niger trip stemmed from nepotism at the CIA. Wilson and Plame have sued top administration officials, alleging that the leak was meant as retaliation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801278.html?nav=rss_nation/special

Fess Up, Mr. Armitage

Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest.

Strangely, Mr. Armitage never seems to have told Mr. Fitzgerald that he'd talked to Mr. Woodward. And Mr. Fitzgerald never seems to have asked to see Mr. Armitage's appointment calendar, which would have showed his meeting with Mr. Novak. It's all enough to make us wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald didn't buy into the liberal "conspiracy" theory of this case from the start and target the White House while giving Mr. Armitage a pass.

Strangely?

What's strange is how the media articles include these vague questions about missing pieces to the puzzle:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.indianexpress.com/story/11731.html

Then of course this bizarre distortion from the wingnuts:

Investor's Business Daily asks THE question
American Thinker, AZ - 11 hours ago
“Patrick Fitzgerald’s three-year manhunt to track down who blew Valerie Plame’s CIA “cover” has been exposed as a costly sham. ...

PLAMEGATE OVER
Free Market News Network, FL - 12 hours ago
So now we know. The man behind the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was not presidential adviser Karl Rove, nor ...

Armitage's Shame
New York Sun, NY - 15 hours ago
Wouldn't you know, but the critics of the Bush administration were right. A Richard was indeed at the heart of the Valerie Plame episode. ...

Did Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald Lie?
Investor's Business Daily (subscription) - 22 hours ago
Plamegate: Patrick Fitzgerald's three-year manhunt to track down who blew Valerie Plame's CIA "cover" has been exposed as a costly sham. ...

[david_vincent]

1. That's funny, I thought the costly sham was

the four separate investigations into Vince Foster's suicide. Whoopsie, guess I stand corrected.

[mmonk]

2. Yeah, just saw on CNN where they said

this proves there was no conspiracy. The White House was not involved. It can be put to bed.

[Imagevision]

3. Armitage goes the John Mark karr route...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did it! - I did it!...

[ProSense]

4. When is the media going to ask the tough (appropriate) questions. n/t