Many of us have been writing to Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Dept. intel official, urging him to keep up the fight. We post on his blog, No Quarter.
As if Larry Johnson needed our encouragement. The man is ON FIRE.
We’re ON FIRE too. As Johnson says in today’s post, “Every American who cares about our national security and the health of our intelligence services should be outraged.”
Just as it’s Democrats like Sen. Patty Murray who are fighting FOR our veterans’ benefits — while the GOP slashes benefits — it’s Democrats who are fighting for national security and strong intel services.
MR. BUSH, HAVE YOU NO SHAME?
Larry C. Johnson
Whatever happened to the Texas cowboy who would fight to defend the honor of a woman being attacked by bullies? Whatever happened to the Commander-in-Chief responsible for protecting the lives of CIA officers? George Bush, unfortunately is missing in action. He is standing idly by while a legion of Republican operatives fan out on the airwaves in an unrelenting assault on the character and reputation of Valerie Wilson, a CIA intelligence officer. … CONT. BELOW:
We read the words of four intel officers yesterday in my diary, “Intelligence Officers: Can We Trust Our President?” Those four officers include Larry Johnson, who posted their words on his blog yesterday. They first wrote their statement in defense of their colleague, Valerie Plame, in 2003, and felt they must repeat their statement at this time.
We read this morning at Juan Cole’s blog the headline, which we’ve all seen but it’s hard to comprehend somehow until Cole puts his comments to the story — “87 Dead in Iraq Attacks, over 100 wounded — 3 British Troops Killed.”
Update [2005-7-17 12:26:14 by SusanHu]: The death toll now is 98, according to Yahoo!’s home page.
The London Times reports that one father said,
‘ “After the bomb I went over there and found my son’s head. I could not find his body,” said Mohsen Jassim of his 18-year-old son.
This is critical because THIS — these deaths and horrific injuries — are where this president, who has no shame, has taken us and the rest of the world along with him.
More from “MR. BUSH, HAVE YOU NO SHAME?,” at Johnson’s blog, No Quarter:
Valerie, who is still a full time employee of the CIA, is not allowed to defend herself against this attack.
At the heart of the matter is the specious claim that she dispatched her husband on the mission to Niger to find out if Iraq was buying uranium. This is the big lie. Didn’t happen and here’s why:
First, here is what Joe Wilson said in the July 6, 2003 NY Times Op-Ed:
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.
Please note that he didn’t say, as Republican National Committee operatives repeatedly insist, he was sent by the Vice President.
Second, the Senate Intelligence report on the matter states on pages 38-39:
After reading the report, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for the CIA ‘s analysis of the issue. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence’s (DCI) Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) published a Senior Publish When Ready (SPWR021402-OS),an intelligence assessment with limited distribution, which said, “information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated. The piece discussed the details of the DO intelligence report and indicated that “some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the U.S. Embassy in Niamey. US diplomats say the French Government-led consortium that operates Niger ‘s two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production.” The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President which differed only in that it named the foreign government service-.
Officials from the CIA ‘s DO Counter Proliferation Division (CPD) told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President’s Office and the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information. Who could make immediate inquiries into the reporting, CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon who had a posting early in his career in Niger.
The Senate Intelligence report provides an incomplete and disingenous account of who hired Joe Wilson to go to Niger:
Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former Ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002 , from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.
I say disingenuous for the following reasons.First, the normal procedure when a PDB briefer comes back to headquarters with a request for additional information from the President or Vice President is to inform the Office Chief who in turn informs the Division Chief who then informs the Branch Chief. The Office Chief, the Division Chief, and the Branch Chief are the only decision makers at the CIA outside of the DCI himself who can make a decision to send someone on a trip overseas.
Valerie Plame was a member of a branch in the Counter Proliferation Division. She was not and is not the Branch Chief nor the Division Chief nor the Office Chief. She simply was an undercover operative in an operations job that required her to travel under non-official cover overseas.
The memo referenced dishonestly in the Senate Intelligence Committee report neglects to mention that it was written in response to a request from one of Valerie’s managers (i.e., the Division Chief or Branch Chief). But the most important aspect of this is that Valerie had no authority to make the decision to send her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger.
What is really laughable and sad about the White House smear of Valerie Plame is that it is insinuating that the bad news Joe Wilson brought back regarding the absence of any evidence that Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger was part of a devious plot hatched by Ms. Plame a full year before President Bush made the mistaken speech claiming that such evidence did exist.
Val was a great case officer but not even she could pull off such a sly plan. Moreover, even if she had the authority to send her husband Joe to, she could not guarantee he would return with confirmation that such a plot existed.
I point the reader to one final piece of evidence in the Senate’s own flawed report. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger at the time and the Deputy CINC of the European Command (General Fulford) both reached the same conclusion that Joe Wilson did –THERE WAS NO SUBSTANCE TO THE CLAIM THAT IRAQ WAS TRYING TO BUY YELLOW CAKE FROM NIGER.
Every American who cares about our national security and the health of our intelligence services should be outraged over the current campaign being directed by the Republican National Committee to continue to smear the reputation and motives of Valerie Plame, an active employee of the CIA, who is not permitted to answer her critics and must sit quietly by while a group of bullies and cowards like Congressman Peter King, RNC Chairman Mehlman, Cliff May, and Victoria Toensing, among others, spread falsehoods about her status and actions.This is wrong and should not stand.
MR. BUSH, can you give Mohsen Jassim back his son? Even his son’s body?
MR. BUSH, can you give our veterans the benefits they deserve so that groups like OperationTruth don’t have to put out full-page ads in the Washington Post to TRY TO GET REPUBLICANS to get emergency funding to the VA?
MR. BUSH, it’d be too much to ask you to accept responsibility for any of this — the almost 1800 U.S. soldiers dead, the 90+ U.K. soldiers dead, the possibly 128,000 Iraqi civilians dead — but could you at least do the MINIMUM on your job?
MR. BUSH, could you tell your cronies in the House to get off their butts and give the veterans the funding?
(I’m ranting now.)
All emphases mine.