October 2, 2003

The Plame Game: More Questions

Seattle blogger Bob Mong wonders: if Valerie Plame was really a covert CIA agent, how come the Los Angeles Times knows this: Wilson's wife works with Foley in the CIA's Nonproliferation Center. And then there's this from the LA Times:

...But David Manners, a former CIA case agent in the Middle East, said such concerns were probably unnecessary. 'If the implication is she ran clandestine operations around the world using her true name, then the real story is: What kind of crazy operation was she running? Because if you're operating clandestinely under your true name, you're a fool.' And one administration official said it was possible that the leaker did not realize that he was unmasking a clandestine CIA officer by naming Wilson's wife."

UPDATE: Okay, I downloaded the latest version of RealPlayer and then watched the speech. And ya know, I was right. Wilson was against the war.

He starts talking about 8:45 into the video (after long-winded introductions) and then spends the first 8 minutes of his speech making a few introductory remarks of his own, before getting the meat of his presentation. But when he does, he starts with a bang. Some choice excerpts below, with a few comments of my own:

What I want to talk today about what I think is a real dangerous road upon which we are embarking and that is the road to war in Iraq.

I want to talk a little bit first about conquest, which is the preferred route that seems to be taken by the administration, and then offer up an alternate scenario which would be focused principally on disarmament without the need to deploy 250,000 troops, occupy Iraq, destroy the government, and try and resurrect it as a thriving Middle Eastern democracy, as is the wont of some of these people who are promoting and driving this particular policy.

But of course, he thinks Saddam was a bad man.

He heads one of the two most horrible regimes in the world, the other being North Korea. ... The world will be far better off when he and his thugs are gone. The Arab world will heave a collective sigh of relief, as will our European allies, as will we - because nothing could be worse than Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq over the long term.

After he goes there may well be dislocation, there may well be civil war, there may well be ethnic strife but over the long term nothing could be worse than the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The question is not whether Saddam Hussein is a good man or a bad man. The question is whether or not we're going to act in our vital national security interest or whether we are going to act on a substantially different agenda.

Regime change is code for an American ground invasion of Iraq for the purpose of destroying Saddam Hussein and his government, occupying the country, pacifying the country, and recreating the country in our own image.

I have been doing democracy for 25 years and I can tell you that the democracy business is really tough sledding. It is even tougher when you try to impose democracy at the point of a bayonet. It is in my judgment a bridge too far and it is not in our interest to use our precious resources, our 250,000 soldiers, our treasure, and our political capital and our standing as a global leader in this fashion.

[Ever since the first Gulf War] there has been a small cabal of zealots in Washington who have been driving an agenda designed to overthrow Saddam Hussein, not because he has weapons of mass destruction, not because he may or may not be linked to terrorism, but because they want to establish a beachhead in the Arab world from which to work to change the political map of the Arab world and essentially ensure Israel 75 more years of security by enfeebling the Arab governments that are arrayed against it."

Please note Wilson preferred we focus on disarming Iraq, and opposed a policy aimed at peace in the Middle East and enhanced security for Israel. What? He think Middle East peace is a bad idea?

The shorthand for this is the road to Middle East peace goes through Baghdad. In my judgment and in the judgment of a lot of people who do this for a living, including those people who've been involved in the mediation effort for any number of years, the Middle East peace process still goes through Jerusalem and will for the foreseeable future.

Sounds to me like Wilson has grown so used to the the peace "process" that he doesn't mind that it never seems to produce a peace result.

September 11 occurred and on September 12 these people very callously seized the opportunity to make the case based on the simple thesis that September 11 was a horrible event, Saddam Hussein is a horrible man, ergo, two horribles equal kill Saddam Hussein - and that has been the driving thesis for this ever since.

If you've read Bob Woodward's book, he makes very clear that within two days of September 11, Don Rusted and Paul Wolfowitz were trying to figure out ways to use September 11 as a way to get at Saddam Hussein and effect this policy of regime change.

Not because Saddam Hussein had anything to do with September 11, not because we were worried about weapons of mass destruction, not because we were worried about a potential linkup between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups...

Wilson then goes on to lay his alternative - UN inspections backed by the threat of force - and then makes an astonishing claim:

We need to remember in all of this that Iraq did not build weapons of mass destruction because the United States was an enemy - Iraq built weapons of mass destruction because it was surrounded by a nuclear armed Israel, a Turkey that had occupied it for 400 years and has 75 million people, and an Iran with which it has been at war for the last 150 years and which also has twice the population of Iraq. Saddam or no Saddam, there is still going to be a desire amongst the national security apparatus to have weapons that allow a relatively small population to defend itself against larger rapacious neighbors and aggressive neighbors.

Please also note that Wilson describes Israel as "rapacious" and "aggressive." He blames the Jews for Saddam's seeking weapons of mass destruction. Who, I wonder, does Wilson blame for the chemical gassing of thousands of Kurds? Maybe he blames Israel - after all, if the Jews weren't so rapacious and aggressive, Saddam wouldn't have had to develop chemical weapons and wouldn't have had to test them on the Kurds to make sure they worked...

Let's continue. No, never mind. I won't subject you to any more of the "apolitical" Joe Wilson. Just answer me one question if you can. Why did the CIA send this Saddam-coddler to Niger to find out of Saddam had tried to buy uranium for bombs? After all, he thinks Saddam had a good reason to want weapons of mass destruction. Surely a man with that viewpoint would not be the most likely person to find evidence in Niger that could be used to justify a war which he vehemently opposed.