Am I going crazy? Am I living in an "Alice in Wonderland" world?
Perhaps I am. Otherwise, I wouldn't be witnessing the media becoming apoplectic over this Karl Rove-Valerie Palme-Joe Wilson non-story-story.
Here is an interesting example of how twisted this whole mess has become:
Howard Kurtz (the self-proclaimed media critic of the Washington Post) writes this in his coverage of the Republican response to the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame "controversy" (6 paragraphs down from the start of his column) -
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story. (Actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong, although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report.)
Emphasis most definitely added - and you'll read why in a second.
First off, let's examine Kurt's "conclusion". He cryptically tells us that Wilson was "right...although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report." Kurtz never bothers to explain the nature of this "critical hit". If you read the bipartisan report itself - any honest person will tell you that Kurtz's conclusion is full of shit. (pages 4-12 and 37-39 are the most relevant to the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair, but it is important to read the entire document, including the footnotes, in order to fully understand the full background of this "scandal". Also, the page numbers I cite correspond to the PDF file document, not the original report's page numbers.)
At the very least, the most that can be said about the "Niger tale" is that the evidence is inconclusive and that Wilson is definitely a liar. And that's just from the redacted version of the report. Who knows what's in the full version?
Maybe Kurtz didn't actually have time to read the Senate Report on Wilson and Niger. But I find it hard to believe that he didn't have time to read his own newspaper which also reported that Wilson is a liar. (And no, this report from the Washington Post is not an editorial. It is a regular news story that they saw fit to bury on page 9 of their paper, and (to the best of my knowledge) hasn't seen fit to mention it again during any of the current reporting of Karl Rove.)
A few key paragraphs from the Washington Post's news story last year:
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.
"Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation..." Gee, ya think?
But wait, it gets better folks! Let's get back to Howard Kurtz's take on this story.
Remember that key paragraph of Kurt'z that I quoted above?
Here it is again:
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story. (Actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong, although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report.)
Now try this simple experiment at home - go ahead and click on the "printer friendly" version of Kurtz's column so that you can print out your own personal hard copy of it (or you can directly link to it here).
Notice any difference between the 2 versions???
Here is what the "printer friendly" version states (or rather, doesn't state):
So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story (actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong).
The printer-friendly version of Kurtz's piece doesn't even mention the Senate intelligence report on Wilson at all!!!! It has been conveniently deleted from the version that people will print out to pass around outside of the Internet.
I'm not about to conclude that it's some sinister conspiracy on Kurtz's part (though so far, there is more circumstantial evidence here for a conspiracy than any supposed conspiracy on the part of the Bush White House). I will say however, that Kurtz owes readers an explanation for this curious but vital discrepancy in his article.
You would think that these two sources would be absolutely critical to an understanding of the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame flap.
Too bad that nobody in the media seems to want to bother....
[Follow-up side note: You will notice that in footnote 8 of the Senate Intelligence Report on Niger, Senator Rockefeller requested that the FBI look into who might have forged the Niger yellowcake documents, what their motivations might have been, and to what extent they were part of a disinformation campaign. To the best of my knowledge, the FBI has never publicly stated any conclusions to these questions. However, some press accounts have uncovered their own answers and have put the blame squarely on the French.]
[Update: Glad to see that Jim Lindgren over at the Volokh Conspiracy is also on the case. Perhaps the Today Show will do better than Howard Kurtz in its analysis. But I wouldn't hold my breath....]
[Not sure if there is a problem with the trackback indicator - but welcome Volokh readers!]