Sick and Dirty Washington

Excerpt from story (full link below) "Time to Apologize to Plame/Wilson" from Consortiumnews.com:

“Plame-gate” was a classic story of how arrogant leaders destroy a messenger who speaks truth to power, except this one had the extraordinary collateral damage of wrecking a U.S. national security program.

What happened was this:

In early 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney asked about a dubious report that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger; a CIA officer working in a counter-proliferation office with Plame suggested that her husband, a former diplomat who had served in both Iraq and Africa might help check out the report.

At the urging of her boss, Plame sounded out her husband who met with Plame’s superiors and agreed to take the unpaid assignment; Wilson traveled to Niger and – like others who checked out the report – concluded that it was almost certainly false; on his return, Wilson relayed his findings to CIA debriefers along with an anecdotal comment from one former Nigerien official who had feared that one Iraqi delegation might want uranium, though it turned out not to be the case.

Nevertheless, while grasping at intelligence straws to justify invading Iraq, President Bush cited the Niger/yellowcake suspicions during his 2003 State of the Union address; the invasion went ahead in March 2003 but U.S. forces didn’t find any nuclear program or other WMD evidence; in summer 2003, Wilson went public with details about his Niger trip and challenged the administration’s misuse of WMD intelligence.

At that point, the Bush administration unleashed the full force of its propaganda machinery to disparage Wilson. The chosen attack line was to portray his trip as a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but that strategy required divulging that Plame was a CIA officer.

Nevertheless, administration insiders – including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; his friend and White House political adviser Karl Rove; Cheney’s chief of staff Libby; and press secretary Ari Fleischer – did just that, alerting reporters to the Plame angle.

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After reading Fair Game, one is left with the sickening realization that Bush’s Washington has become a mean and mendacious place so lacking in honor that the city’s preeminent politicians and pundits don’t see any need to apologize to the Wilson family for all the harm that was done.

In a decent world, political leaders and journalists, especially, would praise Joe Wilson for his patriotism – both for undertaking the CIA mission and for blowing the whistle on the President’s abuse of intelligence to lead the nation to war.

But Washington is not that kind of place. Instead it is a city where having power – whether inside the White House or in the Post’s editorial offices – means never having to say you’re sorry.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/103107.html#When:02:10PM