POLITICS: Dems Force Senate into Secret Session

Yeah, did Sandy Burglar get any punishment at all for his stunt? That episode was almost funny, if it weren't so serious and pathetic.:shk:

Originally posted by jsobecky
Yeah, did Sandy Burglar get any punishment at all for his stunt? That episode was almost funny, if it weren't so serious and pathetic.:shk:

I am not sure, i haven't seen anything at all about that case since it happened, but it is strange that that particular incident, which we have definite proof that it happened, has seemingly gone from the minds of all these people who keep bashing the present administration for rumours.

If the present administration had been the only one to have claimed that Saddam had wmd and that something should be done about, and if it had been the only one that took steps to stop Saddam's regime, I would agree to the possibility that the present administration only went to war with Iraq for profits.

But I know, as everyone else should if they are really knowledgeable about these events, that this is not the case. The information about Saddam's wmd came from many sources, including other countries such as France, and it was not something that the present administration made up like some like to claim.



[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]

he was indited for "stealing" copies of documents and that has abosolutely nothing to do with whether the bush administration lied or not.

Originally posted by jsobecky
I wouldn't be so quick to say that if this were the first time the Dems have done something like this since last election. Think about it: from Iraq to Katrina to Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to whatever, they have been falling all over themselves to condemn this administration as soon as something happens. I am not a Democrat because I could never see these people representing me. Kerry, Kennedy Clinton, Boxer, Schumer. All with the sour faces. The list goes on. Never would I be proud to introduce them as my Senator or friend.

I'm not going to throw the metaphoric political ideological mud back and forth with you.

I will submit to you in agreement they have attacked the opposition any chance they get and I don't condone those kinds of tactics for political gain.

It's like the boy who cried wolf, when it's finally time they do something important, they aren't taken seriously, and thats the straw the republican's are trying to run with.

On this issue: It's alot more important then Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and Katrina, as this outing of 13 spies has weakened American security and Central Intelligence, which weakens the country. And the Uranium claim is another tid bit of misinformation that is punishable by law and I would imagine it would make it an impeachable offense? The downing street memo which was hush hush throughout the media for so long is just finally coming to fruition as I witnessed on newsnight with Aaron Brown when he did the show 'dead wrong' on Oct 31, as well as on cspan and nbc.
Is fixing evidence around a want-to-be-made policy not a big issue?
Is cherry picking intelligence to fit your agenda not a big issue enough to warrant enactment of Rule 21?

They want a bi-partisan committe set up to investigate pre-war intelligence, they couldn't get it before because the media wasn't paying attention and people didn't care enough. The claims before didn't warrant enough attention and so republicans refused the idea of an investigation and the set up of a bi partisan committe.

So they had to grab them by the throat, figurately speaking, and get the spotlight on them to get them to yield.

What is wrong with this?

Do you not care about corruption, secrecy, and cover-ups? Or do you only care when it's the democrats on the stake?

I'll bet you a buck that it will soon be revealed that her status of working for the CIA was fairly common knowledge inside the beltway for years.

She was the one that recommended her husband for the trip to Niger. She recommended him to the CIA. Now how did she have such influence at the CIA as to give them a recommendation? The point is, even if she were not allegedly "outed" it would have come out anyway.

According to Joseph Wilson himself he says that is NOT TRUE.
He even wrote a letter to the senate select committee for not straightening the pieceof information out.

See link for letter he wrote to them to clarify.

Wilson's letter

I believe it's possible that Cheney didn't know who Wilson was. Contrary to popular belief, Cheney did not send Wilson to Niger. Cheney said he wanted a report, the CIA sent Wilson, at his wife's request.

Cheney said he didn't know about Wilson to the press, starting with ABC, then meet the press, but before it hit media, he was giving information to Karl Rove about Plame to give to the media.

[edit on 2-11-2005 by TrueLies]

Originally posted by Muaddib

Originally posted by grover
would someone please tell me how wanting to know how wanting to know what misinformation was used to promote this war hurts America? Ried is right this republican congress has consistantly protected its own to the deteriment of the country. There isn't a member in it that has the moral courage to put the country first before the party and it is a real pity.

The problem, as you should know, is that when people ask for detailed info, info that is secret to protect assets, these same people are asking for all that information to be released not only to the American public, but to the entire world. There are many groups and governments that would love to get their hands in this information to root out spies and other assets used by the US to gather intelligence. But for some reason people forget this and more so when they try to use such information for political motives.

the people asking for information are members of congress. besides that basic fact...the majority of the people in this country based on polls think this war was a mistake and they meaning we meaning all of us deserve an honest answer as to not only why we are there but how we got there in the first place. Bush has changed his story as to why we are there so many times he has lost all credibility.

Well I wonder why he was stealing documents. Maybe to protect his own former boss from something?

Originally posted by grover

the people asking for information are members of congress.

Not really, you hear members in this same forum, and even yourself, ask for all the information, even secret info, to be given quite repetedly.

Originally posted by grover
besides that basic fact...the majority of the people in this country based on polls think this war was a mistake and they meaning we meaning all of us deserve an honest answer as to not only why we are there but how we got there in the first place.

First of all if according to some here the elections can be rigged why is it that you so readily accept the results polls that are much easier to rig than the elections?....

Second of all I really have no idea why you are asking "how we got to Iraq" have you had amnesia for the past 10+ years?

Originally posted by grover
Bush has changed his story as to why we are there so many times he has lost all credibility.

He did not, I have given in the past links and excerpts to the reasons that the president gave to the UN and to the American people for going to war with Iraq, and the reasons haven't changed. The problem is that because of politics some people seem to not remember that several reasons were given from the beginning. Has the president used companies such as Halliburton, an American company, for the reconstruction efforts in Iraq? of course, what did you expect he would hire, companies from Germany or Russia?


[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by grover
he was indited for "stealing" copies of documents and that has abosolutely nothing to do with whether the bush administration lied or not.

The documents he stole and disposed of had to do with Iraq and what the Clinton administration was doing during that time. Now suddenly charges come up against the president about Iraq, and that incident has nothing to do with this?.....

[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]

posted on 11/2/05 at 10:33

from TrueLies
Do you not care about corruption, secrecy, and cover-ups? Or do you only care when it's the democrats on the stake?
< snip >
I am not going to go back and forth with you on that point i'm just going to point out who said what about this side issue:
Here are the pieces of information/disinformation i'll leave it up for you to decide what to believe.

The bigger issue is the info/disinfo regarding the wmds and yellowcake. And I'm still in listen mode as far as those go.

For example:

K. Niger Conclusions
(U) Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents9 on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.

( )

(U) Conclusion 14. The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policymakers that it had sent someone to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador's findings.

( ) PARAGRAPH DELETED

(U) Conclusion 15. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Directorate of Operations should have taken precautions not to discuss the credibility of reporting with a potential source when it arranged a meeting with the former ambassador and Intelligence Community analysts.

( )

(U) Conclusion 16. The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.

( ) PARAGRAPH DELETED

( ) PARAGRAPH DELETED

(U) Conclusion 18. When documents regarding the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting became available to the Intelligence Community in October 2002, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts and operations officers should have made an effort to obtain copies. As a result of not obtaining the documents, CIA Iraq nuclear analysts continued to report on Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from Africa and continued to approve the use of such language in Administration publications and speeches.

***Moderator Hat On***

I'm encouraged by this healthy discussion on an important news event with real conspiracy potential but I would like you all to keep the language civil and mature. I know its easy to get heated when discussing the moral philosophy of a persons life so put yourself in someone elses shoes before you post.

That goes for both sides of the aisle.

Once the thread gets nasty it gets bumped to PTS, if you want it to stay on ATSNN then I implore you to keep it jolly.

Shall we remind people of what democrats were saying during the Clinton administration and up to the war in Iraq?

Let's see "some of the things Democrats were saying about Iraq and wmd before the present administration was in power.....

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Bill Clinton, February 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Bill Clinton, February 17, 1998

"We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction." - Madeline Albright, February 1, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, February 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton. - (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, October 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), December 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, November 10, 1999

Excerpted from.
www.zmag.org...

Notice the dates please and who said those things about Iraq with intelligence that the Clinton administration, and other countries around the world had, up to the beginning of the war in Iraq.

So, again...who was lying about Iraq, the wmd issue etc, etc?.....




[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by jsobecky
I won't even post the source; I'm sure you've done your homework enough to recognize where this came from before you drew your conclusions.

I do not know of that source, could you share your source?
Currently I am researching witness account from cia employees, wilson's statements, and about to dive into the senate select committee's report on intelligence before the invasion of Iraq occured.

Unfortuneately the debate should of been taking place before the war, not after. Over $150 billion spent and over 2500 American deaths, Iraqi's lives lost, and their property destroyed and we're just finally trying to get a bi partisan committee together to investigate this cover-up?
Shameful.






[edit on 2-11-2005 by TrueLies]

This is taken from his letter... It the last paragraph in it, I will post the link so you can read verbatim what he see's as distortions, lies, and errors.

It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further "additional comments."

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Wilson IV, Washington, D.C.

published by Salon

TrueLies
Re-read my post; I edited it to add the source.
I agree that it is shameful on both sides of the aisle, btw.

True Lies, do you even know that the CIA approaches the wives of ambassadors and ask them to work as operatives? I doubt that our enemies were not aware to the possibility of Plame being an operative. Our enemies know this is the case, although it is not always the case.

I am not sure 100% but i would think that Plame was an operative that provided RumorInt. Which is the least credible source of information gathering, from the three that exist. All these sort of operatives do is listen in to conversations at parties, anylise everything they hear, and give feedback on that info. The thing is that this sort of operative can be fed false information, and quite frequently our enemies feed "false info" to anyone they think could be a spy.

If Plame held any real intel, she would have dissapeared the day she was mentioned as an operative. She would have been put in a program equivalent to the witness protection program that the FBI has, or some of our enemies would have wisked her away, or tried to.

BTW, I am not a spy and was never one, if i was i wouldn't be saying this in the first place.


[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Was Valerie Plame a covert operative?

July 18, 2005
More: Was Valerie Plame A Covert Operative?
The answer appears to be no, despite Duncan Black's earth shattering ability to convince otherwise smart people of radical ideas based upon no facts whatsoever.

Several days ago, Timothy at Free Dartmouth critically linked to my report of Wilson's admission that his wife wasn't a clandestine officer the day Novak supposedly outed her. In an update to that post, Tim says:

But the premise of the Dartblog post is also wrong. Wilson was NOT saying Novak didn't blow his wife's cover. Here's the transcript:

I am posting a snippet of an interview between Wolf Blitzer and Joe Wilson.
Goto the source if you want to read all of it:
Source

BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.

Now it makes a difference whether you out a covert operative, or someone who merely works in the typing pool at the CIA, no? So where is the crime?

From Wikipedia (on "Valerie Plame"):

Speaking in a press conference on October 28, 2005, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said,

"Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life."

Further, it wasn't merely Valerie Plame's identity that was revealed. Brewster Jennings & Associates was revealed by Novak to be a front company for the CIA. This implicates more CIA agents than just Plame, as well as the operations of the company.

-koji K.


[edit on 2-11-2005 by koji_K]

Funny Muaddib that you bring Clinton into this taking in consideration that Clinton never used his information that obviously he got in hand to invade Iraq.

Perhaps because he knew that it was not reliable?

But occurs he was smarter than Bush and Cheney was able to use it to get Bush into invading Iraq because that's what Cheney wanted even before 9/11 so hey let's blame everybody else including Clinton.

It only proves one thing . . . the willingness to get into Iraq was this administration goal since day one.

Can you blame Cheney for that? not, not if you are to gain something for it but to lie that it was all for liberation and for the war on terror that is what the people of American wants to know, why the lies.

Plame was "classified"? Is that the same as covert? To be considered covert, a person needs to meet certain criteria.

From the source I cited above:

Grammar aside, we already know that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent via other avenues. The CIA, recall, operates internationally. It seeks to obtain intelligence exclusively overseas. The United States of America does not and cannot fall into the purview of the Central Intelligence Agency: there are clearly basic issues of civil liberty at stake there. Because the CIA is an organization concerned solely with foreign affairs, an operative is deemed covert under the US Code if and only if he operated in official CIA capacity overseas within the past five years. When Novak published his column, Plame had not; she had been little more than a desk worker for some years.

Emphasis added.

Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life."

Yeah well,neither did the BTK Killer's ...
.

[edit on 2-11-2005 by jsobecky]

Originally posted by TrueLies
This is taken from his letter... It the last paragraph in it, I will post the link so you can read verbatim what he see's as distortions, lies, and errors.

It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further "additional comments."

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Wilson IV, Washington, D.C.

published by Salon

I guess that overlooking that the info on Iraq's wmd came from before the present administration was in office has nothing to do with "the obligation to tell the American people the truth"?.... It all starts and ends with the present administration right?.....

Wilson is using this as a tool for whatever agenda he has in mind, otherwise he would be presenting every piece of information about the intel leading up to the war in Iraq which involved every country and every political party.


[edit on 2-11-2005 by Muaddib]