Great Read in The Denver Post! We Are Waking Up!

[babsbunny]

http://test.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6316023

bob ewegen | columnist
Outing Valerie Plame aided our enemies
By Bob Ewegen
Denver Post Columnist
Article Last Updated: 07/06/2007 09:57:24 PM MDT


After 44 years in journalism, I don't get angry very often about the dirty tricks that so often besmirch the American political process.

But I am angry about the Valerie Plame affair, a sordid tale that flared anew this week when President George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

I am not angry at the commutation or the pettifogging partisan exchanges it spawned. I am angry at the underlying event - the fact that an American patriot whose only crime was to serve her country in a dangerous and honorable profession had her mission undercut for partisan political purposes.

I am even angrier that the vicious "outing" of Valerie Plame put her sources at risk - the men and women in foreign countries who had risked their own lives to help America in our war on terror.

In the intelligence trade, such foreign sources are called "assets." I call them heroes. And they are the ones who were put most at risk after columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's CIA connection as part of a clumsy Bush administration effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had become a critic of the Iraq war.

[ClassWarrior]

1. K&R

:hi: babs... That's one to print out and pass around to the fence-sitters. Thanks!

NGU.

[The Blue Flower]

2. Read the comments

Mostly disgusting regurgitation of Rove's talking points.

[Buzz Clik]

6. The knuckledraggers struck early, but those with a handle on the facts came back.

[w4rma]

7. The first few comments are Rovian talking points. Most of the rest aren't.

It's almost like a few people were waiting for the moment that the article was to be published to try to counter it in the comments.

[Warpy]

3. They didn't out her just to have revenge on Wilson

This was a twofer, folks.

She was outed because of her position in the CIA, specifically, her position in monitoring nuclear development in the Middle East. By outing not just her but her cover group, they effectively blinded the CIA in that area, making it easier for them to lie about nonexistent nuclear weapons programs in first Iraq and now Iran. There is no information to the contrary coming in.

If they had only meant to discredit her husband, they never would have instructed Novak to name Brewster Jennings, the name of the cover company.

And this, folks, is what makes the outing of one lone CIA agent rise to the level of TREASON.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. wish I could recommend your comment

for the Greatest Page!

[NotGivingUp]

9. Wow. I never thought of that. I highly recommend that you post this as a new thread.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

[raccoon]

12. I second that emotion. nt

[AntiFascist]

10. Exactly, if only editorials such as this would mention...

the outing of Brewster-Jennings and the underlying reasons for that!

[bonito]

5. K&R n/t

[NotGivingUp]

8. So...the corporate press decided to put a little piece in the opinion section...for show. big deal.

[donheld]

11. Bob Ewegen has lived accross the street from me for the last 18 years.

Sadly we really don't know each other.