D_Raay
07-21-2005, 01:27 PM
As intriguing as the prospect of seeing Karl Rove sent to the pokey is, I must admit that on one level I don't really care who the guilty parties in the Plame leak case are. Whoever did the deed ought to be found out and punished, because that's what you do, but it will make little difference. My opinion that Rove is a scumbag won't be altered by his possible vindication, nor appreciably strengthened by his possible conviction. The basic case for scumbaggery, grounded in the public record, is simply far too strong to be altered one way or another by anything related to this matter. At the same time, I doubt that removing the wrongdoers from office will do any good. There are a lot of scumbags out there, and as recent coverage of the College Republicans' annual conference has made clear, the right churns them out assembly-line style. President Bush will have no trouble replacing anyone he may lose with someone just as bad.
Lurking in the neighborhood of this case, however, is something I would genuinely like to know. Joseph Wilson went to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had made significant progress toward acquiring uranium yellowcake there -- reports grounded in a memo indicating that such a deal had gone down several years previously. This memo was a forgery.
The FBI, so far, seems to have come up with, well, with nothing. What we do know about the documents is that they were brought to the U.S. Embassy in Rome by Elizabetta Burba, an Italian journalist. According to European press reports, she got the documents from Rocco Martino, a former Italian military-intelligence official turned businessman with some kind of ties to French intelligence services. Martino has been to the United States at least twice since being publicly identified as the source of the documents, and the FBI didn't bother to interview him.
It seems clear that some powerful elements in Washington don't want to know the truth, which should raise suspicions. This, after all, would seem to be an important matter. Somebody went to some lengths to do this. He ore she must have had some purpose in mind, and it's hard to see how that purpose could have been anything but nefarious. Republicans don't seem interested in finding out, perhaps because further scrutiny of the matter would simply reveal how willfully gullible the White House was, or perhaps for some deeper reason. Democrats' reticence to ask what happened to the FBI investigation is more puzzling, but someone ought to get on the case. That there's a partisan payoff at the end of this particular rainbow is far from clear, but unlike in the Plame case, knowing the truth might actually change how we think about a thing or two.
Anyone else have anything they can offer in the way of information on this?
I'm not having much luck finding anything pertinent, which is really eating at me. I believe this matter is quite serious and any help would be appreciated.
Lurking in the neighborhood of this case, however, is something I would genuinely like to know. Joseph Wilson went to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had made significant progress toward acquiring uranium yellowcake there -- reports grounded in a memo indicating that such a deal had gone down several years previously. This memo was a forgery.
The FBI, so far, seems to have come up with, well, with nothing. What we do know about the documents is that they were brought to the U.S. Embassy in Rome by Elizabetta Burba, an Italian journalist. According to European press reports, she got the documents from Rocco Martino, a former Italian military-intelligence official turned businessman with some kind of ties to French intelligence services. Martino has been to the United States at least twice since being publicly identified as the source of the documents, and the FBI didn't bother to interview him.
It seems clear that some powerful elements in Washington don't want to know the truth, which should raise suspicions. This, after all, would seem to be an important matter. Somebody went to some lengths to do this. He ore she must have had some purpose in mind, and it's hard to see how that purpose could have been anything but nefarious. Republicans don't seem interested in finding out, perhaps because further scrutiny of the matter would simply reveal how willfully gullible the White House was, or perhaps for some deeper reason. Democrats' reticence to ask what happened to the FBI investigation is more puzzling, but someone ought to get on the case. That there's a partisan payoff at the end of this particular rainbow is far from clear, but unlike in the Plame case, knowing the truth might actually change how we think about a thing or two.
Anyone else have anything they can offer in the way of information on this?
I'm not having much luck finding anything pertinent, which is really eating at me. I believe this matter is quite serious and any help would be appreciated.