Showing posts with label Niger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Niger. Show all posts

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Is There a Conspiracy Link Between the CIA and President Bush?


Jack Cashill insinuates a mysterious conspiracy possibility involving or I should I say revolving around Plamegate.

After reading “Joseph Wilson's Original Sin and how the Administration Washed it Away,” I realized I might have been a little slow connecting the dots.

Who sent Wilson to Niger? It has been verified that wifey Valerie Plame sent Wilson. Why did Plame send Wilson? This is the CIA connection I did not get until possibly now. Wilson was highly involved with French interests in providing nuclear material to Saddam Hussein. The CIA was against an Iraqi invasion by the Bush Administration.

Why was the CIA so dead set against an invasion that America’s Cloak and Dagger Company did everything it could to embarrass President Bush and the Administration?

Here is my guess. Iran has been an official enemy of America since Carter sold out the Shah and allowed the Iran Revolution to proceed. As is typical of those in the American bureaucracy that favor Arab assets to accomplish National Interests, I believe the CIA was working with Saddam to do something to a mutual enemy – Iran. In that work relationship, I sense the CIA (some how) schemed with the French without the knowledge of the Bush Administration or perhaps prior to the Bush Administration.

Why do I contemplate an operation was in place prior to the Bush Administration Agenda to take Saddam down? It is because America shipped out 1.77 tons of enriched uranium out of Iraq. The story was brief but mysteriously withdrawn. Now why would the Bush Administration not take advantage of this moment of vindication?

I sense the CIA was trying to sweep complicity to an Iraqi nuclear program that would also implicate France and Russia. By the time the Bush Administration connected the dots about CIA designs that ran counter to a Bush agenda, the invasion was committed to happen or happened.

President Bush had to decide whether to look like a weak President not in control of his own government and expose America to the embarrassment of a Clinton Agenda still moving in the bureaucracy or hide the dual opposite American government agendas to project strength.

I believe the President chose the latter. Unfortunately the less embarrassing choice set Bush up to be a target by unscrupulous Democrats that had only one agenda: to regain power in government at any cost. I believe there are Democrats that are privy to the knowledge of the CIA agenda. I believe Sandy Berger stole Classified Documents and shredded them to protect Clinton and various Democrats who might be traced to the CIA, French and Russian agenda. When those documents were destroyed, President Bush lost a smoking gun to be used against his political enemies.

Thus President Bush was at the mercy of the 2006 election in hope of perpetuating a Bush agenda. The Democrats exploited enough propaganda that voters were swayed to Democrat lies. I sense President Bush has lost his resolve to follow through and acquiescing to political enemies at the expense of American honor.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Frank Rich's War

MSM are continuing to scream about the Bush Administration is lieing. Facts are coming out that it is just the influence of liberals apparently attempting to topple the credibility of President Bush to the voting public. The Liberal media are planting seeds in the publics mind to sway future elecitons of 2006 and 2008. However when testimony is examined in both the press and Congressional committee reports it is a different story.
Read this rebuttal from the NY Sun Editorial Staff:
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New York Sun Staff Editorial
November 28, 2005
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/23556

Those who charge President Bush and Vice President Cheney with lying to get America involved in the war in Iraq, as the New York Times columnist Frank Rich did yesterday, have a special obligation to get the truth correct themselves. It's one thing for Mr. Rich to disagree with the decision to go to war in Iraq and to blame Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for the decision. It's another for Mr. Rich to accuse our elected leaders of misleading the country while the columnist himself goes about misleading readers of The New York Times.

The Niger Uranium

Mr. Rich's New York Times column yesterday refers to Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address with the "bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium." Those words were, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But those 16 words are neither bogus nor fictitious. They were and are true. A July 2004 report of the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger in June of 1999 and met with Niger's then-prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki. The committee relayed that Mr. Mayaki said the meeting was about "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries, which Mr. Mayaki interpreted to mean "that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales."

A July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's State of the Union comment was "well-founded." As the Commission put it, "It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible. ... The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it."

According to the Butler Commission, Saddam Hussein's government claimed that a 1999 mission to Niger by Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican was for the purpose of conveying an invitation to the Nigerian president to visit Iraq. Now, it's possible that, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, if Frank Rich were president, he would have concluded that the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican probably just had jetted down to Niger for the purpose of hand-delivering an invitation. But the British concluded otherwise, and it's hardly "bogus" or "fictitious" for Mr. Bush to have said so. Given Saddam's known nuclear ambitions - remember Osirak? - and Niger's main export, would it have been prudent for Mr. Bush to take the word of Saddam's envoy over that of the British?

Two Commissions

Mr. Rich's New York Times column yesterday accuses Messrs. Bush and Cheney of "falsely claiming they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence." Yet two major reports that looked into the matter of the administration and intelligence did exonerate the president. Here is a quote from the report of the bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission: "The Commission found no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."

Here is a quote from the report of the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities." Yet, in contravention of those conclusions - reached by groups that included Democrats such as Senators Edwards, Levin, Wyden, and Durbin and Clinton administration officials Lloyd Cutler, William Studeman, and Walter Slocombe - Mr. Rich speaks of "the administration's deliberate efforts to suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade."

September 11 and Iraq

Mr. Rich accuses Mr. Cheney of dissembling by conflating the terrorists of September 11, 2001, with those we are fighting in Iraq. As evidence that Mr. Cheney is lying he cites an American general who says the Iraqi insurgency is 90% homegrown. But it's undisputed that the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a Jordanian, Zarqawi, who shares with the rest of Al Qaeda, including the September 11 terrorists, the goal of re-establishing the caliphate. Certainly in their violent targeting of civilians and their jihadist rhetoric, those who attacked New York office buildings on September 11 and those who are blowing up restaurants and hospitals in Iraq have a lot in common. One may choose to emphasize or de-emphasize the similarities, but emphasizing the similarities as Mr. Cheney has done hardly amounts to dissembling.

The DIA Report and Senator Levin

Mr. Rich references a report of the Defense Intelligence Agency released by Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, which Mr. Rich said demolished the credibility of a source the administration used "for its false claims about Iraq-Al Qaeda collaboration." Here's how Mr. Levin hyped the report in a press release. "In February 2002, the DIA stated the following, which has remained classified until now: 'Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.' That DIA finding is stunningly different from repeated Administration claims of a close relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Just imagine the impact if that DIA conclusion had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."

The only stunning thing here is the disingenuousness of Messrs. Levin and Rich. First of all, the DIA report is not much different from what Bush administration officials were saying publicly at the time. On February 6, 2002, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, made a similar argument in public testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying, "Baghdad has a long history of supporting terrorism, altering its targets to reflect changing priorities and goals. It has also had contacts with al-Qa'ida. Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is possible - even though Saddam is well aware that such activity would carry serious consequences."

Moreover, the notion that the secular Baathists and the Islamic jihadists are so ideologically divergent that they will not work together has been disproven by what is going on now in Iraq, where they are cooperating against Iraqi moderates and American troops.

James Bamford

Mr. Rich cites the reporting in Rolling Stone of James Bamford. Yet even Mr. Rich's own newspaper, the Times, in reviewing Mr. Bamford's 2001 book, remarked on Mr. Bamford's "palpable distaste for the Israeli state." Said the Times review, "Rather too credulously, Bamford sides with the conspiracy theorists."

The Truth

Mr. Rich writes that the White House's record on the road to Iraq recalls the saying, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Here is what Mr. Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address, the one whose 16 words about Uranium in Africa caused such a storm. "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages - leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained - by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."

That the president spoke the truth has been sadly confirmed in free Iraq. The Associated Press's Nadia Abou El-Magd interviewed Firas Adnan, whose tongue had been cut off with a box cutter by a Saddam loyalist. Mr. Adnan, "his slurred words barely comprehensible," said of Saddam, "He is a despot, the biggest despot, Iraq will be much better without him." Susan Sachs of Mr. Rich's own New York Times reported from the mass graves of Hilla: "On April 11, 1991, a few weeks into the Shiite rebellion, Iraqi helicopters dropped leaflets over Karbala ordering everyone to leave or be attacked with chemical weapons. Mr. Mohani piled his relatives into a pickup truck and a car and fled. About four miles south of the city, the escape route was blocked. There, he said, he saw Mr. Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, executing people randomly at a checkpoint. 'He was telling people to get out of their cars and then he would shoot them, shoot them until his arm was too tired to do it anymore.'"

Does Mr. Rich think his own colleague and the Associated Press are also part of what he derides as "propaganda" and "the disinformation assembly line"? And when it comes time for a new generation to ask their elders what they did during the war to end the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, what are the editors of the Times going to have to say for themselves?

http://www.slantright.com

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Is the Valerie Plame-CIA Leak Case Crumbling?

O what wicked web liars weave when they set out to deceive? Theyget caught in their own web of deception. Fitzgerald is reaching forimaginary straws to prosecute a case that is emerging as a witchhunt for Conservatives when the only witches are self-incriminatingliberals.

Again it appears the Democrats are sinking in their own mud. Go to http://www.slantright.com/ to read more.

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by Jim Kouri, CPP
November 17, 2005 06:34 AM EST

What a difference a few weeks make in the world of politics. One day, the Democrat Party and the mainstream news media are celebrating the indictment of a key White House staff member, then suddenly facts start to emerge that just might put a damper on the prosecutors case.

Recall how Patrick Fitzgerald announced the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice charges. During his jovial press conference, Mr. Fitzgerald lectured Americans about how serious it is to leak classified information. He avoided using the term "covert" when describing Valerie Plame, because in order for the leak charge to be a crime that's exactly what she would have had to be -- a covert agent. And it's pretty clear now that she wasn't.

Suddenly there is growing doubt about Fitzgerald's case since the legendary journalist Bob Woodward announced that he knew about Plame's identity weeks before the exchange between Libby and Newsweek's Matt Cooper. And he further stated that it wasn't Libby who told him.

Bob Woodward's own description of when and where he learned the identity of a CIA operative contradicts Patrick Fitzgerald's allegation that Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was the first to make the disclosure to reporters. Recall how Fitzgerald stated as fact that the leak began with Libby's conversations with reporters. Apparently, that's not true.

Woodward claims he told his editors at the Washington Post last month that he had learned about Valerie Plame's identity and her work at the CIA more than two years ago, but declined to name his source.

Another less reported, but equally important, event occurred following Libby's indictment. Major General Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret.) said that prior to the alleged leak, Ambassador Joe Wilson bragged to the general that his wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA. And General Vallely is not the only person making such claims.

Also, news organizations are asking, through their attorneys, that US District Judge Reggie Walton deny a court motion by special prosecutor Fitzgerald for a blanket protective order keeping all pretrial evidence in Libby's case out of public view. One wonders if Mr. Fitzgerald disclosed this evidence to Libby's trial attorneys. Libby's legal counsel is entitled to full disclosure.

As the trial date approaches look for more stories to break. For instance, Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" is a key figure in the case since he denies having told Libby about Plame's CIA position. Libby testified that he believed it was Russert who told him about Plame. Mr. Russert's conduct as a newsman has been criticized by several news watchdog organizations for his coverage of a case in which he is deeply involved.

I predicted that the attorneys for Libby would make things very uncomfortable for some members of the mainstream news media. These people have crossed the line between being unbiased journalists and covert political operatives perhaps once too often. Does anyone believe Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were the only ones? Elite media's cozy relationship with the DNC and liberal activist groups must be exposed to the American people, many of whom still believe what they read in the newspapers and see and hear on their televisions.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He's a staff writer for New Media Alliance (thenma.org), and he's a columnist for TheConservativeVoice.Com, AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he's syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.

[Found at http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=10030]

© 2005 The Conservative Voice. All rights reserved. Some portions ©The Associated Press.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

THE PLAME GAME: General wants Wilson apology

One wonders why Fitzgerald does not go after Wilson for perjury or worse breaking the very law that Fitzgerald is supposed to be investigating. Again this whole Libby perjury trial smacks of liberal Democrats imposing an agenda to disrupt Bush. A Machiavellian whatever it takes agenda to discredit conservatives and Bush. Now this is fascinating for it is the very thing the leftists are accusing President Bush and his Administration.
See more at http://www.slantright.com.
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By Art Moore
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Posted: November 8, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Threatened with a lawsuit for "slander," retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely is turning the tables on Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, calling on the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy to offer a public apology for accusing him of lying.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Vallely claimed Wilson revealed wife Valerie Plame's employment with the CIA to him in a casual conversation the year before she allegedly was "outed" by columnist Robert Novak.

Vallely said he brought up Wilson's disclosure last week because he saw Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the alleged leak as unfinished.

Wilson, he said, has made so many misstatements of fact, "but nobody has taken him to task."

Why Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald did not question Wilson and Plame under oath, "is a mystery to me," Vallely said.

Meanwhile, Wilson's lawyer Christopher Wolf notified Vallely and WorldNetDaily that his office mailed an official demand letter yesterday threatening a lawsuit unless the general retracts his claim.

The letter follows an e-mail Saturday to both Vallely and WND warning of legal action.

Wolf warned Vallely "the claim that Ambassador Wilson revealed to you or anyone that his wife worked for the CIA is patently false, and subjects you and anyone publishing your statements to legal liability."

But Vallely said Monday he still has no intention of backing down.

He first made the claim in an interview on the ABC radio network's John Batchelor show Thursday night. Since speaking with WND late Friday, Vallely has clarified the number of occasions Wilson mentioned his wife's status and when the conversation occurred.

After recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson, Vallely says now it was on just one occasion – the first of several conversations – that the ambassador revealed his wife's employment with the CIA and that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002.

He is certain, he says, the conversation took place in 2002.
Wilson admits to two encounters with Vallely, the first in July 2002.
Fox News Channel would not provide information about Wilson's and Vallely's appearances, but WABC's Batchelor told WND his staff has found that Wilson appeared on the network at least 25 times from Aug. 13 to Dec. 31 of 2002 and that Vallely appeared from 150 to 200 times during that year.

After two years of investigating the CIA leak allegations, Fitzgerald's only indictment – of vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby Oct. 28 – pertained to the investigation itself, not the 1982 law that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. One of the key drafters of the law, Washington attorney Victoria Toensing, told WND earlier this year she believed it did not apply to Plame.

Fitzgerald has been probing whether Plame's identity was leaked by the White House as retaliation against Wilson for his assertion that the Bush administration made false claims about Iraq's efforts to buy nuclear material in Africa. Wilson traveled to Niger in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored trip to check out the allegations about Iraq and wrote up his findings in a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece titled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

White House defenders insist the White House aides simply were setting the record straight about Wilson, seeking to put his credibility in context by pointing out it was Plame who helped him get the CIA consulting job. Wilson denied his wife's role initially, but a bipartisan report by the Senate panel documented it.

Wilson declared in the column that his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Widely known?

At least two veteran reporters say Valerie Plame's association with the CIA was widely known, and a prominent analyst on military and political affairs, Victor Davis Hanson, told WorldNetDaily his own green-room encounter with Wilson revealed a man who is unusually free with personal information to strangers.

Former Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey told the New York Sun in a story published Sunday. "[Plame's] name was knocking around in the sub rosa world we live in for a long time."

NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, in an appearance on CNBC's "Capitol Report," Oct. 3, 2003, was asked how widely it was known in Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

"It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger," she said.

Hanson, a Hoover Institution fellow and National Review columnist, told WND that like Vallely, he had a casual but unusually frank conversation with Wilson in the Fox News green room before appearing on the air with the ambassador some time, he believes, in early 2003.

But contrary to a report, Hanson said Wilson did not disclose his wife's CIA employment.
Nevertheless, Hanson found the first-time encounter to be revealing, describing Wilson as being very "indiscreet" and "unguarded" with personal information, rambling in a "stream of consciousness" manner.

"It was almost as if he were bored; he was non-stop talkative and sort of self-absorbed," Hanson said.

"When I left, I seemed to know a lot about Joe Wilson that he had spontaneously offered to a stranger."

While Wilson did not tell Hanson anything of his wife's CIA connection, Hanson was a witness to an intense 30-minute conversation between the ambassador and The Nation magazine Editor David Corn, who apparently were meeting for the first time.

Corn's July 16, 2003, column was the first published mention of Wilson's claim that the White House intentionally had "outed" Plame as retaliation for the Niger report.

Entitled "A White House Smear," Corn's column said, "Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad, the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

Corn claims Wilson never confirmed whether his wife was a covert agent, yet he writes:
Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."

Corn concluded: "The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security."