Robert Novak is America’s quintessential crotchety old coot, who makes his living complaining about the government full time. He must think it’s good work if you can get it. And even an old-timer can mix it up once in a while. Novak’s July 14th column revealed that former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame was a covert agent for the CIA. What does this have to do with Iraq, Colin Powell, and the recent announcement that President Bush decided to go “hat-in-hand” to the blue flagged new age United Nations?
Maybe nothing… for where there is fire, there is smoke. That’s not true always the other way around. Yet when you smell smoke, it’s time to make sure something isn’t burning. In this case, we must review what was thought of as a well-known story from the top, starting with “sixteen words” that surely ignited more than one blaze.
Let’s look at the players. Everyone knows Colin Powell, Secretary of State. But not everyone knows that Joseph Wilson was U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome (whoa! those are real countries?). Wilson was tasked by the CIA to investigate assertions in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that Saddam Hussein “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”. More specific, Wilson was sent to Niger for research. And he came back concluding that there was no such effort in Niger by the now-defunct Iraqi regime.
Little evidence of a full investigation by Wilson in Niger, anything other than “sweet mint” tea-time, actually exists. But one month after George Bush declared that major combat operations were over in Iraq, Wilson wrote a stinging op ed that was published in the New York Times, in which he plainly accused Bush of lying. He set off a firestorm around Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address that heated up on July 6. One week later, Robert Novak’s column broke the spouse’s CIA cover, leaving Wilson and others crying foul.
In a recent report by one of the Web’s more colorful conspiracists, Al Martin ascribes a statement to Wilson at a Washington symposium that none other than Bush political adviser, Karl Rove leaked to Novak (or others known to both) how Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative. If it is true that Wilson has leveled such a public accusation against Rove, this is more than remarkable. It would mean that a former U.S. Ambassador, one who recently was tasked by the CIA on a critical piece of intelligence, is accusing a top adviser to the Bush administration of a felonious national security breach.
The White House denied that it had anything to do with the revelation by Novak. And one must consider that, about a year and a half after hiring into service for the CIA, Wilson wrote an op ed about it in the New York Times. This is a discrediting fact. Responsible people who do work in intelligence for the United States don’t write about it in the New York Times. Such is the behavior of scoundrels and traitors (here we should remember that Wilson was Bill Clinton’s advisor for Africa policy on the since-impeached President’s National Security Council).
Al Martin makes a case that Secretary of State Powell is stonewalling Joseph Wilson’s request that the Department of State file charges against Karl Rove. According to Martin, this would force John Ashcroft to investigate and prosecute any wrongdoing. Martin’s essay, “The Ambassador Wilson Affair: The End of Karl Rove – And George Bush?” proposes the whole issue could result in an impeachment of the 43rd President of the United States.
Try as has this writer, one can find nothing about the symposium in which Wilson made that accusation. And there is little evidence if any that Novak got his information about Plame’s CIA status from Karl Rove, or anyone else at the White House. So it is questionable that the Secretary of State is covering for Karl Rove, or George W. Bush.
Still, the Bush administration has apparently caved over objections by the Secretary of Defense to the UN one-world crowd, as the President is now going to the United Nations for “help” in Iraq. None can doubt that this fits right well with Colin Powell and people like Assistant Secretary Richard Armitage at State. They’ve been towing the UN-line in the administration for over a year, and are responsible for the French debacle over a “second Iraq resolution” earlier this year.
Assuming that Powell doesn’t hold the President and Karl Rove totally over a barrel – that no one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. broke Valerie Plame’s cover (in spite of what Joseph Wilson has alleged) – why has President Bush caved to the UN? Only days ago, Bush was talking about how the conflict in Iraq was a direct engagement of terrorists that were better fought over there than over here. You certainly cannot expect the United Nations to do a better job of fighting terrorism than the Fourth Infantry Division. And any money we save with the UN is only our own, since we pay for most of their peacekeeping missions anyway.
Watching Colin Powell at his State Department briefing announce that the U.S. was going to go begging the UN for help, you could not help but note the Secretary’s near “giddiness”. Perhaps that story about Powell’s planned resignation, which appeared in the Washington Post only weeks ago, was more than bad reporting. Maybe Powell has made good on some power-move that he won by threatening to abandon George W. Bush — sort of the General’s “my way or the highway”. Or maybe Al Martin isn’t so far off the mark. Either way, you can almost hear cheers from C St. and 23rd, even on this side of the beltway, as the one-worlders at Main State now have something to celebrate.
Stay tuned folks. Anticipation builds as we wait for the next catch phrase from the other side of the Potomac. American sovereignty still has a few friends — just say no to blue helmets. And “Old Europe” is definitely older than Robert Novak.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”