Hang Right Politics

Posted by COgirl on September 1st, 2006 in The Pinocchio Press

There are a couple of good articles out there today on the recent revelation that it was Dick Armitage who leaked Valerie Plame’s name. The first is from our good friend, Lorie Byrd, at Townhall, Never Mind. Lorie commented on how the MSM has been unusually quiet about the story now that it turns out that it was not a “vast right wing conspiracy” to reveal Plame’s identity.

Democrats have a page in their playbook that they use often and it works almost every time. Make an assertion, even when it is contradicted by facts (in this case by Novak’s statement from day one) and then repeat it over and over again until it becomes conventional wisdom. When the facts emerge and it is clear that most, if not the entire thing, was a liberal fantasy, the damage will have been done and since the media was so instrumental in spreading the misinformation, they will call very little attention to the correction.

Almost eerily, the Washington Post wrote an editorial today about the end of the story. (Did someone leak Lorie’s article to them in advance??? Now that’s a conspiracy!) End of an Affair They pin the blame for the whole affair, not on Dick Armitage, but on Joe Wilson himself! If only I could do a Fred Sanford heart attack simulation on this blog! (And we older folks know what I’m talking about here.)

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Now my question in an earlier post on this subject is still relevant here. Does anyone remember the big news conference where Valerie and Joe announced that they were “regretfully” filing a suit against Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, et al? Here’s a quote from the Washington Post story dated July 14, 2006. Vice President Sued by Plame And Husband

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Vice President Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, accusing the three of violating their constitutional rights in retaliation for Wilson’s criticism of President Bush.

Plame and Wilson say that, after Wilson accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Cheney, Rove and Libby conspired to “discredit, punish and seek revenge against the plaintiffs that included, among other things, disclosing to members of the press Plaintiff Valerie Plame Wilson’s classified CIA employment.”

Will a judge throw out this case as a frivolous lawsuit so that we can finally put the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame grandstanding to bed?