Skip to main content

The End Of The Affair

In his masterful style, Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine [“Plame Out: The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington”] bids goodbye to the farcical Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson fandango, concluding that pretty nearly everyone – but most especially the lemming media – got it wrong. It was not the pro-Iraq war Bushies – Rove, Cheney et al -- that outed the CIA intelligence analyst. The outing came from the camp of the dubious -- Colin Powell and Richard Armitage.

Comments

I enjoy reading your blog more than any other CT based blog.

-ACR
Anonymous said…
The affair is not over. Libby still has to go to trial.

And there are those who say that maybe it was not the pro-Iraq war Bushies – Rove, Cheney et al -- that directly outed the CIA intelligence analyst, but they were on the sidelines cheering what was going on.
Don Pesci said…
Anon
Well, sure: There’s rarely an end to litigation. But here is what we know: 1) Plame was not a CIA agent when she was outed. She was an analyst, not the same thing; 2) the claim that Cheney or Rove or Novak did the outing was false. Novack apparently got her name from a Who’s Who report; 3) Armatige was the first administration official who gave her name to a reporter – Woodward, not Novak. It seems to me that these disclosures shred Fitzgerald’s case – which was grossly misprosecuted, since Fitzgerald knew 3) when he zeroed in on Libby.

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e