Late Edition: Armitage on Leaking Plame's Identity and Smart Power
By Nicole Belle Saturday Nov 10, 2007 1:02pm
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What an amazingly refreshing and grown up admission from a former member of the Bush Administration. When shown a clip of Valerie Plame Wilson castigating him for revealing her identity to Robert Novak by Wolf Blitzer, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has really only one thing to say: She's right.
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In the second clip, Wolf asks Armitage about his work with the CSIS Commission on "Smart Power." Armitage's response to the way that Bush & Co. have prosecuted the "War on Terror" sounds amazingly like a *gasp!* progressive position:
BLITZER: Are you suggesting that the “War on Terror” is not the central component of U.S. policy right now?
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ARMITAGE: There’s two different things. I’m suggesting that it perhaps shouldn’t be. The fact that we make a war on “terror”--which I think is a bit of a misnomer—perhaps it should be a war on extremism, certainly Islamic extremism right now—is keeping us from focusing on other issues, both domestic and international. Look, these terrorists want to hurt us; they’re a real and growing threat. But absent the availability of WMDs to them, they don’t pose an existential threat to us. This is not like fascism during the second world war or communism. The threat they pose to us is whether we in response to their activities will actually do harm to ourselves by changing our way of life, by suspending writs of habeas corpus and by engaging in such activities as torture.
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No, not foolish, Armitage: Treasonous.
great time to grow a set dickhead
Sounds like a defense.... that said, Armitage has been consistently upfront throughout. So the question... who wrote the memo? SOMEONE knew she was covert! Come on Fitz!
Armitage cannot be trusted. Here is some background.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3342.htm
And; (researchers might want to save this one to your hard drive, it's hanging by a thread at the archive)
http://www.vicpeace.org/iraq/articles3/1070.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030320175155/http://www.vicpeace.org/iraq/a...
"A Vietnam veteran and graduate of Annapolis, Armitage's roots have been thoroughly intertwined with the likes of CIA veteran Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, Heine Aderholt, Elliot Abrams, Dewey Clarridge, Edwin Wilson and Tom Clines. All of these men have been directly linked to CIA covert operations, the drug trade, the abandonment of U.S. prisoners of War after Vietnam and/or Iran-Contra. Armitage has also been routinely discussed in FTW as a Bush-era covert functionary who has been linked to covert operations, drug smuggling and the expansion of organized crime operations in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East.'
thoughts @ 3:
Yep.
But that question won't be answered any time soon for the general public.
Instead, sometime soon, the maladminstration will be saying something to the effect of, "Arimtage was never really part of our administration. He's a senile man, who simply wandered through the White House every now and then in a clown suit, smearing his own feces on the wall. And he hates America. Thankfully, our stellar White House security finally pushed him out. For the liberal media to interview him at all is a disgrace."
The Richard Armitage who comes to Australia regularly to be feted by right-wing journalists and politicians recently told an audience here that Australian troops in the 'GWOT' were doing 'God's work'.
This type of talk does not go down well in this country, outside of a few fringe weirdos.
Who is this man? I'm confused.
Sounds like somebody laced his lunchtime martini with sodium penathol.
i bet woof was hugely disappointed by that claim of responsibility. you can bank that he was hoping armitage would rip her to shreds.
Lollimom @ 1:
Lollimom, you took the words right out of mouth. Or the words right off my keyboard.
Why did Novak say "operative" if no one told him that was her job. They are all a bunch of cowardly liars. Why didn't Blitzer ask him any questions about the "memo" where he saw her name?
Foolish? It was dangerous, irresponsible, and reprehensible. Consider that the premise of his disclosing Ms. Plame's name to Novak was based strictly on backbiting partisan revenge tactics.
Ms. Plame was trying to be kind when she used the word "foolish" to describe his actions in public. I'm sure in private her words are much more vituperative. Armitage was a willing accomplice in ruining Valerie Plame's career.
And just who the hell inserted her name into that memo?
Too bad, Armitage -- thanks in part to you, the damage has already been done and can't be undone. If you were ever truly in possession of either courage or conscience, you would have at least made some sort of token effort to either stand up to the Bush administration or walk away and refuse to participate any further in their charade -- but you did not. Had you done so, perhaps you might have been able to retain at least some vestige of honor and dignity -- but your integrity has been stained forever by association, and it's nobody's fault but your own. Your apology (if in fact it was sincere) might have had more meaning if it had taken place a year or two earlier...but now it's just TOO DAMN LATE and no amount of mea culpa or hindsight can even begin to compensate for what you did.
He should have just come and said 'FEAR MONGERING'. That is exactly what this so-called 'war on terrorism' is.
I could get run over by a bus today, tomorrow or next week and be reduced to a spot on the pavement. I don't get out of bed everyday worrying about it. If a terrorist entity really wants to perpetrate a massive attack on us, there is no amount of intelligence, torturing or circumvention of our Constitution that is going to stop it, especially with our borders, ports and sensitive infrastructure is so grossly and negligently unguarded the way they are. As long as people continue to respond to the fear card when it's pulled, our current sorry excuse for a President and the next one will use it to get what they want.
Like Ben Franklin said...Anyone who gives up their freedom for a little security deserves neither.
Fat, fascist, treasonous SLUG - E S & D!
Armitage is a hard guy to judge, especially for a PNAC member. He was good here though and also in the Frontline documentary: Showdown to Iran.
He came out publicly over a year ago about leaking Valerie's name, and he did go to Fitzgerald early in the investigation and tell all he knew without ever getting an attorney.
I have to respect him on some level for that much. It looks like he got set up by whoever put her name in that memo, and I don't believe for a second that was a mistake. that memo probably came straight out of the WHIG or Feith's Office of Special Plans, or both.
The first question to come to everyone's mind is who sent the memo, whatelse did it say and why was it sent? Oh yeah, and who else got the memo, if anyone did?
Why didn't Wolf ask any one of those questions?
pissed off patricia @ 16:
That's all really old news. It was the same State Department memo Fleischer was leaking to reporters from on a presidential trip to Africa.
JerryO @ 13:
Exactly so. If these people were fanatical and even slightly capable, they would make runs on US airports every once in a while in front of departing or landing passenger planes, blowing themselves up in US markets, buying rocket propelled grenades on US black market and shooting at the busses, planes or sky scrapers (if there are hundreds of thousands of guns on that market, there are at least thousands of RPGs which they for some reason don’t buy, and the reason they don’t buy is because the nature of men is not to kill mindlessly) They are the fighters, trained and armed like soldiers, who prefer to fight on a battle ground of Iraq and Afghanistan, and they do it only because we create the battle grounds. In other words, the war on terror is about to end very soon because too much money has been wasted and the killing nature of man is nowhere to be found on our soil. Freedom and prosperity seen on the streets of US is the last thing a terrorist wants to become a part of and taste before a strike, for him the Iraqi desert, mountains and woods are the way to go, and EVERY American can’t help but admit that those would be pretty much the logical and right places for a fanatic to be in, and end their lives in the name of responding to F16 strike or Blackwater killing.
Romemerica
The Dems should be working triple overtime to define the GOP as the Torture Party. The Dems have been handed a gift. They are squandering it. What else is new.
you fat fucking piece of stinking shit! both of these fucking bitches! where are the fuckin' armed guards to carry this fat ass bush fucking cock sucker to prison for treason!?? oh that's right, there is no fucking accountability with these scum fuckers.. i almost forgot. this jack ass lowlife takes the hits for these fucking criminals in the fucking white house.. and like we don't see that??? you fucking mother fuckers! this prick sits there and lets wolf fucking buttfucker suck his smelly stinking cock while our soldiers and innocent men, women and children in iraq are dying for this reprobates fucking illeagal war.. dying for his corporate cock sucking, mother fucking bosses so they won't have their asses hauled off to the hague to face war crimes. i hate these fucking pukes.. they make me sick.
Blitzer: "it is established truthiness that you were the first to leak Valerie Plame's name..."
Armitage was really good in the Frontline Documentary about Iran (especially in pt 2)
pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua2F8VrAaK4
pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXHKxuW7RnU
He's no fan of Bushco.
All I hear from Armitage is false contrition and careful standard issue CYA word parsing. The initial contrition is designed to avoid appearing to engage in denial or defense of the facts of his indefensible conduct; however, once that nicety is dispensed with he artfully proceeds to do just that. He didn't knowingly expose Plame because mention of her name in a memo seemed evidence enough to him that she was an "analyst" and not an "operative." It was all an honest mistake, you see.
Ironically, the inclusion of the Plame clip is part of what makes this rhetorical slight of hand work. The compelling strength of her indignation is transferred directly to his apparently complete but false contrition so effectively that it is easy to miss that he proceeds to reduce his involvement to a foolish misunderstanding about a memo. No wonder he asked for the clip before it even rolled!
Novak used the word "operative" so that it a loose end that needs tidied up by blaming Novak for misquoting him. Another misunderstanding!
Finally the glaring lack of obvious follow-ups by Blitzer seems to authenticate it all nicely and sweep it under the rug for Armitage. Well, glad we cleared that up that misunderstanding...next question!
I think you have been fooled. I hear him covering his ass by blaming other people--the memo writer and Novak. Refreshing? No, I hear the same old story.
Too little too late. I don't trust any of these jerks. CYA is all they know.
memorycardfull @ 23:
I think you hear what you want to. The fact is her name was in the state dept memo and if she was covert it should not have been. Armitage was one of the first, if not THE first person to go to Fitzgerald and testify all he knew, without ever getting an attorney. That's pretty crazy. He did so knowing he shouldn't have been leaking any info from the report to Nofacts in the first place. so, innocent he's not, but he didn't try to hide it or lie about it, and Fitzgerald chose not to prosecute him. he's no hero, but he wasn't knowingly a part of the scheme to out Valerie. He's a long-time hard-liner and founding/early(?) member of PNAC, but on this thing he got duped by whoever put her name in the state dept memo Cheneyco had prepared and was floating it around. the memo was drawn up specifically in response to Joe Wilson's being an anonymous source for a couple of Nicolas Kristof columns even before Joe Wilson's NYT op-ed. They knew what they were doing when they put her name in there.
justabill @ 15:
It came out of Cheney's or Scooter's clammy treasonous hands (Either way Cheney was behind it. Hang him!) . No doubt about it!!!!
ROTFLMAO.... not to make light of the ample amount of disdain poured onto him... but... it's inevitable... and often involves a great deal of pain and suffering... but the CONservative mindset eventually begins to realize the difference between daylight and darkness...
Either he's growing a conscience or he's setting us up.
Captain Kangaroo @ 26:
It's probably not a good idea to go calling for that, but FYI, Cheney was already hung a long time ago.
thoughts @ 3:
Exactly! that would have been the correct followup question if Blitzer was a true journalist: "who wrote the memo that you saw?"
pissed off patricia @ 16:
Maybe because CNN is pandering to the GOP? The mere fact that they have someone like Glenn Beck on the payroll should be evidence enough of that -- but it really hit home for me last week when I visited CNN on my web-enabled mobile telephone on Nov. 7 and saw how CNN chose to frame the headline concerning the state gubernatorial elections. I can't remember the exact wording, but whoever wrote it chose to focus exclusively on the GOP -- and I felt that this made it all the more clear just whose side they're really on. They may not be quite as blatantly slanted to the right as Fox, but they're still slanted.
Don't be fooled folks. Armitage was a charter -- and integral member -- of the neocon Project for the New American Century with Rummy, Wolfy, and all the rest. He was sent to State to keep an eye on Powell. And then he was dispatched by Cheney to leak, and they spun it as him being a silly gossip. We are all being played by this guy. He is in the thick of it.
At first I wondered if there was some sort of gas that Bush emitted that filled the White House with toxic, mind-altering chemicals. And Armitage was now freed of those and could think clearly.
But then I remembered he's a Republican. Ask him in ten minutes and he'll probably deny he said any of those things.
Gee with friends like Armitage, who needs enemies? He has no thoughts or opinions that are his own. He just says and does that which he thinks benefits himself. Armitage is a selfish, self-serving bastard.
Elaborating on post #31:
Anybody notice how CNN conveniently edited a clip of Nancy Pelosi so that she apparently said (possibly paraphrasing here), "The Democratic Congress hasn't done anything," instead of her actual words, "Congress hasn't done anything ... to end the war in Iraq"?
CNN is just another pandering, politicized, Bush-licking corporate kneepad brigade. An integral part of the Mighty Reich-Wing Wurlitzer. The Most Twisted Name in News. (After Faux, of course.)
D.G. Bowman @ 35:
Yep.
Presto! CNN Edits Pelosi's Quote To Make Her Say Dem Congress "Hasn't Done Anything"
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/11/presto_cnn_edit.php
VIDEO: Bush I Calls Leakers “Most Insidious of Traitors”
GEORGE H.W. BUSH: “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.” [Speech at CIA, 4/26/99]
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/07/28/video-bush-i/
BTW - Treason, during a time of war, is punishable by death. Time for the bushies to line up for trial.
slippytoad @ 33:
yeah..this got me too...I think he's smelling an indictment coming,and he's already looking for a deal.
I would take "dick's" words with the same grain of salt I take listening to "W". Everything they say is the complete opposite of what they intend/mean.
Dick will probably get "the call" from the neocon speaking tour circuit to change his tune
Holy moly. Holy smokes. It sounds rational. (It does not compute.)
Let's not get too warm and fuzzy about the guy. He just used another tried and true insidious tactic from this administration: do damage to your enemies and then admit fault afterward, when it's too late. You look good in being honest, and also you make it sound like it's a matter that is trivial enough to be solved by admitting making a "foolish" mistake. (Used also by Dana Perino and the missing emails.)
"What an amazingly refreshing and grown up admission from a former member of the Bush Administration. When shown a clip of Valerie Plame Wilson castigating him for revealing her identity to Robert Novak by Wolf Blitzer, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has really only one thing to say: She’s right."
How about, "She's right and I"m sorry?" See that's the thing. Not one of these self-justifying pricks has ever apologized. Or ever will. They all, Armitage included, justify what they did six ways from Sunday--I was misinformed, I was lied to, I couldn't have known, it wasn't my fault. Not one has apologized. They're all ratshit.
Eternal Vigilance @ 7:
Right-o. That's the only logical answer. Hmmm...
he looks like a cross between Lex Luthor and Emilio Largo
99 @ 28:
Look at his body language. Of COURSE he is setting us up. Rolling he eyes, jerking back in his chair, sighing, constantly glowering at Wolf (or whoever is interviewing him). He obviously isn't engaged in the subject and is only going around spinning this because there is some other, undisclosed, benefit for him in doing so.
Hell, I though he was going to punch Wolf in the face for just reading the list of questions that were probably supplied by Armitage himself! Trust him? Ha! No way.
pissed off patricia @ 16:
Wolf is an idiot, and a willing tool.
Truly spoken like a man who can tell which way the wind is blowing.
The Hague for you, too, pal.
.
It could be why fritz would not let libby off.......The memo was made up by VP-Deliverd by libby.
The Valerie Plame Wilson outing: a classic example of loose lips sinking ships.
Or, if this had happened during World War II, and someone divulging classified information to enemy spies or to news outlets had caused one of our troop-carrying ships to be torpedoed and sunk, with all hands lost, then that someone would have been charged, tried and executed.
So, we still do not know how many CIA agents and their contacts overseas lost their lives due to the "loose lips" of people like Armitage. Odds are that as part of the deal that got George Tenet his Medal of Freedom was his agreeing to quash the CIA's after-incident investigative report that detailed the in-house investigation at the CIA that was conducted after Mrs. Wilson's identity was exposed, as well as Brewster-Jennings, the CIA front company, that provided overseas cover for her and a lot of other covert CIA NOC agents.
The traitors in the Bush administration, like Armitage, who are the ones responsible for this major national security breach will spend the rest of their sorry lives covering their asses, trying to convince people that what they did doesn't demand capital punishment.
As far as CNN goes, I stopped watching CNN when I learned that Ted Turner had been conned out of creative control over his own cable news creation. On CNN in the late 1990s, I first noticed the use of Republican Talking Points, where Republican pundits being interviewed would keep repeating the same spin phrase, employing a repetitive brainwashing technique perfected by Nazis and Communists. Also on CNN in late 2001 around the time Ted Turner lost creative control, I saw a blurb scrolling at the bottom of the screen stating that the FBI was conducting 15,000+ investigations into anthrax letter mailings (I figued one investigation involving lethal anthrax plus 14,999+ investigations involving hoax anthrax powder mailed in envelopes meant to terrorize people). This scroll line lasted for about thirty minutes, then disappeared, never to be seen or reported on again.
I now only watch Countdown, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, because I like humor mixed in with the factual reporting of the news. I can't stand to watch the jokers reporting the "news" on the other stations because these "jokers" are hardly funny. I'll go so far as to say that they, by corrupting the news reporting process, are as much a danger to our democracy as the al Qaeda, because these "jokers" reporting the "news" in our democratic, free nation are just fascist enablers. Which means that their "loose lips," that are "loose" with reporting the truth, just might "sink" our ship of state, swamped by relentless waves of fascist right-wing ideology, unless their lying "mouth holes" aren't stoppered in time.
Plame is fine. No hanging or nothin.
Beginning to realize that there is such a thing a consequences, is he?
Before, during and after the Pat Fitzgerald investigation, Armitage openly admits he was the person who revealed the identity of Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby got convicted for impeding the investigation of a crime when the guy who committed the crime already confessed. What's wrong with this picture?
Blitzer almost seems upset that Armitage didn't tow some Administration talking points...
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
----Friedrich Nietzsche
From Armitage's mouth the God's (Bush's) ears.
Did I hear him right? He's actually making sense.
who wrote the fucking memo?????
waterboard armitage until he talks
Now that the money has all been stolen, it's time to put the brick-a-brac back on the shelf and pretend nothing happened.
RICHARD ARMITAGE IS A CO-CONSPIRATOR IN GENOCIDE.
Now he sounds so reasonable. Hang a few hundred dead Iraqi babies around his neck by their intestines, see how reasonable he sounds then.
Neo-Pogo: we have met the enemy and he is more usa than al-them.
Armitage is a hard one to figure. First of all, he's a Colin Powell crony, not a Bush crony, and he approaches foreign policy from a paleo-con veiewpoint, not the neo-con viewpoint. He has contributed to PNAC, but unlike most neo-cons and PNAC members who've never been in a schoolyard fight, he's a war veteran who did three tours in Vietnam and graduated from the Naval Academy. He's also notoriously disdainful of Donald Rumsfeld.
As reported several times by several people.. certain professinal CIA and other Department of state personnel were always against GWB since the Florida recount farce...this Dufus is but an open pussy sore that best illustrates his dubiuos agenda.. He should be in Jail..along with Wilson-Plame..... NOT Scooter Libby...
This guy is a dirtbag and should have been locked up long ago. He is nothing more than a thug.
Have these people no sense of decency. They lie each time they open their mouth. They are lowest form of living creatures.
OMG it's Uncle Fester
If Dick is telling the truth about not knowing that "Plame was a covert agent when he discussed her with syndicated columnist Robert Novak" the he is a downright MORON. My 10 year old son could have figured that out. Armitage, you will go down because now there are people out to get you. Better watch your back for the rest of your life.
ivanoffsky @ 65:
LOL, that's funny!! Looks like he had his head up Bush and Rove's a$$ too.
Why is this man not being charged with treason? I thought Bush said he was going to punish whoever was responsible for the leak. How can we be protecting our country from rouge nations with WMD's when we are outing the very people who have dedicated their lives to accomplishing that mission. Armitage should be tried, and possibly executed. There is no higher crime than treason.
Justabill.....when Armitage read Novak's non-partisen gunslinger coloum in late Sept he immediately called his boss Powell and then they called republican fix-it man Ken Duberstien. I would think that most reasonable people would realize that that these three would fix their story BEFORE Armitage went to the FBI.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/129554/de_la_vega_debunking_the_armitage...
thoughts @ 3:
Absolutely. The question is glaringly obvious. Has anyone asked it?
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