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Sunday, October 30, 2005In more pointed language, Instapundit nicely tackles what we and many others are saying:[Either Wilson's] mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn't care much about Plame's status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.And if it's the first option - the CIA was meddling in domestic politics -, as seems likely, the person who planned the mission should be prosecuted for those crimes normally associated with attempting to undermine the democratically elected government and substitute oneself. I'm not sure if coup or putsch is the more appropriate term, but the crime is treason. At the same time, Scooter Libby done wrong. The White House should not have been leaking around town that Joe Wilson was traveling on his wife's tab, so to speak. They should have been shouting from the rooftops that he was a goofy flake, a Clinton holdover and a patent phony. Rather than letting slip that Joe's wife got him the gig, they should have simply declared that Cheney had nothing to do with the mission, wondered aloud whether there really was a mission or if Joe Wilson was merely delusional, then suggested that if he had undertaken a mission such as was described in the NYT, his supervisors needed to be canned as they were obviously inadequate to tasks of greater moment than determining the chlorine levels in the pools at Niger hotels. Granted, the national press corps would have done their best to push Wilson's line, but had the administration hammered home that Wilson was a Clinton holdover with incompetent handlers - else why would he be allowed to write an NYT op-ed about a classified mission? - the CIA would have wound up blowing this in their efforts to defend themselves while Tenet, on his way out, could have played the good guy sold out by his former colleagues when he stayed loyal to the country's elected government, rather than the Democratic party. In short, it would have been ugly and dirty and protracted. But that's no different than what we've got here. The only difference is that the folks facing prosecution would have been those folks who attempted to convince themselves that the democratic process only counted if they agreed with its results. 
posted by gbarto at 11:41 PM |
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