Rumsfeld Wants a Ministry of Truth

Where I disagree with you and Ken is that I think that the Pentagon is a de facto military situation and therefore it should not have Rumsfeld's gay activist Democrat friend employed there.

Scalia remarked the other day that the Supreme Court overturned 200 years of criminal law for no reason other than to be politically correct. No offense to anyone, but hasn't the Libertarian Party followed the politically correct line here?

It is true that American law does not allow people to be fired for adultery in general. However, adultery committed in the Indiana State House did get two people fired a few years ago. The private sector in Indiana can fire a person for no reason given I think.

The GOP does not need the donations of the gays and lesbians to fill its coffers. Nor does the GOP need to give appointments to gays and lesbians as Rumsfeld did.

Rumsfeld seems unwilling to undo this error. It is costing the GOP politically.

 

Many Republicans are disgusted with the lack of order on the domestic side of the Bush administration. Bush is a moderate and he goes his own way and ignores the party. In fact, a good case can be built that Bush never stood up to the Democrats on domestic issues at all. Hence, the overly expensive farm bill, for example. Pennsylvania Jim has linked all of the gay and lesbian appointments of Bush, a worthless expenditure of political capital on a voter bloc that is 99 and 44/100s percent Democrat.

Another source of trouble is Bush's Ramadan dinners where Bush invites a bunch of Arab Democrats from Detroit to the White House and makes a Vatican-like statement that Islam is a hunky-dory religion. He should hold those dinners on October 31 if he insists upon doing it at all.

The whole Bush family seems to lack what Bush 41 called "the vision thing." Bush 41 knows whole passages of The Holy Bible and probably is a true Christian, but he knows no doctrine and no theology. Bush 43 is a Methodist like Hillary Clinton, and he also seems to know no doctrine or theology.

In a word, Ken, Bush is syncretistic.

 

No offense taken. The Libertarian Party is probably the most poltically un PC group around. The Libertarian position is that people should be hired soley on their ability and not in regard to their race, personal life or religion.

CMG, I think we are in total agreement that it is wrong to hire people to appeal to that group (such as gay and lesbian appointments of Bush)or to advance their immoral causes or Bush's Ramadan dinners with Muslims where he as a Christian sounds like he believes Islam follows the same God as Christians. This is no doubt a effort to appear moderate to Muslims but for many Christians including myself it borders on denying Jesus Christ. I am often confused by Bush's faith in that he does not seem grounded. The best thing he could do on that is stay away.

I think the GOP lost it's soul when Reagan left the White House in 1989. Nobody in the GOP has been able to fill his shoes nor show his type of leaership. To be honest I like Pres. Bush as a person but I disagree with his policies and how he was moving the GOP more over to the Democratic Party's socialist ideas on government. There is a libertarian group in the GOP. http://www.rlc.org/

 

Ah, just for the record, do you consider Novak a traitor for protecting the guy who exposed one of our CIA agents? Or is that good journalistic ethics?

It's an old tradition. Washington hired one to get the continental army in shape at Valley Forge.

Hmm... whisky, gays, and generals. Interesting combination. There's a joke in there somewhere. But what problems have there been as a result of this guy owning a distillery, or being gay, or being in the Pentagon. Tell me about it.

Haven't heard about it. My understanding of Catholic doctrine in that area is that homosexuals who are celibate are no less worthy than heterosexuals who are celibate.

I don't know about you, but many Christians call that adultery.

 

Was this woman a CIA agent, Galatian? I have never heard exactly what her title was. And did Novak actually expose her? Or was her case and open secret around Washington DC as she and her husband had already told everyone where she worked?

The political party that needs to be put out of business is the Democrat Party. The sooner the better for the good of the country.

 

Oh, I don't think for a moment that the Libertarians and the other third parties will go out of business. Indeed, with the Democrats gone forever, the Libertarians just might be the second party. The old Democrat Party just doesn't work anymore. The Arab Democrats booed Lieberman just because he is a Jew--forgetting that Lieberman was a Democrat. And then Louis Farrakhan, who delivers on election day to the Democrats, has also expressed some hostility towards Jews. So maybe the Democrats will just cancel each other out and shred the party. Hey, Democrats, do the correct thing and put your party out of business.

 

Yep. Had a good number of foreign contacts, all who are now in danger, because the White House wanted to get even with her husband for not following the party line. Imagine what this does for the morale and effectiveness of our intelligence service. BTW, a judge recently set aside the conviction of a Reagan-era CIA agent, who had been convicted of arms trafficking. He said he was doing it for the CIA. Reagan's appointees testified that he was not.

Turns out that they lied. This happened after Iran-Contra, and the administration wanted no more embarassing revelations of arms shipments to our enemies. The judge issued a very angry statement and voided the man's conviction.

The man, meanwhile, had spent 20 years in prison, because the Reagan administration didn't want to be embarassed.

I don't think the CIA gives out that information. Apparently, Novak didn't pubish it, either. He just exposed her as an agent.

Yep. The CIA was not happy about it. He apparently contacted them first, and they requested he not do it for her safety, and the safety of her contacts.

Nope. It wouldn't have been a problem then. Of course, that kind of thing isn't what CIA agents do. She would have been relieved of duty at the very least, if she had done that.

Because they don't expose our CIA agents?

 

Here is what Novak actually said, Galatian--and not what you said:

'Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.'

 

And here is some more to refute what you have posted in error, Galatian. This also is from Novak:

"At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

"How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.

"A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered" -- working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.

The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the Agency to Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request ignited anti-Bush furor."

Turns out that she is an analyst--a desk job.

 

A desk job? So how is it she was getting overseas assignments? That's a mighty big desk. Her position was classified, but she was more than an analyst. What about her contacts overseas? When they're targeted are they to say "Novak says she was just an analyst?

Novak is trying to cover his butt, now that it's clear what he did. Novak is also being deceptive in saying that the woman's name was no secret. What was a secret was that she was a CIA agent.

"The Sept. 28, 2003, edition of The Washington Post quoted an unidentified senior administration official as saying two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed Plame's identity and occupation. Disclosing the identity of covert U.S. intelligence officers is a crime under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and the Justice Department opened an investigation into the leak."

If it was legal to expose her role in the CIA, why is the Justice Department treating it as a crime?

Face, it Novak committed an act of disloyalty against the United States. He's trying to revise what happened to make it go away.

"Anti-Bush" furor? Not yet. Maybe never. It depends on who turned out to have ordered this little bit of treason. My guess is that Bush isn't the culprit. He's venial, not evil.

And the motive counts. If officials know that the White House is free to do this sort of revenge against them for telling the truth, then they will be more reluctant to tell the truth. That is not a good thing, and one of the reasons we should make every effort to find the criminals and punish them severely.

Bush is no doubt hoping it will all blow over. Maybe it will. That would be a very bad thing for America.

 

Galatian, once again you have gone over Niagara Falls!

Novak reported that her own husband had her name printed in "Who's Who" in his biographical entry. It was she who made the arrangement for him to go to Niger. This was a very low level thing.

But he broke diplomatic code when he went public. He implied that someone high up was behind his mission. His wife--probably at his request--got him the assignment.

Then you have to remember that he is a partisan Democrat. That was his downfall. That was the reason that he went public against the President of the United States in a time of war.

The attack was not against her but against him. He is not thinking correctly. Clifford May, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times--a liberal Democrat newspaper--has also said that her job was an open secret in Washington DC. Here is what May wrote:

"On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.

"That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

"I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa."