The Plame Scandal

"We Americans all too often take for granted the luxury of living in and benefiting from the rights and freedoms guaranteed by our constitution. Several actions undertaken by this administration serve as a reminder that the social contract that binds us is fragile and requires our vigorous protection if we ever hope to preserve it. We have known this since the time of the drafting of the constitution over two hundred years ago when Benjamin Franklin remarked that the founding fathers had bequeathed to the nation ‘a republic, if you can keep it’." -- Joseph & Valerie Wilson; July 17, 2006

Valerie Wilson did a wonderful job of telling the congressional committee about her side of the story of the "Plame scandal" yesterday. And the House democrats did a great job of providing the American public with the truth about several of the key issues in that scandal. Several of the republican "talking points" were exposed as purposeful lies, aimed at confusing the issues involved in the falsehoods that brought this nation to war in Iraq.

In his book "The Politics of Truth," Joseph Wilson wrote about the "work-up" on him that was done by some in the Office of the Vice President, and shared with the White House Iraq Group and others. "According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July, the workup on me that turned up information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles. That would explain the assertion later advanced by Clifford May, the neocon fellow traveler, who wrote that Valerie’s employment was supposedly widely known. Oh, really? I am not reassured by his statement. Indeed, if what May wrote is accurate, it is a damning admission, because it could only have been widely known by virtue of leaks among his own crowd." (pages 443-444)

The truth of this became evident when neoconservative Victoria Toensing, who testified after Plame, claimed that Valerie was not "covert." How would a person with no connection to the CIA be in a position where she would believe she knows what Plame’s employment status was? Not only is Toensing purposely lying – and lying to a congressional committee should have consequences, especially when it has to do with a national security issue – but it proves beyond any doubt that Joseph Wilson’s claim is correct: the OVP?WHIG was pushing a lot of information on Valerie Plame Wilson to people not legally entitled to receive it.

More evidence came when Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) was focusing on if Plame was a registered democrat. The idea that in the spring of 2003, VP Dick Cheney questioned Joseph Wilson’s report on the Niger yellow cake lies, because he was a democrat, and his wife who worked in the CIA department that sent Joe to Niger was a registered democrat, documents the extent of the "work-up." It also shows the diseased thinking of republican congressmen who attempt to justify the paranoid OVP actions as rational.

The administration’s lapdogs in the media have been saying that no one outside of Washington, DC cares about the Plame scandal. That seems to ignore the fact that Americans recognize the Plame scandal involves the White House committing crimes to destroy the lives of those people who dared tell the truth about the WMD "threat" that Iraq posed. It ignores that a majority of Americans do not support the Bush/Cheney war in Iraq. It ignores the fact that Americans mourn for the over 3,000 US soldiers who have died for the administration’s WMD lies. It ignores the outrage Americans feels when they hear about the mistreatment of wounded veterans. And it ignores the fact that Americans voted in a democratic majority in both the House and Senate, in order to change the direction this nation is heading in.

I urge readers to take three steps: {1} Write and/or call your elected officials, and tell them to investigate and impeach administration officials involved in the Plame scandal; {2} Write letters to your local newspapers, expressing outrage that the administration derailed a significant part of the intelligence communities’ efforts to protect our safety; and {3} Support the Joseph and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust.

Learn more about their civil case against Cheney, Libby, Armitage, and Rove by going to:

http://wilsonsupport.org/

Contributions may be sent to: Joseph & Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust; P.O. Box 40918; Washington, DC 20016-0918. The Wilsons have stated that if their civil case results in a payment larger than the costs associated with their legal activities, the equivalent monies contributed to the Trust will be donated to one or more charitable organizations that work to protect government whistleblowers’ First Amendment rights, and to protect them from retaliatory actions.