On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Max Sawicky wrote:
> a new piece in Buchanan's rag
>
> http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html
>
> plus blog posts by Yglesias, Billmon, and Jane Hamsher make a nice neat
> package of the notion that the Plame outing was motivated by a need to
> cover up a much more serious scandal -- complicity in the forgery of the
> Niger "uranium" documents.
Unlikely. The American Conservative article seems clearly to be written before the 3 part La Repubblica series published last week, all 3 of which have been translated into English. And the blog posts don't add much, IMHO.
La Repubblica translation links:
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/berlusconi-behind-fake-yellowcake.html
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/yellowcake-dossier-not-work-of-cia.html
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/nigergate-great-nuclear-centrifuge.html
That series seems to nail down pretty very clearly by name who forged the documents, who mixed them with other documents, who sinned by omission, etc.
There was lots of impropriety involved in Feith & Co.'s stovepiping operation. And immorality. It was outrageous. But it's not immediately clear that it's illegal. And FWIW, the La Repubblica series seems pretty clear that the one thing they didn't actually do is physically forge the documents. They just made everyone accept them as true. But that we know.
On the other hand, I think it does all speak to motivation -- to why Libby made such transparent lies. And that could conceivably contribute to catching several of the big fish you named in the net of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Unlike other people, I like the fact that Libby is been indicted for lying rather than for outing an agent. Lying is the soul of what's evil with these people. If we can have more indictments for lying and conspiracy, connected to a Fitzgeraldian diagram of how they motivation was to cover up their conspiracy to fabricate intelligence, that would be just perfect by my lights.
The one thing in this that really reminds of Watergate is how the thing they got for they didn't even have to do. Nixon didn't need that burglary to beat McGovern. And they didn't need to do this.
Michael