"They're world-famous and immensely rich"

By Creature

This weekend on the McLaughlin Report John Podhoretz reminds the nation how the outing of Valerie Plame was really a "win win" for the Wilson's:

She's got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar movie deal. Tom Hanks and Cate Blanchett are going to play them in the movie. It's a terrible thing that happened to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. They're world-famous and immensely rich -- awful.

That's not why you pardon him. You pardon him because he was -- because no harm was done in the case, because it was a case that was overreached. The sentence was an overreach. The indictment was an overreach. He did not do -- and we know, as a matter of tort, that, far form doing any harm to Valerie Plame Wilson, she got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar book deal.

I guess damage, as a matter of tort, to national security by outing a CIA officer who just happened to be on the hunt for WMDs doesn't play into the equation for Mr. Podhoretz. It's about deflection of guilt. It's about minimization of harm. It's about the politics of personal destruction. It's never about the good of, or harm to, the country for these neocon shills. Selfish bastards.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Heil Bush

By Creature

I can't break down the minutia of the Valerie Plame outing like some on the Interwebs can, but I can recognize denial when I see it, and today the Right side of the Sphere is in serious denial over the fact that Valerie Plame was indeed "covert" at the time of her outing and that the people deemed serious about national security are anything but. Their loyalty to all things Bush, over all things country, Constitution, and reason, is beyond disturbing.

Update: Glenn Greenwald chronicles the Wingnut "covert" denial.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Smearing Plame

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The right will stop at nothing to smear whomever it deems a threat to its grip on power. The main targets of the right-wing smear machine are often leading political figures, such as Obama, but the machine also targets those who speak the truth to right-wing power, who expose the lies and deceptions of the right, of the Republican Party, of Bush -- such as Valerie Plame.

In her testimony before the House Government and Oversight Committee, Plame stated that she was in fact, and contrary to partisan right-wing claims, covert at the time her identity was made public by conservative pundit Robert Novak. And if she was in fact covert when outed, then we come back to the rather significant matter of who knew what and when, of whether there was a concerted and coordinated plot to out Plame and where such a plot originated.

And this is why the right-wing smear machine is attacking Plame's claims that she was covert and that she did not recommend that her husband, Joseph Wilson, be sent to Niger. On Fox News today, Brit Hume even went so far as to allege that Plame lied under oath. Having already argued that she was not covert, he is now arguing that she did send her husband to Niger. It's just more of the same from the right.

You can find the video of Hume's smear at Think Progress.

The spy who testified before Congress

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And here she is. Valerie Plame. Her expression -- a look of what-the-fuck exasperation -- is priceless.

(Photo from the Globe.)

Covert Plame

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In testimony before the House Government and Oversight Committee today, outed CIA agent Valerie Plame stated that she was in fact, and contrary to right-wing claims (lies), covert at the time her identity was made public by conservative pundit Robert Novak.

Think Progress has the video here (along with a round-up of the right's "false claims").

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See also WaPo: "It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover," Plame told the committee. Her identity was blown "carelessly and recklessly".

See also our co-blogger Libby Spencer over at The Impolitic, as well as updates on Plame's testimony from Barbara O'Brien at The Mahablog.

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Update

See Taylor Marsh: "Let's also remember that this whole event stemmed around Joseph Wilson deflating the Bush administration's case for war. Nothing is clearer."

See also David Corn, Steve Benen, Cernig, and, on the right (and questioning Plame's covertness), James Joyner.