As I sit here being angry about Irving “Scooter” Lewis Libby’s commutation by lil’ Bushie it occurs to me that the whole sordid afair is actually much worse than originally thought.
The simple story is that the outing of Plame was just a method of discrediting Wilson’s trip to Niger because she reccommended her husband for the job. This always rang hollow with me. Coming from the most courrupt, cronyistic administration since Tammany Hall a little nepotism hardly seems worth mentioning.
So what is my take on the situation? It was a two for one. They discredit Wilson and they destory the CIA operation monitoring the WMD progress in Iran. The latter being the more important goal.
It is said that Plame was leading an operation monitoring WMDs being sent or built up in Iran. Given the administration’s flagrent lies about WMD in Iraq and the CIA taking the fall for that I’m sure Cheney’s minions knew they would not get a pass on using the same techniques for war with Iran. Agents from the CIA would have leaked enough information to the press to blow the administration’s claims out of the water. Wilson’s op-ed was probably just a shot over the bow.
So their best bet was to neutralize the CIA’s intelligence network for Iran. Along came the fabulous opportunity when Wilson wrote his op-ed. They could go after him and the CIA’s network and call it “politics as usual.”
People looking at this as simple revenge for Joe Wilson’s op-ed are not looking deep enough.