Libby found guilty

[JamesB]

According to WHOM?

And what is "bladding?"

Wilson talked about this himself, to Maureen Dowd:

http://www.letstalksense.com/articles/dowd10020303.htm

The Spy Who Loved Him

by Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON -- It was like a movie scene. But instead of meeting cute, they met covert.

Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson both happened to alight in Washington, their jet-set schedules intersecting, and spotted each other across a cocktail party filled with foreigners.

"I saw this striking blonde," he recalled, still sounding smitten six years later. At first she said she was an energy analyst, but confided sometime around the first kiss that she was in the C.I.A. "I had a security clearance," grinned Mr. Wilson, then a political adviser to the commander of U.S. forces in Europe.

 

[gumboot]

Shouldn't this be in politics or current events or something?

-Gumboot

 

[JamesB]

Shouldn't this be in politics or current events or something?

-Gumboot

Hmm, it depends. Do you think he was setup? Did he take the fall for Cheney? Maybe this is just a distraction so nobody will notice this weekends neo-nazi anti-tax conspiracy theorist conference?

 

[skepticalcriticalguy]

Shouldn't this be in politics or current events or something?

-Gumboot

Well, it could belong here in conspiracy theories, since it's been much written about that the Plame team (Brewster Jennings) was involved in heading off the planting of WMD in Iraq, and also looking into 9/11 financing.

 

[maccy]

Also there are already three threads about this in Politics, two on the verdict:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76382
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76381

and one on the original "outing":

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10662

If the debate drifts too far away from Conspiracy Theories, maybe someone can suggest the poster moves over to one of those threads.

If you're interested, here's how the LCF crew are responding:

http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=5092

 

[TOHMS]

No, and the NWO controlls everything, yet very suspicious tactics were used in both of President Bushes victories. But remember, Alex Jones said that all candidates are the same.

 

[yodaluver28]

According to everyone Skepteical.

The woman was NEVER a secret undercover CIA agent.

Wrong, she was an undercover operative. Just because she wasn't James Bonding all over the globe doesn't mean that she wasn't undercover or NOC. She was a Non-Official Cover agent which means that she worked and traveled under a professional disguise and that if she were captured in a foreign country doing her job, she would be caught without diplomatic papers, would be prosecuted as a spy, and executed. When her identity was revealed to the press it not only endangered her life but the lives of all the agents and informants in foreign countries who have been disguised through Brewster Jennings and Associates, which was her professional cover that was leaked as well.

And lets not forget she admitted herself to bladding after she f8cked her future husband on the first night they met!

I don't know what bladding is supposed to be but whether or not she and Wilson had sex on their first date is none of your business and totally irrelevent to the situation. What Joseph Wilson has said was that she told him after their first kiss, he didn't say first date. But regardless, since Wilson was already in possession of a national security clearance, her telling him her NOC status was neither illegal nor inappropriate.

However, what concerns me is this. The MSM have had a field day accusing Libby of uncovering this so called agent

The news media is having a field day because the Vice President's now former Chief of Staff was charged and has now been convicted of charges related to the betrayal of the identity of a NOC intelligence agent while workingi for the VP for the purposes of exercising a political vendetta against her husband. That is real news, not pointless Anna Nicole garbage. Real, important legitimate news. I'm sorry that the criminal was a member of your political party but that's not Plame or anyone else's fault.

 

[JamesB]

I don't know what bladding is supposed to be but whether or not she and Wilson had sex on their first date is none of your business and totally irrelevent to the situation. What Joseph Wilson has said was that she told him after their first kiss, he didn't say first date. But regardless, since Wilson was already in possession of a national security clearance, her telling him her NOC status was neither illegal nor inappropriate.

That is not the way it works. I have a security clearance too, that doesn't mean any woman I kiss can just tell me any national security secret that she feels like.

Although I am a really good kisser, so they usually feel like telling me everything...

 

[greyleonard]

Here's a Dave Lindorff article about some of the background with the forged Niger documents.

excerpt:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]So Scooter Libby has taken the fall.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Three and a half years and a long bloody war after he and a gang of war-mongers in the White House and Blair House, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, set out to undermine and trash the reputation of an Iraq war critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Libby has been found guilty of perjury, lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice by a Washington jury.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Now maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and what passes for journalists in the mainstream media can get down to the real business of finding out just why the entire White House smear operation was unleashed upon a minor state department official and why they went so far as to violate federal law and expose his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame, in the process destroying her entire network of contacts for monitoring the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Because that's what this whole Libby story is really about.

[/FONT]

 

[JamesB]

Here's a Dave Lindorff article about some of the background with the forged Niger documents.

excerpt:
[/SIZE][/FONT]

The forged Niger documents had nothing to do with Joe Wilson. They weren't found until months after he made his trip.

 

[greyleonard]

The forged Niger documents had nothing to do with Joe Wilson. They weren't found until months after he made his trip.

How do you figure that? Is the article misleading?

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]And that was to go to Niger, one of the poorest nations in Africa, to prove conclusively that there was no truth to a set of forged notes on the letterhead of the Niger embassy in Rome, purporting to be receipts for 400 tons of Niger uranium ore allegedly being sought by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Wilson knew those documents were cheap forgeries--the name of the mines official on the papers was someone who hadn't been in office for years--but he went to Niger anyhow, just to make doubly certain that no such purchase attempt had been made.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]None had.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents? [/FONT]

 

[Brainache]

... [/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents? [/FONT]

I think Killtown did it.

 

[JamesB]

How do you figure that? Is the article misleading?

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]And that was to go to Niger, one of the poorest nations in Africa, to prove conclusively that there was no truth to a set of forged notes on the letterhead of the Niger embassy in Rome, purporting to be receipts for 400 tons of Niger uranium ore allegedly being sought by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Wilson knew those documents were cheap forgeries--the name of the mines official on the papers was someone who hadn't been in office for years--but he went to Niger anyhow, just to make doubly certain that no such purchase attempt had been made.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]None had.

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents? [/FONT]

I don't know if the author is being intentionally misleading, or is just confused, but in any case he is wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer=emailarticle

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

 

[greyleonard]

I don't know if the author is being intentionally misleading, or is just confused, but in any case he is wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer=emailarticle

We should all be aware of the danger of relying on outdated news items. Did you happen to catch the correction on the right side of that page, or the major corrections in the Post's article a week later on July 18th 2004?

"The former ambassador said that he may have misspoken to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were forged."

At issue here, an article in The Washington Post in which you were the source, you acknowledge being the source. You spoke of forged documents long before anyone ever knew that they were forged.

WILSON: No, no, that's wrong.

First of all, I was one of several sources.

Secondly, that article appeared in June. And, in fact, on March 7th of that year, Dr. El Baradei had described to the U.N. that these documents were forgeries.

In addition to that, on March 24th, I think, for the March 30th issue of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh wrote a long article about it, in which he laid out the facts based upon an interview he had with the International Atomic Energy Agency...

BLITZER: So when the committee says that you told them you had misspoken, what did you misspeak?

WILSON: Well, actually, what I misspoke was, when I misspoke to the committee, when I spoke to the staff -- this interview took place 15 months after The Washington Post article appeared. I did not have a chance to review the article. They did not show me the article.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/18/le.00.html

...the tale begins at the end of 2001, when third-rate forged documents turned up in West Africa purporting to show the sale by Niger to Iraq of tons of "yellowcake" uranium. Italy's intelligence service obtained the documents and shared them with British spooks, who passed them on to Washington. Mr. Cheney's office got wind of this and asked the C.I.A. to investigate.
The agency chose a former ambassador to Africa to undertake the mission, and that person flew to Niamey, Niger, in the last week of February 2002.
Kristoff, CNN.com Friday, June 13, 2003

Salon article

 

[mailman]

In other words, her activities were secret, but she wasn't a spy.

-Gumboot

Thank you, this was the point I was trying to make

Mailman

 

[jhunter1163]

Yes, but what is bladding? And along those lines, what are punters, tossers, and taking the piss? These are all Britishisms I've seen here that I have no clue what they mean. Any help from across the pond would be much appreciated.

Thanks, mates.

 

[MaGZ]

Sorry, sometimes my sense of humor gets away from me...the point I'm making is, if Richard Armitage outed Plame, why no charges against him?

I thought the whole thing started over who outed Plame.

The initial question should be: Who forged the Italian "yellowcake" documents?
My I make a suggestion?

 

[maccy]

I don't know what bladding is.

A punter is a customer usually in the sense of somebody who regularly pays for something, often somebody who bets on something (hence "to take a punt" means to bet).

Tossers is probably a violation of rule 8, and I'm going to make it worse by saying it's pretty much the same as wankers, Literally, tossers are people who masturbate, but it's more often used metaphorically.


Taking the piss, means to make fun of, usually ironically or sarcastically. Taking the mick is a common variation. "Are you yanking my chain?" is probably a close approximation of "Are you taking the piss?". Also, somebody who is useless can also be said to be "taking the piss" ie they're a joke.

As for bladding, it's not in Urban Dictionary and it seems to exist mainly as misspelling of blading (usually in conjunction with roller or sometime rollar). There is this:

http://abcsofmarshalltown.blogspot.com/2005/02/b-is-for-bladding-and-basketball_15.html

But I doubt if that's the context it was used in this thread.

 

[maccy]

The initial question should be: Who forged the Italian "yellowcake" documents?
My I make a suggestion?

Yes, if you can do it without using the words Mossad, Israel, Jews, Zionists, Woody or Allen.

 

[gumboot]

Yes, but what is bladding? And along those lines, what are punters, tossers, and taking the piss? These are all Britishisms I've seen here that I have no clue what they mean. Any help from across the pond would be much appreciated.

Thanks, mates.

I'm pretty sure "bladding" is a typo and meant to be "blabbing".

Blabbing generally involves talking about stuff you're not meant to...

"I told John a secret and the next thing I know he's blabbing to the whole office about it!"

A "punter" is a customer or potential customer.

"If you tell the punter's we've run out of beer we'll have a riot on our hands"

"tosser" is an insult.

"You're a complete tosser."

"Taking the piss" means making fun of something.

"My God I just saw an alien run down the street."
"Oh get off."
"No I did."
"Stop taking the piss."

or

"So the boss is standing up there, blah, blah, blah, and Tom's right behind him taking the piss."

-Gumboot