two scandals two diaries

Allan Lichtman, civil rights activist and candidate for Senate in Maryland, get's it just right at boomantribune in a piece called, the Scandal of the Century:

"Unlike the response to Hurricane Katrina, the first great scandal of the century remains mostly unknown. This was the disenfranchisement of more than 50,000 African-American voters in Florida's 2000 presidential election. These were not potential votes struck from the rolls as felons or prevented from reaching the polls. These were voters who actually turned up at the polls and fully expected their ballots to be counted in the election.

George W. Bush will be president of the United States for eight years because the votes counted in
Florida's 2000 election did not come close to matching the ballots cast by the state's voters. The result in Florida was not decided by hanging chads, recounts, or intervention by the Supreme Court. As the analyst for the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights I found that George Bush won Florida and the presidency because officials tossed into the trashcan as invalid one out of every nine to ten ballots cast by African-Americans throughout the state.  In some counties, nearly 25 percent of ballots cast by blacks were set aside as invalid."


Whatever Allan Lichtman's chances in Maryland, this piece is a must read, and his cause is a worthy one. This is where BushCo. starts...in Florida in 2000...and it's high time we shine the light of justice on what happened there. I mentioned the tentacles of scandal last weekend. This is another one that we have never really exposed. Despite all else that's swirling, that time is now.

The second essay is by a blogger at dailykos named ne plus ultra discussing that other scandal...the one involving Valerie Plame. It's a must read:

"My belief is that, oddly enough, the affair that bears Valerie Plame's name is actually centered on, not her husband Joseph Wilson, but on Valerie Plame herself.  

That Wilson is not a key player; that his investigations weren't very thorough.  But that Plame was at the heart of the agency effort on WMD, perhaps controlling it; handling agents and moles whose work was thorough; putting together the agency's case against WHIG right from the start; that most of her evidence was classified, so she needed a way to get unclassified material that could be released; that therefore, she sent her husband to verify things she already knew; that this was a tactical blunder on her part, not because it was a junket, but because he didn't do it very well, and that reflects back on her decision to send him; that the leak was intended not to punish Wilson, but to weaken Plame herself, to make her scurry to reseat herself at Langley for a few months, buying time, perhaps knocking her out of the loop, preventing her from coordinating the campaign to show how bad the administration's evidence was.  

In sum, I believe Fitzgerald's secret evidence is that Valerie Plame herself played and plays a much larger role at CIA and in the pre-war and post-war intelligence debate than has been let on.  That's why her outing is of such tremendous importance and relevance to Fitzgerald and to the judges empaneling the grand jury."


Ne plus ultra puts together three parts of the public record to make this case: A guess about how the redacted evidence that Fitzgerald presented to Judge's Tatel and Hogan would merit holding Miller in contempt, the way in which the significance of Libby's Winpac misinformation is a "red flag", and ne plus ultra's reading of Wilson's less than convincing report of his trip to Africa.

This argument is really strong even though it's the product of reading long available evidence. I've always thought that common sense said that to attack Wilson, it would have been easy enough to attack Wilson. It hadn't occured to me that in attacking Plame they might have been simply attacking Plame and through her the entire CIA. When you think of it that way you see just how nefarious that really might have been, what kind of chilling message attacking Plame was meant to send.

If this is true and Plame's position at the CIA regarding WMD was more central than we've been told...then this is a much different kind of affair...one that exposes the running battle between the CIA and the entire Administration, and makes this scandal about WMD, Iraq and the Vice President...more than ever.

If this is true..then all bets are off...especially with those who've emerged at the center of this affair. Cheney, Miller, Libby, Rove, and Wilson...and the speculation that has swirled around them.

Attacking Plame through her husband would not be something done by a political hack. It would have to go deeper than that. Ne plus ultra's point make sense. Many things about this scandal...the silence of the press, Fitzgerald's doggedness, the seriousness of the judges, Judith Miller's centrality, even the silly image of "aspens turning in clusters" make more sense if we see it as Cheney attacking the CIA.

Karl Rove would be nasty enough to slander a man by sleazily attacking his wife...but to attack Plame through her husband would take a different kind of evil...one seeking to protect and cover up a fabric of lies that sent us to war...one caculcating enough to send a chilling message deep inside the CIA...attacking Plame in this context bears the signature of Dick Cheney.

The triangle in this battle may have been Plame and Cheney and Fitzgerald all along.

I think we've arrived at our Lady from Shanghai moment.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
BINGO!

EVERYTHING IS FALLING IN TO PLACE.

What a great post and what a new idea.
awol said…
Reddhedd has a post that brings these two scandals together as well. When was the last time that Rove really has back to the wall? Republican 2000 primary, South Carolina. Rove with his brutal ability to go (with pleasure) after the most decent things about a person, because that's where the knife can sink deepest. Peditrician == he's a pedarast. Accomplished female governor == she's a lesbian. Adopted a Bangladeshi child == fathered a mixed-race bastard. Served your country with honor = coward in wartime.

What a sick and vile motherfucker. Who has been -- more or less -- ruling the world.

"Bush's Brain" should go on the best-seller chart of an indictment comes down with Rove's name on it.
Mad Feminist said…
Damn! I've been waiting impatiently for bloggerworld to start looking at Plame as the real focus. One had to suspect that they wanted to knock her out of the game. (And Hi! from another proud Oakland--center of known universe--resident.)
Scaramouche said…
One more from hello from Oakland.

I suspect that Libby had run into Plame while he was 'visiting' Langley in the lead up to the war. It is quite believable that she had stood up to him and Cheney when they putting pressure on analysts to see things their way on WMD. It would explain so much, especially why they outed the Brewster Jennings connection. They had to take out the network that was producing contrary evidence.

I

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