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Corruption is not something which happens overnight. It takes time, like water wearing on a rock. The Bush Administration of 2001 is not the Administration of 2005. This doesn't mean the seeds of corruption were not there, but they took time to develop.
[. . .]
Why would Rove and company smear a former ambassador? Because, even after two years, they had no conception that the gulf between Texas statehouse politics could come to harm them. The corrupt pundit class, frightened into compliance by the Beltway Sniper, who scared them a lot more than 9/11, was willing to go along.
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The problem here is that Valerie Plame was the rarest of the rare, a non-official cover agent of the CIA. No one knows how many there are, but the guess is that they would not fill too many tables at a dinner. Training one is more expensive than training a fighter pilot or Delta Force trooper. Revealing her name to anyone without a security clearance was a crime. Even while employed at CIA headquarters, people had no idea she was a NOC. Apologists like Bob Somersby and Richard Cohen just don't get it. This was a crime and one with serious consequences.
No need to belabor the point, but I'll put it this way: one of Special Operation Command's mission is to pull agents from dangerous situations. Pulling a NOC is the most dangerous of all. No one knows how many missions had to be run to clean up the mess created by this bit of spitework.
But why would they do it, then cover it up. Surely they understood what had happened?
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As one who's pulled several Agency butts out of the fire, I have to agree. The Plame outing put literally hundreds of lives at risk; not just the spies, but the lives of those who have to go in and extract them. I lost friends in the failed hostage rescue in Iran and I had friends who had to get some of our covert operatives out of Russia during the height of the Cold War. I've pulled folks from 'unfriendly Asian nations' myself. It can get hairy as a motherfucker, something the idiots who live inside the Beltway can't begin to comprehend.
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Once corruption enters the process, people assume everyone is corrupt. That everyone is as craven and venal as they are. That they work from the same motives. They never got that Wilson and his wife were real patriots, people who had risked their lives for the US and what it stood for. That they were deeply offended by this crap.
[. . .]
Were I Joe Wilson and someone did to my wife what they did to his, they'd pray for Fitzgerald to indict them; jail would be far more preferable than what my deranged mind could cook up for them. [Keep in mind, her life will never be truly hers. She's probably brought down some people who will want retribution. She will live the rest of her life with a target on her back, thanks to these assholes. - F.] I admire Joe for his restraint in allowing the process to work itself out. He's a far better man than I.
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