by hilzoy
Via Mark Kleiman, this ABC News story:
“One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent’s name from President Bush’s top political advisor, Karl Rove.
Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an interview with “Good Morning America,” that the vice president’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, confirmed to him that Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative.
“There is no question. I first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove,” Cooper said.
Libby has since claimed that he heard the Plame rumors from other reporters. Cooper disputed that version of events. “I don’t remember it happening that way,” he said. “I was taking notes at the time and I feel confident.”
If a trial goes ahead, Cooper said he would name Rove as his source of the information.
“Before I spoke to Karl Rove I didn’t know Mr. Wilson had a wife and that she had been involved in sending him to Africa.””
Look, over there! There’s an Alito!
[UPDATE: ABC News has now retracted what I took to be the important part of this story. From the current version: “This update corrects two errors in an earlier version of the story, which referred to Nigeria instead of Niger, and stated that Libby in his conversations with a Time reporter referred to Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. ABC News regrets the error.”]
Libby Trial Poses Problems for Bush Team
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, was a key White House official with i
How long will it take before we hear voices from the Right claiming that Matt Cooper is a liar?
How long will it take before we hear voices from the Right claiming that Matt Cooper is a liar?
Factoring in relativistic computations? Last week.
I’m waiting and seeing. This isn’t very much in the way of information.
Slarti- When was the last time one of your posts did contain information?
Slart’s posts are a wealth of information — if you can pick up Obsidian Wings on your fillings and understand the code. 😉
More seriously, I like Slart’s posts and his comments.
Some of his information is like mine. It’s filtered through a stunning Rube Goldberg mind and comes out the other side funny, he said with considerable but not very funny self-regard.
That’s supposed to be a compliment, but then consider the mind from which it just emerged.
😉
Posts, or comments? Last few posts I put up were just open threads. I usually don’t bother with the information anymore, though, because few pay attention to that sort of thing anymore.
Taken as such, John. Don’t compare me to you, though; I can’t hope to compete with you in the area of Rubic Goldberg thinking.
“I usually don’t bother with the information anymore, though, because few pay attention to that sort of thing anymore.”
Oh, these fallen times! And the kids! Their music is just noise, I tell you!
Yep, I’m a dad. I’m almost destined to kvetch.
Well, it does contain this bit of information: Matt Cooper says he first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove. Not from Washington insider cocktail party chatter, not from other reporters, not from Plame’s neighbors, but from Karl Rove.
I think that’s a pretty interesting piece of information, but that’s just me. Which isn’t to say that waiting and seeing is an unwise approach.
Not saying it’s not interesting or unworthy of conversation, just that it appears to be either three months old, or in contradiction to what Cooper said three months ago.
Point us to the contradiction, if you would? I haven’t kept up with Cooper’s role in this.
Actually, I thought the interesting piece of info was that Libby confirmed that Plame was covert.
Cooper, like a drowning voice in the cacophony of right wing noise, reminds us that Rove was one of the leakers. How novel — actual straight information. And I thought I was supposed to believe that Fitz did not find any White House leakers.
This whole episode is about one giant lie fest by the Repubs. It began in earnest in October 2004, when this thing first really got into the press, so as to keep a lid on the thing during the election. It is going on now with all of the constant baloney about how Fitz hasn’t really charged anyone with the leak — except that Libby is being charged for perjury, et al., for lying about being the leaker.
How can there be no leak if Libby is charged with perjury about being a leaker?
On top of that is the favorite lie peddled by Charles, et al., that Wilson is allegedly the big liar. As with all of it, its one giant pile of made up nonsense.
SOP for the GOP these days.
Well, here’s one thing that popped up on Google:
How close that is to his actual words under oath, I have no idea.
Slarti: it appears to be either three months old, or in contradiction to what Cooper said three months ago.
Which is it? So that others could judge for themselves, would you be kind enough to provide a link to what Cooper said three months ago?
I don’t want you to think no one cares about information these days. I very much do, but all my Plame clips are on another computer.
I’m willing to attribute it to “misremembering”.
Sorry, Nell. Sometimes I forget that I’m not the only person who can’t keep track of all this.
Thanks, Slart. You’re right that it looks contradictory, although contradictory within the realm that could be resolved by sloppy paraphrasing.
I didn’t say it WAS contradictory, I was saying that it was either that or pretty much what he said…looks like four months ago, nearly.
Um, no. Cooper says Libby confirmed that Plame was covert, which could actually be all kinds of things. What it isn’t is a confirmation that Plame actually was covert in any important way.
Important in the sense of applicability of the IIPA, that is.
Well, the contradiction, if it is such, is that Cooper now seems to be saying that Libby told him Plame was covert, but didn’t say that four months ago. It’s possible that Cooper isn’t saying that now, or it’s possible that he is saying that now, but didn’t publish it in Time four months ago. And in either case we don’t have a transcript of what he testified to.
What it isn’t is a confirmation that Plame actually was covert in any important way.
Well, (assuming Cooper is truthful) if she was, in fact, covert in the IIPA sense, the fact that Libby said to Cooper that she was covert is confirmation that Libby had the requisite knowledge to violate the IIPA.
Slarti: what LizardBreath said. The relevance is to what Libby thought, and thus to the question: did he think he was just discussing an analyst, or did he know he was outing a covert operative?
I’m not thinking untruthful, I’m thinking that his recollection of things might be off. In any case, I doubt the IIPA applies here. Other laws might, though.
And given that I brought up IIPA in the first place, it’s probably a good thing for me to explain that last:
(4) The term “covert agent” means—
It’s possible I’ve misinterpreted “or” to mean “and not”, if so feel free to correct me. In any case, B and C appear not to apply, so Plame would have to conform to Part A.
“What it isn’t is a confirmation that Plame actually was covert in any important way.”
I think Patrick Fitzgeral was quite clear on this part:
This seems unambiguous, does it not?
She worked in the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) of the Directorate of Operations, not the Directorate of Analysis, as I’ve seen many blogs falsely claim. She ostensible worked for Brewster Jennings & Associates,; that was one of her covers. This isn’t “covert”? She’d been career clandestine for over twenty years with the DO. But I’ll take Patrick Fitzgerald’s word; he doesn’t exactly seem to be a flaming out-of-control partisan.
Read my previous post. If you think that she fits the definition of covert there, please tell me why you think that. I get that you feel that she ought to fit the definition of covert, Gary, but that has little bearing on whether she actually was, as far as the law is concerned.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about that, but just as obviously I don’t think I am.
Or, perhaps, there’s an amended definition of covert in the law somewhere and I’ve missed it. If so, you know what to do.
The IIPA is a side-issue now, anyway; it’s irrelevant to the perjury charge.
Agreed, Gary. I think I’ve said as much on numerous occasions, here. But you’ve been away, so, again: agreed.
The only doubt I’m aware of, Slart, is the Aii part, whether she’d been out of the country in the past 5 years, which we can’t know, of course. I assume Fitzgerald knows. I would tend to expect that therefore she was, but can’t be sure. In any case, it’s 100% for now. No one is charged, at this time, with violating the IIPA. Regardless, what Fitzgerald said stands.
To clarify Slart’s point, I think the question is the ‘five-year’ prong of the IIPA. While Fitzgerald was clear that her identity as a CIA agent was classified, it’s not absolutely clear that she meets the five-year standard.
(As I understand the facts (vaguely, that is), she’d been out of the country for the CIA in the relevant period, but hadn’t been stationed outside the country in that period. I don’t know how the IIPA operates in those circumstances, and it’s possible, if it hasn’t been litigated, that Fitzgerald doesn’t know either.)
And Slart, assuming that I guessed your point correctly, it’s a perfectly reasonable point. Why make people guess at it, rather than saying something explicit like “Yes, Gary, you’re right that Fitzgerald said her ID was classified, but he didn’t say that she met the rest of the IIPA’s standards, particularly the five-year prong.” It makes the conversation so much pleasanter.
Whoops, should have previewed.
“In any case, it’s 100% for now.”
Should have read “100% irrelevant.” But we’re all agreed on that, then.
As I alluded to upthread, I suspect the use of “covert” is probably inapt and therefore cause for excessive hope-upgettingness by those inclined to see Libby broken on the wheel, and I think the real focus ought to be on the compromising of classified, NS information. I’d guess that if Plame’s identity was in fact classified (and I’d guess by now that Fitzgerald has positively determined that to be the case), it was at least TS and probably TS-codeword.
All in all, still a bad thing.
“ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States;”
I would tend to think that if that was intended to distinguish “stationed” from “served,” it would say so. But, not being familiar with any precedents or rulings, I couldn’t say, and might be wrong.
Sorry, it should be clear by now that I’m exceedingly lousy at writing anything resembling a finished product before the eighth iteration or so.
This is much too agreeable. Let us all post as rapidly as possible, and talk past each other!
Wintel sux! Linux rools! Macs r for lusers!
Thor could beat Superman cause his hammer is magic!
(Whoops; this would have been here much faster if not for the line-drop/redial.)
I suspect the use of “covert” is probably inapt and therefore cause for excessive hope-upgettingness by those inclined to see Libby broken on the wheel, and I think the real focus ought to be on the compromising of classified, NS information.
A problem here is the fact that some people (you, but not you alone) are using ‘covert’ as a defined term meaning ‘covered by the IIPA’. The rest of us are using the English word ‘covert’. In common English, Plame’s identity was covert whether or not she served outside the country in the relevant period — where she was doesn’t affect the level of secrecy.
If you expect it to be used only as a defined term, you should probably make that clear to avoid confusion.
“The rest of us are using the English word ‘covert’.”
I’m not. I’m using it as I understand it to be commonly used in the IC. (Which I’m only aware of from reading, of course. Or so I say.)
Or, to rephrase, I’m using the term “covert” not based on the legal definition of the IIPA, because that’s hardly the only relevant law, nor merely on the basis of common usage, but on my understanding of its usage as specifically institutional jargon.
I believe I did, LB.
Again, my apologies that my piercing insights aren’t all tooth by jowl with each other.
I didn’t notice anything you particularly needed to apologize for, Slart, but if you wish to do penace, please prepare a short briefing memo for me on all of your positions on the issues I’ve missed in recent weeks. One or two pages should do.
If you truly feel the need, extend that to update me on the positions taken by prominent others here during that time.
😉
Penance, even. I’m not sure what “penace” is. Some kind of spice?
At this point we’re quibbling, this is all a little misunderstanding, but making it clear that you’re talking about the IIPA does not establish that the word ‘covert’ is, from that point forward, to be used only as a defined term. You can use it however you want (I’m not being sarcastic here — your usage is a reasonable one, in context), but conversation will be facilitated if you remember that not everyone has signed on to your usage.
OMFG. How long do we have to endure the “sent him to Africa” meme?
Its false. Its wrong, the extent of Plame’s involvement in her husband going was a single emai. She simply “responded positively to the suggestion in an e-mail “to higher-ups at the CIA who suggested that Joe Wilson be sent.”
“OMFG. How long do we have to endure the ‘sent him to Africa’meme?”
Well, you’re the first person to use the phrase on this thread. If you’re referring to Marc Cooper’s quote, a) it’s news, and surely we shouldn’t censor quotes; b) “nvolved in sending him to Africa” seems perfectly accurate.
“‘nvolved in sending him to Africa’ seems perfectly accurate.”
That is “involved” does. I really should slow down. But all that coffee!
I thought Fitzgerald was quite clear that Plame was a CIA agent, that her status as a CIA agent was both classified and not well known, and that releasing that information to reporters was “wrong” for a variety of reasons. He was also clear that he does not have evidence to demonstrate that the “wrong” violated the law (possibly because of the 5 year requirement). But so what? Libby, Rove, et al obviously realized that, illegal or no, their actions were beyond the pale and public knowledge of them would be devasting. Thus they lied about their possibly lawful activities and obstructed the investigation into them.
Many pundits have expressed puzzlement over why a savvy operator like Libby would let himself get into the pickle he is in over an action that wasn’t in itself unlawful. E.J Dionne, in today’s Washington Post, suggests an answer that rings true to me. As Fitzgerald noted, had Liddy and Rove come clean with the investigating FBI agents, the investigation could have been brought to a close in October 2004, not a full year later. But October of 2004 was just shy of the election. A revelation that Rove, Libby, and maybe Cheney had outed a CIA agent (fully meeting the definition of covert or not) would have been devasting at that time. So maybe Mr. too-careful-to-make-a-mistake Libby didn’t make a mistake. He lied intentionally to ensure no 11th hour revelations would screw up the election. There was good reason to believe that the reporters would never testify to the truth and he would skate. In the unlikely event the worst case occurred (as it did) he may have had a wink and nod assurance that George W would pardon him late in the second term. If so, Libby will continue the delaying action with his lame “I forgot” explanation knowing that he will never go to jail. He will not be subject to further pressure from Fitzgerald during the trial phase. The only way to make sure that game is not being played is for the President to state unequivocally that he will not pardon Libby.
Don- I don’t think there is any way for President Bush to make such a promise binding on himself. And he has already lied to the American people concerning this case. He promised to fire anyone involved in this leak and then didn’t fire Rove when it became clear to everyone he was involved.
He was also clear that he does not have evidence to demonstrate that the “wrong” violated the law (possibly because of the 5 year requirement).
Not exactly. It is possible that he has such evidence but has not acted on it yet, or may not act on it at all, for tactical reasons. It would be wrong to say that he does have such evidence, but the current absence of indictments on it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t.
LizardBreath- I think it is also possible that he isn’t allowed to use that evidence because Mrs Wilson’s travel itinerary is classified.
Dunno. Anything I know about classified stuff is from reading spy-novels with gold-foil hammer&sickles on the cover.
“He was also clear that he does not have evidence to demonstrate that the ‘wrong’ violated the law (possibly because of the 5 year requirement).”
No, that’s not what he said. You’re over-reading. He– oh, wait, LB got to it first.
“I think it is also possible that he isn’t allowed to use that evidence because Mrs Wilson’s travel itinerary is classified.”
It’s possible. I think it’s a bit unlikely, because I’d think they could work around that with unclassified affadavits and either the jury would buy them as credible or not, but it’s not utterly impossible. IMO. IANA intelligence professional. I read lots of unclassified stuff on intelligence, which only puts me one or two steps above LB. (I’ve edited or worked on lots of spy novels for various publishing companies, too, but that’s irrelevant.)
Well I had a top secret clearance when I was in the Air Force, but I don’t really know either, just an idea.
“Don- I don’t think there is any way for President Bush to make such a promise binding on himself. And he has already lied to the American people…”
I completely agree. Not only would the promise be non-binding, he would never admit he made it. Libby would be acting on trust. But Bush has a reputation for such trust with respect to loyal friends if not to the American people.
Jeeebus, I wasn’t disparaging Hilzoy’s post. I was pointing at Cooper, a freaking reporter, is still saying it.
Yes, “involved” is technically correct, but that is not the intent of the phrase. Her involvement was little more than being his wife. The intent of the phrase is with a wink and a nudge to continue to support the lie that she was responsible for sending him.
On top of that is the favorite lie peddled by Charles, et al., that Wilson is allegedly the big liar.
I’m willing to attribute it to “misremembering”.
Fair enough, although 99% of his alleged “lies” are things he in fact never said. The most famous one is the most repeated GOP talking point that Wilson claimed Cheney sent him to Niger (and therefore poor overworked Rove and Libby had to set all those reporters straight about his wife sending him), except Wilson never claimed that Cheney sent him.
Next on the list is the allegation that Wilson claims he debunked the forged Niger documents, except he never made that claim either.
The one I had in mind was his claim that he’d seen the forged documents while he was in Niger, which he later recanted.
I have no idea why intelligent, informed people are still arguing over whether or not Plame was considered covert. This investigation was begun at the behest of the CIA; they certainly knew Plame’s status and thus whether or not blowing her cover would constitute a crime.
As far as I can tell, the trickiest leg of the IIPA is the “knowingly” leg – demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that not only did Libby and Rove blow Plame’s cover, but that they knew at the time that she was a covert agent. There’s a small mountain of circumstantial evidence very strongly suggesting that Rove and Libby knew and acted accordingly, but Fitzgerald may be waiting for stronger evidence. More to the point, if he’s already got Libby nailed on enough perjury and obstruction of justice charges to throw him in jail for the next couple decades, he’s already got enough to get Libby to talk – which makes for a stronger case against more targets.
Slarti: The one I had in mind was his claim that he’d seen the forged documents while he was in Niger, which he later recanted.
Except he never made any such claim: that’s yet another of the Invented Lies of Joseph Wilson.
Iron Lungfish: I have no idea why intelligent, informed people are still arguing over whether or not Plame was considered covert.
Because they can see that Libby, Rove, and maybe Cheney are going down for it, and they want to believe that when Bush pardons them all, late December 2008, it was because they didn’t really do anything wrong.
I’m with Jes. If Wilson ever made any such claim, it’s news to me.
Of course he didn’t. He just said a lot of things that look exactly like that.
And of course the Senate Intelligence Committee’s discussion with Wilson is not even worth considering:
Dunno what I could have been thinking.
Slarti- I never could get why that talking point gets circulation. It is devastating to your case. He didn’t say that he had seen it, he said the names and dates were wrong, which they were, and that it was an obvious forgery, which it was.
I think Wilson was talking out of school and this was classified material that he wasn’t supposed to know about. If Fitzgerald weren’t busy maybe you could find out who Wilson is covering for and get some people in trouble.
What you can’t claim is that Wilson is the one with credibility problems here. It is the Republicans who have used these talking points who have credibility problems.
All you do is point up the fact that the State dept knew that the Niger forgeries were forgeries, when Bush and Blair were using them to make the case for war.
In the first link, it’s a quote from a time at which the names and dates in question were public, isn’t it. While the Post’s editing is unclear, Wilson isn’t claiming to have seen anything before it became public. Same thing from the committee report: what you’re describing as a ‘recantation’ is Wilson saying something along the lines of ‘if I said that, I was confused’ where the only indication that he’d said it was the Post article, in which he does not make that claim.
The ‘claim’, in the Post article, is not a claim to have seen the documents before they were public, and the ‘recantation’, in the Iraq report, is not a recantation of a false statement but a clarification of the Post’s writing.
I’m reminded of the whole ‘Al Gore is a big liar’ thing, here. In both cases, the accusations were of weirdly motiveless lying.
I mean here, you have to do a fair amount of creative reading to guess that Wilson might have said something untrue, and it was something untrue that, if he had said it, wouldn’t have bolstered his story or changed anything about it in any material way. Given the absence of a quote in which he actually said anything untrue, why would we assume he was lying here? Random burst or uncontrollable irrelevant dishonesty, like Gore’s compulsion to dishonestly claim that the head of FEMA had been at a forest fire he actually hadn’t made it to?
That should have been “random burst of uncontrollable dishonesty”.
Not to interupt the conversation, but I’ve not noticed anyone mentioned Reid throwing the Senate into secret session to demand that Phase II of the Roberts-promised investigation of the uses of intelligence pre-war be carried out, and that Frist’s head is exploding with rage. It’s already been done, and Reid forced an agreement. Roberts claims that he planned to resume next week “all along.”
He just forgot to tell anyone since October.
Whoops, that’s: “since October, 2004.”
I know. I’ve hung a picture of Reid on my office wall with a big heart around it. Senator Reid is dreamy!
If I might murmur a point about formatting: frequently I find myself quoting stories that have embedded links; this is rather common practice around the interwub.
It may, therefore, as a general practice, not be the clearest thing to do to embed one’s own links into a story, without disclaiming that the link is that of the presenter, not one from the original story. Of course, in the sort of way you use it, Slart, you’re not quoting stories with such links, so you may not find this a point worth bothering with. I’ll merely bow out by whispering that it’s no more difficult to embed the link in one’s own words.
But, of course, to each their own, the more the merrier, and a stitch in a broth will always come home to roost.
“I’m reminded of the whole ‘Al Gore is a big liar’ thing, here. In both cases, the accusations were of weirdly motiveless lying.”
Well, there were so many of them for Gore. But the idea was to sell the notion that Gore was *cRAZy*! A compulsive liar for no reason!
Thus his fiendish lie about visiting a disaster with James Lee Witt when he got the date wrong! And his lie about Love Story partially being based on him and Tipper! (It was.) And his lie about inventing the Internet! (Which he never said, and he does get a lot of the credit for “taking the initiative in the Senate on the creation of the Internet.”
And so on and so forth. They’re still at it. Al is still *cRAZy*, but not he’s even **CRAZIER** with his accusations! Just like ***INSANE*** Howard Dean! (This from the party of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dornan.)
For God’s sake, don’t say Reid is a nice guy! 50% of the population will want to dump him.
I’m sure Roberts was too busy gearing up for this:
Meanwhile, Hoekstra’s counterpart in the Senate, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, intends to preside over hearings on the intelligence community’s use of covert protections for CIA agents and others involved in secret activities.
The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could hold hearings on the use of espionage cover soon after the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess, said Roberts spokeswoman Sarah Little.
Little said the Senate committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.link
Laura Rozen has this piece on the missing report (though I think that “the report that didn’t bark” has a bit more poetic ring to it) and has this information that arrived after the piece went to the printers
Earlier this week, as the piece was already at the printer, I was calling someone up for a quick question, and we got to talking about the latest Fitzgerald news from over the weekend. And I was told something that really stands out: that Roberts has literally been coordinating with Senate majority leader Frist and Cheney’s office very closely on many aspects of the Senate Intelligence committee’s supposed investigation of the intelligence, and in particular, working closely with Cheney’s office on crafting the language defining the terms for the as-yet unfinished Phase II report. It hardly is surprising that Cheney took a big interest in what the Senate Select Intelligence committee might turn up in its investigation. But think about it. Here’s the Congressional committee constitutionally mandated to provide oversight of all intelligence activities happening by the US government. And yet, here we have the Intelligence committee head coordinating to some degree with the Vice President’s office, who we now know to be deeply involved in some of the most dubious of pre-war intelligence pronouncements, tasking, unconventional intel channels, and cherry picking, and at the forefront of a post-war campaign to slime Wilson and his CIA officer wife. When Congress is in cahoots with the administration in stifling oversight, who can investigate the investigators? Unfortunately, it’s not in Fitzgerald’s mandate.
link
And if you still haven’t had your fill of the Wilson vs. SSCI report, Emptywheel at the Next Hurrah has a very interesting comparison between the report and what Wilson says in his book.
Just a bit of review. The CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division invited Wilson to a meeting on February 19, 2002 to discuss ways they might assess the intelligence on an Iraq-Niger uranium deal they had received. There were about 6 to 8 people at the meeting, including experts on proliferation and Africa, from both CIA and INR. At that meeting, there was some discussion of the contents of the Iraq-Niger intelligence–although it is unclear just how much discussion. After the meeting, Wilson was given a set of talking points to use on the trip that referred to uranium deals with rogue nations, but did not specifically mention the Iraq intelligence. And shortly thereafter, he went on the trip.
Wilson did not write the trip report himself. Rather, a DO reports officer (and apparently a DO case officer) debriefed Wilson. Then, the case officer drafted a report, and the reports officer then added “additional relevant information from his notes.” As a result, there is a pretty significant difference between what Wilson says he reported and what the trip report says.
and
And here’s the part that stunned me, when I first realized what it said:
In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki. (44)
As I said when I first wrote about this, this suggests the CIA report completely obscured the reason behind Wilson’s trip, which was to respond specifically to a piece of intelligence alleging an Iraqi-Nigerien uranium deal.
and finally
I’m not alleging anything nefarious happened to produce two such different versions of Wilson’s report. As far as the most troubling discrepancy–that Wilson knew he was responding to a specific piece of intelligence, while the case officer was treating it as more general information–that might (or might not) be attributable to the way the CIA collects information. They were treating Wilson as a source, not as a CIA officer or an analyst himself. Therefore, they did not treat him as someone who could go out and answer a question, but simply as someone who could bring information, which the CIA would then assess the validity of. In other words, they were pretending that Wilson never went to the meeting at Langley where they discussed in detail how to assess such information. The report was written to allow CIA analysts to assess the information, to not prejudge its veracity or value.
As I’ve heard say, read the whole thing.
“I’m sure Roberts was too busy gearing up for this….”
Also this sort of thing.
Incidentally, I hope everyone realizes that Fitzgerald can’t possibly confirm or deny whether or not Plame was “covert,” which is why he phrased what he said so carefully. It would be illegal for him to either confirm or deny, since her status hasn’t been declassified. (Which is why he emphasized that her status was classified, of course.) It suddenly occurred to me that while this is perfectly obvious to me, it might not be to everyone. On the other hand, maybe I’m being condescending in thinking that. Anyone?
Note: I just updated this to reflect the fact that ABC has now retracted the claim that Libby confirmed to Cooper that Plame was “covert”.
Do they somehow not know that this is a rather important element of the story? One that it would be, you know, good to nail down?
“ABC News regrets the error.”
[eye roll]
Harry Reid: “Look over here! Libby! Plame! Rule 21!” AP:
Reid’s display of spoon-banging will backfire.
On top of that is the favorite lie peddled by Charles, et al., that Wilson is allegedly the big liar.
I showed you the facts, dm, and what Wilson actually said when he said it. Sad to see such denial.
The only doubt I’m aware of, Slart, is the Aii part, whether she’d been out of the country in the past 5 years, which we can’t know, of course.
The SIC report had Plame out-of-country in ’97. Assuming they’re correct, Plame was not covert. What I’m unclear about is whether covert = “non-official cover”. Also, Fitzgerald said her identity was classified prior to July 2003, but not covert. I’m a little unclear about that difference, but if she were actually covert, seems like Fitzgerald would have said so. My recollection is vague, but I thought a CIA officer’s identity is–by default–classified, unless it is voluntarily or involuntarily made public.
“The SIC report had Plame out-of-country in ’97. Assuming they’re correct, Plame was not covert.”
This is completely false. At best, what you mean is “Assuming they’re correct, Plame wasn’t covered by the IIPA.” Suggesting that these two things are the same is, to take the polite interpretation, ridiculous.
Someone is still a liar even if they didn’t commit perjury in a given situation. Plenty of DO people — all of them, actually — are covert, no matter they’re not covered by IIPA. I’ll assume you didn’t know this.
“My recollection is vague, but I thought a CIA officer’s identity is–by default–classified, unless it is voluntarily or involuntarily made public.”
Oh, and that latter is false, also, as I just explained.
The public can’t declassify things. Neither can a leaker. Honest. Don’t believe me. Look it up. You’re just wrong. Sorry.
“Also, Fitzgerald said her identity was classified prior to July 2003, but not covert. ”
Oh, and that last clause is also false. He never said that.
Apparently like so much Patrick Fitzgerald had to say, this is unclear and rampant with ambiguity.
Roberts has exactly zero credibility on anything relating to Plame or misuse of intel.
Part II of the “Iraqi intel investigation” was tabled by an agreement between Roberts and Rockefeller to wait until after the 2004 elections. (I remember being pissed off at Rockefeller for that.) Now Roberts is blaming the Democrats for the delay? What, is he blaming Rockefeller for agreeing to the delay he, Roberts, wanted? Please.
Roberts was also the co-author of that infamous addendum to the SIC report on Iraq’s WMD and nuclear weapons; the addendum that devoted itself to attacking Joe Wilson, and which is the source for most of the “Wilson lied!” talking points the Right keeps pushing.
Going three for three, Roberts has also stonewalled investigaions into treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
Roberts has used his position in the Senate to protect the Bush Administration. Period.
I previously asked the question:
Slarti thoughtfully pointed me to the (521-page) Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report.
Now, usually I read things. I confess, this time I haven’t read it. But, really, is it believable that we had the obviously forged documents in October, 2002, and did not learn they were forgeries until March, 2003? When all the while the Vice President was breathing down the neck of the CIA?
George W. Bush may not be a “details man,” but Dick Cheney is. Regardless of what that report says, and even given the universal potential for people and organizations to screw things up, I find it hard to believe that we “were all fooled.” No, I think the hypothesis that Dick Cheney was not fooled explains things much better.
Of course he didn’t. He just said a lot of things that look exactly like that.
It’s probably worth noting that your quotes don’t actually support the contention you’re trying to make here.
Well, ok then.
Look, Wilson returns from Niger and is debriefed by the CIA. By his account, he told the CIA about the forged document. You’re saying that he was telling the truth when he told the reporter that he reported the forged documents to the CIA? And that he’s still telling the truth when he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he “may have misspoken”? Or maybe it’s that he actually did see the forged documents in Niger? Now, that would make for an interesting development.
Or, possibly, that there’s some interpretation that actually makes sense, that I haven’t considered? That’s got to be it. Well, please share.
Slarti: Look, Wilson returns from Niger and is debriefed by the CIA. By his account, he told the CIA about the forged document.
In which account? Because he certainly doesn’t say he told the CIA about the forged documents in the NYT op-ed: are you referring to the account in the Washington Post that you linked to earlier, which does not, in fact, include any direct quotes from Wilson with reference to the forged documents?
Or, possibly, that there’s some interpretation that actually makes sense, that I haven’t considered? That’s got to be it. Well, please share.
You’ve misunderstood: I’m not taking any position on the overall veracity of the claim as I’m not fully conversant with the situation. What I’m saying is, your cites don’t support your contention that Wilson claimed to have seen the documents in question. There may be other cites in which this is established, but those ain’t it.
By his account, he told the CIA about the forged document. You’re saying that he was telling the truth when he told the reporter that he reported the forged documents to the CIA?
As I noted before, Wilson met with people from the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division to develop precisely what questions to ask and was sent to either confirm or debunk a specific piece of intelligence, which were the Niger forgeries. He also apparently later gave the CIA a list of the appropriate signatures that would be found on such a document. Clearly, he know _of_ the document, regardless of whether he had laid his eyes on the actual forgeries or not. Thus, I think that Wilson could logically say that he told the CIA “about” the forged document. (though this seems to be your restatement rather than precisely what Wilson said). The fact was that the forgeries were apparently not sent in toto, but sections were transcribed and put into the Italian intelligence report which makes it very unclear as to who saw what when. Which was precisely the point as the goal was to trump up evidence of Iraq attempts to get yellowcake by multiplying the apparent sources. Sometimes you use the echo chamber, sometimes, it uses you…
I would also recommend the Left Coaster posts on the particular ins and outs of the forgeries. (Click for other links within the post)
Also, see this post, which has this
Footnote 214 refers to this statement (emphasis mine):
214 CIA, Analyses on an Alleged Iraq-Niger Uranium Agreement (undated but prepared sometime after March 7, 2003). See also Senior Publish When Ready, Iraq’s Reported Interest in Buying Uranium from Niger and Whether Associated Documents are Authentic (March 11, 2003) (concluding the documents were forgeries). The errors in the original documents, which indicated they were forgeries, also occur in the February 2002 report that provided a “verbatim” text of the agreement, indicating that the original reporting was based on the forged documents.
Slarti.: Shoot, while I was looking through the SIC report (BTW, if you’re going to link to a 512pp. document, it would be helpful if you would provide the number of the page[s] you are citing), Jes & Anarch got in and made succinctly the point that – half an hour later – I was planning to make at ponderous length. To wit:
The SIC is *not* a primary source on much of this information (alas). It is a secondary source. The information in it has been thoroughly “processed,” which makes it more comprehensible than the original reports, but potentially biassed, and in any event not thoroughly reliable. You cannot use it to say “By his account, he told the CIA about the forged document because the SIC does not provide us, or even purport to provide us, “his account.” What it gives us is the SIC processed version of (1) what the original briefers said that Wilson said, followed by (2) a synopsis – NOT a quotation – of what Wilson said to the committee.
Even if one were assuming full good faith, this is a parlous evidentiary base. If there is any possibility whatsoever of partisan politics shaping the “process” (I know – it’s a stretch just imagining the US Senate being affected by partisan politics, but try), it’s effectively unreliable.
If you are asking me (in my capacity as historian, and thus as long-time interpreter of shonky documentation) what I *suspect* might have happened, consonant with the evidence we have, I would put forward the following possible scenario:
Wilson readily figures out what documents would have to be signed, and by whom, and when, to effectuate the alleged transfer. He goes to Niger and, inter alia, talks to the guys who would have had to sign these documents, and learns that they never did, and/or that the timing was wrong. At some point – and the record is murky here – he learns that documents purporting to record this information do exist and the CIA has them. Did he see them? The record doesn’t say so, and it seems unlikely that he did. Was he told of them by the CIA or other US officials? They deny it, but they would, wouldn’t they. (He might even have been asked specifically by the two guys sent to debrief him: “What would you say if we told you we had documents …?,” though they deny this: He Said, They Said?)
Whatever the scenario, on learning of these documents his response might well have been: “These documents are bogus.” (In the same way, if I were to be told “There are pictures on the internet showing you in flagrante with a goat,” I would be able to dismiss these as forgeries without actually having to see the pictures themselves. I am confident of this, because I made damn sure there were no cameras around.) (More to the point, perhaps, any competent blogsurfer is well aware that on any given day s/he may encounter “documents” supposedly written by Ann Coulter or Andy Rooney or the Pope or Adolf Hitler or Hillary Clinton which are SO egregiously out of character that we dismiss them as “forgeries” out of hand, without even bothering to pursue their origins or fisk their flaws.)
Asked two (?) years later by the committee to clarify this, it is possible that Wilson simply doesn’t remember exactly what he said or what he knew when. Did he “misspeak” in characterizing the documents as “forgeries” without actually having seen them? Perhaps, and he admits as much. So what?
Now I agree with the committee that there are troubling inconsistencies between what (they say) the CIA said Wilson originally reported orally and what (they say) Wilson later told the committee he had said. But the only way that these particular inconsistencies can be taken to prove that Wilson lied is to assume that neither the CIA nor the SIC ever made a mistake, or even innocently misunderstood what was said. And that assumption I cannot make. Can you?
Charles Bird:
“Reid’s display of spoon-banging will backfire.”
I, unlike you, consider kicking a liar in the *ss to make him live up to his word about investigating treason to the USA to be more than ‘spoon banging’.
Slarti: I am working from memory here. However: Wilson was told that there was evidence suggesting a particular sale of yellowcake from Niger to Saddam. He was asked to investigate, and concluded that there had been no such sale. In fact, the evidence was a verbatim transcription of the forged documents, which, however, the CIA did not have at that point. The CIA only obtained the documents later (memory wants to say: in October 2002), but a transcript of them was available earlier, and did in fact prompt the CIA to send Wilson.
When Wilson learned (later, when el Baradei asked for the US’ evidence about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa, got the documents, and found them to be forgeries) that the President’s State of the Union remarks referred to Niger, he then thought: wait, I checked that out, and it wasn’t true. Moreover, I checked it out for the CIA, and told them, and they had been asked to investigate by the VP, and would presumably have told him. What’s going on? Thus, his press comments and op ed.
Whether or not you think it matters that his trip was based on a verbatim transcript of the documents, rather than the documents themselves, and what difference you think there is between showing (a) that a verbatim transcript of a document is false, and (b) that the document itself is false, I leave to you 😉
Or, possibly, that there’s some interpretation that actually makes sense, that I haven’t considered? That’s got to be it. Well, please share.
Piling on here, but in the unlikely event that I manage to be clearer than everyone who’s spoken before, here goes. The Washington Post article doesn’t quote Wilson claiming to have seen the documents at the time of his trip to Niger, nor does it quote him having claimed to have reported to the CIA at that time that the documents were bogus. The words the Washington Post used, while ambiguous, could lead you to surmise that that was being claimed, but you can’t call Wilson a liar because the Post wrote a badly worded story based on an interview with him — to call him a liar, you need a quote from him saying something untrue.
(I’m not an absolutist here — if the ambiguity were important to the story, I’d be tempted to speculate that it was Wilson’s fault. Given that whether he knew the details of the documents at the time of his trip or report is entirely irrelevant to the meat of the story, I can’t see the point of speculating about how an ambiguously written story might indicate that he said something untrue to the reporter.)
You know, this is all I ever maintained to begin with.
Hold it: what part of “misremember” is difficult to understand?
Which would be well and good, if that’s what had happened. If, for instance, the SOTU address had claimed that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger, yes, that would have served to nullify that bit of evidence if it was used to substantiate that claim. As it is, though: oops.
Hold it: what part of “misremember” is difficult to understand?
If all you meant to say was that you think Wilson may have misremembered, why was “misremembered” in inverted commas, which are usually used to indicate that you don’t really think he misremembered?
But never mind. You asserted:
and the various responses since were all, pretty much, in response to that comment. Now, if you are backing down from that comment, having been convinced that in fact you were wrong and we are right… it would be gracious to admit it.
dr ngo: Did he “misspeak” in characterizing the documents as “forgeries” without actually having seen them? Perhaps, and he admits as much.
Slarti: You know, this is all I ever maintained to begin with.
Well, uh, no, that’s not true:
The one I had in mind was his claim that he’d seen the forged documents while he was in Niger, which he later recanted. [Emph mine]
I’ve yet to see proof that he made such a claim, although if you’re now rescinding it in favor of the weaker characterization that’s fair enough.
Slarti: as I understand it, Wilson did not assume, when the President made the SoTU speech, that he was referring to Niger. But when el Baradei asked for the administration’s evidence for that claim, and received the documents that turned out to be forged, he (reasonably, I think) did draw that conclusion.
Slarti: Which would be well and good, if that’s what had happened. If, for instance, the SOTU address had claimed that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger, yes, that would have served to nullify that bit of evidence if it was used to substantiate that claim. As it is, though: oops.
Oh, joy: back to that again. Those sixteen words in SOTU 2003 were parsed to death, and can indeed be sort-of if you squint not-quite seen as a lie. (Similiar to the claim that Bush never said that Iraq was an “imminent threat”.) Mainly, of course, by pinning the blame on the Brits, which annoys me in a special way.
But the clear intent of those 16 words, and various other efforts around the time, was to convey the impression that Iraq was or might nearly become a nuclear threat.
Insofar as the President was referring to anything at all in those 16 words, he was referring to the “evidence” of those forged documents from Italy: and Wilson already knew that (a) they were bogus (b) that the CIA, and Dick Cheney’s office, knew that their bogosity had been proved by his own trip to Niger.
So: oops. SOTU 2003 included at least one statement which deliberately mislead the American people about a cause for war, and which it is proved the Bush administration knew was misleading when the President made the speech. Oops.
(Oops? Ed, did you say “oops”? No, Ed. “Oops” is when you fall down an elevator shaft. “Oops” is when you skinny-dip in a school of piranha. “Oops” is when you accidentally douche with Drano! No, Ed. This was no “Oops.” This was an AAAAAAAAAAAAAHA-HA-HA-HA!)
Jes, “was to convey the impression that Iraq was or might nearly become a nuclear threat.”
Is that statement not accurate? Iraq was a nuclear threat. Israel destroyed part of the threat and then the US also did in the first Persian Gulf War.
Then Joe Wilson claimed that when meeting with a former minister in Niger the minister thought that Iraq was trying to obtain more Uranium.
Your analysis rings true.
Think about it this way: why were the famous 16 words phrased in such a precise way, carefully crafted to accommodate a later retreat from responsibility when the Niger documents proved to be forged? Accident? An abundance of caution?
Not only did the administration know about the documents at that time, they had been in its possession for months, and a great deal of investigation had taken place.
Is that statement not accurate? Iraq was a nuclear threat.
No, it wasn’t. It had been a potential nuclear threat; by any time of relevance to the second Iraq war, it was no longer.
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all different. I means what I says and I says what I means; you of course are free to misinterpret in whatever way seems fit to you. But, just to haul things back to clarity, or at least make the attempt, the quotes were to emphasize misremembered as a replacement for lied.
doc: Did he “misspeak” in characterizing the documents as “forgeries” without actually having seen them? Perhaps, and he admits as much.
Slart: The one I had in mind was his claim that he’d seen the forged documents while he was in Niger, which he later recanted.
Now, you may see a smidgen of daylight between these two, but this may serve to stop the gap:
Ok, so it’s clear that Wilson misremembered something about those documents, and it’s also clear that the papers have published this as fact in juxtaposition with his CIA debrief without, as far as I’ve ever seen, a retraction or even an op-ed by Wilson to clear things up. You may disagree with this assessment; disagreement is free of charge here.
Odd that I’m being accused of hairsplitting here, given the number of hoops being jumped through by others in order to avoid Wilson having a simple memory lapse.
You know, there’s an obvious, simple answer to that question. Not dismissing the need to consider other possibilities, mind you, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Slart-
You’re looking at an article and claiming that it shows that Wilson might have misspoken on a peripheral issue, and the Senate Report which shows that a year or so later, without his words in from of him, Wilson wasn’t positive that he didn’t misspeak on that peripheral issue. There’s no record of him actually misspeaking, but it seems possible, based on second hand reports, that he might have.
Great. No one is going to commit themselves to the position that Wilson has never erred. But if that is the limit of what you’re taling about, it is absolutely and completely uninteresting. It’s on the level of which forest fire did Al Gore visit with James Lee Witt. So if this is your position (that there is evidence that shows, without conclusively establishing, that it is possible that Wilson may have misspoken), no one disagrees with you, but it is astonishingly picayune and irrelevant to any important question.
You’ve gotten a heated reaction from a bunch of people (I’m mindreading, but I figure it’s inoffensive if I’m doing it to people I agree with) because we’re all giving you credit for not being cripplingly dull (you generally aren’t) and we are therefore assuming that you believe that the issues you’ve raised relate to something important. Like, say, Wilson’s credibility on some issue of importance that we’ve been taking Wilson’s word for.
Do you have an argument like that in mind? Or was your point limited to the fact that it seems possible that, and it certainly can’t be disproven that, Wilson accidentally or intentionally led people to believe that he’d seen the forgeries at a time before they were public knowledge?
Ok, so it’s clear that Wilson misremembered something about those documents,
No. At the time Wilson spoke to the Post, the “names and dates” were public (I’m pretty sure. Late spring 2003?). He could perfectly well have told the Post that he, at the time of the interview, knew that the “names were wrong and the dates were wrong” without having claimed to have seen the documents before they were public. He could have misremembered something — it’s certainly possible — but the Post article doesn’t quote him, or directly paraphrase him, saying anything false.
Slarti, I gather you are trying to say, “they meant what they said.” But that doesn’t really fly, given the fact of all the investigation of the claim, the high stakes involved and the sequence of events that have followed. Yours is a possible explanation, but I think it fails Occam’s Razor.
“but this may serve to stop the gap:”
Not really. You’re quoting a secondary source characterizing a primary source, to impeach the primary source. That doesn’t work.
I can’t quote Anarch’s summary amd rewording of your words to impeach your words, can I?
To impeach Wilson’s words (and surely some are impeachable — who hasn’t mis-stated things at times?), you have to actually quote the words. Not someone else’s rewording. I’m rather baffled that this isn’t too obvious to need to say. But I trust you agree that that’s necessary, now that you’ve paused to consider?
Slarti: But, just to haul things back to clarity, or at least make the attempt, the quotes were to emphasize misremembered as a replacement for lied.
Ah. I apologize, then: I confess I loathe the popular practice of using quotation marks for emphasis.
No, Occam’s Razor is otherwise known as the Principle of Parsimony, and my explanation is by far more parsimonious than, for instance, conspiracy to mislead the voting public by the entire Intelligence Community, or the like. You may not like that, but that’s neither here nor there.
As for the rest, recap: somebody or other said the story was Wilson was a liar, I responded by that perhaps he misremembered, got a lot of rather vociferous disagreement, attempted to substantiate and pretty much no one is buying that. Noted. Also got accused of perhaps being uninteresting; also noted (although I think what I said initially was rather uncontroversial, and would have sat there all by its lonesome if not for the counterbarrage). I think you’re wrong, but I don’t have the time to continue this back-and-forth. Some people maintain Wilson’s (possibly only evident) inconsistency is evidence that he’s a liar; I’m giving him the benefit of a doubt. Why that’s ignited high controversy here is…well, you tell me.
Oh, and thanks, J. I think with you and I, periodic misunderstandings are going to continue to be a given. In both directions.
“Ah. I apologize, then: I confess I loathe the popular practice of using quotation marks for emphasis.”
Well, yes, you can’t do that, any more than you can use periods or commas, or the letter “b.”
I confess that my eye just skipped past Slart saying that, with a “does not compute” lack of comprehension; I literally didn’t know what those words meant. Besides, when he said quotes, I assumed he meant “quotes.” The quoted words. The words quoted. I also completely failed to understand that, in this content, “quotes” meant “quoation marks,” not “quotes.”
and my explanation is by far more parsimonious than, for instance, conspiracy to mislead the voting public by the entire Intelligence Community, or the like.
…which is kind of like saying that really, really strong invisible glue is a much more parsimonious explanation for why things don’t fall off the Earth than inventing the concept of a force and calling it gravity. Because, well, we know glue exists, but who can say that gravity exists? Who’s seen it?
The Bush administration were determined to invade Iraq from summer 2002: documented fact.
The excuse given to the US public was that Iraq was a threat; those 16 words in SOTU 2003 were intended to give the impression that Iraq might become a nuclear threat. (If they were not intended to give that impression, they were meaningless.)
We know now that the Bush administration knew that they had no evidence for making that claim in SOTU 2003: part of how we know that is that Joseph Wilson wrote about his trip to Niger (and part of it is that so much information about those Italian documents was crudely forged).
Even if the British intelligence services had told the US intelligence services that they thought Iraq was seeking yellowcake in Africa, it’s clear that the US intelligence services had no evidence to persuade them that the Brits had got it right, and considerable evidence that the Brits had got it wrong. (And I suspect that, 30 to 100 years down the line, documents will be released that show the British intelligence services were relying on the same forgeries, frankly. Can’t promise any sooner than 2033, though.)
So, there was definite intent to mislead by the Bush administration in at least one statement made in SOTU 2003. Conspiracy to mislead the voting public? Given that Scooter Libby could have come clean about all of this when first asked about it in October 2004, I think that’s exactly the right term for it.
Slarti, your explanation has to have a bunch of epicycles added to account for the retraction of the 16 words, the fierce attack on Joseph Wilson (changing the subject), the lack of investigation of the origin of the documents (highlighted by yesterday’s little drama in the Senate), and so on. Parsimonius? I don’t think so.
Oh, I doubt there was a conspiracy by “the entire intelligence community” as you put it. I wouldn’t even call what happened a conspiracy, exactly. I’m just saying that the simplest explanation for many of these events is that Dick Cheney knew those documents were forged at the time of the State of the Union address.
That is not to say that there weren’t have other reasons for believing Iraq to be a threat. I’m only saying that the administration knew it was on shaky ground regarding the 16 words.
Retraction? What retraction?
You mean, the part where Tenet says the sixteen words were “factually correct”?
‘cuz, you know, if that fits your definition of retraction, the fact that your brand of retraction has taken place doesn’t support your thesis that the words were a lie to trick the US into war.
George Tenet’s conclusion: “This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed.”
I didn’t say they were a direct lie. I think Jes gives a very good characterization: “those 16 words in SOTU 2003 were intended to give the impression that Iraq might become a nuclear threat.”
That was the intent and the words accomplished their purpose. That was also what Dick Cheney had been saying for a long time prior.
And I’d call this a retraction regardless of the fact that it uses the words ‘factually correct.’ Sample quote:
This being part of the background, I’m not sure what you’re trying to establish.
Oh, and this:
Emphasis mine. So, is Tenet a liar, here?
Could be. Myself, I don’t have the first-hand knowledge to tell you. When he’s presided over an error, whether deliberate or merely inexplicably careless, that had the effect of strongly supporting the case his boss, Bush, wanted to make for war, I don’t find his statement that it was an accident irrefutably convincing in itself.
See, that’s the difference between the discussion of Wilson’s credibility and the 16 words. With Wilson, the accusation is that he possibly, although not certainly, said something incorrect that was entirely unimportant if he had said it.
With the 16 words, Bush certainly and publicly, on national television, said something inexcusably misleading (and not even technically true. The British can’t have learned something if what they learned wasn’t true.) that directly supported the case he was making for war. Possibly it was just a very fortunate accident, and without seeing into Bush’s, or Tenet’s soul I can’t say that it wasn’t — they could be incompetents rather than liars. But when someone’s inexplicable carelessness directly serves their publicly stated goals, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that their actions are deliberate.
Well, I take exception to this. Certainly one can learn things that are untrue. But that’s kind of mooted by the fact that you haven’t shown it to be untrue.
The only reason I quoted Tenet is that some were taking Tenet’s words as a retraction of the sixteen words. If you want to take some of Tenets words as true and others as lies on an (to all appearances) arbitrary basis, count me out of this discussion.
Slarti: Certainly one can learn things that are untrue. But that’s kind of mooted by the fact that you haven’t shown it to be untrue.
“Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
You still think that “hasn’t been shown to be untrue”, Slarti?
Your employment of a double negative adds your own brand of ambiguity to this claim, of course.
You could equally argue that it hasn’t been shown to be untrue that George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are covert allies, which explains neatly why Bush took so little interest in the threat of a terrorist attack in August 2001, and why he hasn’t put much effort into trying to capture Osama bin Laden after 9/11. You could argue that this is a highly unlikely possibility, and I’d agree with you: but it hasn’t been shown to be untrue.
(Leaving out the assertion that The British Government has learned that since I hope we agree that if it wasn’t true, the British government couldn’t have “learned” it.)
I’m completely baffled by this question. If you think I’m wasting your time, don’t participate.
Without rhetorical questions:
I, and I surmise Jes, believe it has been shown to within a reasonable degree of certainty that Iraq did not in the relevant time period seek significant quantities of uranium form Africa. I believe this because, after years of total access to anything we want in Iraq, we have absolutely no positive evidence that it ever happened. (I believe a Nigerien official once said that an Iraqi official approached him about trade, and did not mention uranium, but the Nigerien official speculated that the Iraqi might have been thinking about it. In the absence of any positive evidence, I’m not putting any weight on that.) I suspect Jes’s reasons are similar.
Do you agree with me, that given that there is no evidence that Iraq sought uranium in Africa, that it can safely be concluded that it did not happen?
The CIA maintained that it did happen, LB. They’re not maintaining that now, but that’s sort of irrelevant to any discussion of whether the sixteen words were intentionally deceptive.
That didn’t answer my question. Jes was not, in the post that confused you, and I was not, in my last post, asking what you thought about the mental states of individuals within the CIA at some time in the past. Proving why people say what they say? Very difficult.
I was wondering if you agreed that, in reality, it has now been established to a reasonable degree of certainty that Iraq did not seek uranium from Africa in the relevant time period. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, of course, but finding out what facts we agree on makes discussion easier.
I’d say that based on the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the CIA did not have sufficient evidence to support that claim.
I haven’t seen what the Brits had, though. Tony Blair said they had sources other than the forged documents.
Slarti- If it turned out that those other sources were reports about the forged documents (not the documents themselves) or statements made by the forgers, I’d say based on your pattern here, you would claim Blair was telling the truth. 🙂
That comes under the “still didn’t answer my question” heading. I’m not, at this point, interested in what you think anyone, whether the British or the CIA, knew in 2002 or 2003. I am wondering if you think:
(a) the absence of any publicly available evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa in the relevant time period shows with reasonable certainty that, in reality Iraq did not seek uranium from Africa in the relevant time period. (This would be what I think.)
(b) there is good evidence that Iraq did seek uranium from Africa in the relevant time period, and you therefore personally believe that it happened. (If this is what you think, I’m curious about the evidence.)
(c) Whether or not Iraq sought uranium from Africa in the relevant time period is unknowable to us. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, we have no way of knowing.
I’m not just being a jerk here. It’s very hard to talk about the ’16 words’ if I don’t know whether you think that it’s possible that the British were literally correct (not justified, not honest but mistaken, but correct) about their claim that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. If we agree that the British were at least mistaken, then we can talk about whether it could have been reasonable to rely on them. If you’re still taking the position that they might have been right, then the conversation has to be different.
What was Saddam going to do with the yellowcake in addition to his old yellowcake, assuming he somehow got it into Iraq? Was he going to feed it to his magic goat, which would excrete it as uranium coins? The best spin I can come up with for the Bush admin is that it fell for the shadow of a bluff.
“Can’t promise any sooner than 2033, though.”
I’m fairly sure you can’t promise 2033, actually, unless you have the power to bind future Parliament’s with your promise.
“The Bush administration were determined to invade Iraq from summer 2002: documented fact.” (With link to Downing St. Memos.)
I know this isn’t liable to do any good, but for the record, you undermine your own perfectly good case, Jes, in a pointless way. If you simply said “We have immensely credible and convincing evidence that the Bush administration were determined to invade Iraq from summer 2002,” you’d be fine.
Instead, you overstep by claiming it is proof, “documented fact,” which it surely isn’t. And since it isn’t, you’ve shown that you either can’t tell the difference between the documented opinion of an outsider to something, with actual documented evidence of the thing itself — this would take documents signed or authorized by such as G. W. Bush, R. Cheney, or D. Rumsfeld, not Sir Richard Dearlove’s opinions about his impressions of other people’s actions. Unless you’ll take as “documented fact” about British military events of the past 5 years on the word of Donald Rumsfeld?
Anyway, if you’d simply said something along the lines of what I suggesting above, you’d be presented a damn strong case. Instead you blow a hole in your foot. Good job.
“Emphasis mine. So, is Tenet a liar, here?”
I assume you are equally copacetic with ex-President Clinton’s explanation of Sandy Berger’s handling of documents, of course. After all, everything said by a President and senior members of his staff must be taken at face value, and only face value. There’s simply no way anyone would defend anyone else without being correct, and absolutely no way anyone would deflect responsibility from where it belonged. Blaming someone other than the President? Heaven forfend!
Couldn’t happen. We must accept the truth.
GF: “Anyway, if you’d simply said something along the lines of what I suggesting above, you’d be presented a damn strong case.”
Fascinating construction, GF.
As I noted before, Wilson met with people from the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division to develop precisely what questions to ask and was sent to either confirm or debunk a specific piece of intelligence, which were the Niger forgeries. He also apparently later gave the CIA a list of the appropriate signatures that would be found on such a document.
Wilson hurt his own credibility by not putting together a written report, LJ, and the CIA made no reference to forgeries. The forged documents in question were delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome seven months after Wilson returned from Niger (cite), so when he talked about the names and dates being wrong, he wasn’t referring to his Niger trip. He was sent to Niger not to investigate allegedly forged documents specifically, but to investigate claims as to whether Saddam struck a deal to obtain yellowcake.
I, unlike you, consider kicking a liar in the *ss to make him live up to his word about investigating treason to the USA to be more than ‘spoon banging’.
Where did Pat Roberts lie, Barry? He informed the committee that there was a delay, caused in part by Democrats on the committee.
Insofar as the President was referring to anything at all in those 16 words, he was referring to the “evidence” of those forged documents from Italy:
Not true, Jes, because British intelligence was based on a white paper published five months prior to the forgeries’ appearance.
With the 16 words, Bush certainly and publicly, on national television, said something inexcusably misleading
Tenet may have called it a mistake for the 16 words to have been in the speech, but the British have continued to stand by their intelligence, and there was nothing in the Butler Report to change their position.
Odd that I’m being accused of hairsplitting here, given the number of hoops being jumped through by others in order to avoid Wilson having a simple memory lapse.
I’m not accusing you of hairsplitting but rather of making a claim that you still haven’t justified, to wit that Wilson had claimed to have seen the documents in question. Innumerable people have pointed out plausible alternatives and that I’ve seen you’ve still neither justified nor retracted it.
If all you want to say is that Wilson misremembered, fine. If you’re going to put forth a positive allegation like the one above, then the burden of proof is on you — and if you can’t meet that burden, as you’ve tacitly acknowledged, then would you please drop the claim?
No, Occam’s Razor is otherwise known as the Principle of Parsimony, and my explanation is by far more parsimonious than, for instance, conspiracy to mislead the voting public by the entire Intelligence Community, or the like. You may not like that, but that’s neither here nor there.
Two notes: first, as remarked upon by Jes, is that Occam’s Razor can only apply to theories which account for all observations, not merely a selection thereof. There’s presumably probabilistic form in which the credibility of the fit (especially in the fields of human relations) is taken into account but I’m too damn lazy to try and find it.
[If you want to wax pseudo-technical, Occam’s Razor is a means of ordering equivalence classes of theories, where theories X ~ Y iff X and Y are basically as good at accounting for the observations. If X is inferior to Y, its simplicity is irrelevant.]
Second, which hasn’t been noted and which is far subtler, is: “simplicity”, “parsimony” or “optimality of fit”, however you choose to paraphrase Occam, isn’t well-defined. Implicit in any Occam’s Razor construction is (and must be) a metric relative to which the notions of simplicity must be computed. It’s thus markedly dangerous to say that “X is superior to Y by Occam” without immediately following that with how, exactly, you’re making the measurements of complexity.
In this specific instance, it’s not clear to me from the present discussion whether either of these conditions are met relative to your theorizing, i.e. a) I can’t tell whether your theory, such as it is, is superior in its accounting of the observations; but also b) I can’t tell what your measure of simplicity is.
I’m aware that this Occam discussion is all hypertechnical folderol that’s not particularly relevant to the matter at hand, but misuse of Occam’s Razor is a pet peeve of mine since it happens to have had direct relevance to my research (via the notion of the complexity of a theory).
Unless you’ll take as “documented fact” about British military events of the past 5 years on the word of Donald Rumsfeld?
This symmetry argument doesn’t in fact show anything.
Where did Pat Roberts lie, Barry? He informed the committee that there was a delay, caused in part by Democrats on the committee.
The reason we invaded Iraq was caused in part by Charles Bird. You heard it here first.
Italics begone!
“I confess I loathe the popular practice of using quotation marks for emphasis.”
I don’t accept there is any such practice, popular or otherwise. It’s grey and cold-solder-jointy in Stanford and I don’t need more bad news.
If there weren’t Ds on the committee, they would in fact have written the report by now. It would have blamed Michael Moore.
Wilson hurt his own credibility by not putting together a written report, LJ, and the CIA made no reference to forgeries.
Do you think it is usual for source/analysts to put together their own written report without specifically being requested to?
He was sent to Niger not to investigate allegedly forged documents specifically, but to investigate claims as to whether Saddam struck a deal to obtain yellowcake.
Wow, you’ve got that parser set on micro-fine there. He was sent because of a particular piece of intelligence, which was based on the forged documents, of which verbatim chunks were imported into Italian intelligence reports and treated as the source of the claims. You seem to be claiming that the yellowcake allegations are totally unconnected to the Niger forgeries.
and the CIA made no reference to forgeries.
Perhaps you missed this because I referenced a blog post rather than the original document, but the Robb-Silberman report has this (footnote 214)
The errors in the original documents, which indicated they were forgeries, also occur in the February 2002 report that provided a “verbatim” text of the agreement, indicating that the original reporting was based on the forged documents.(emp mine)
If you consult this timeline, you will see that Feb 2002 was when Wilson went to Niger. You could claim that the CIA
refused to fully brief Wilson, and sent him out with a minimum information, but I don’t think that is a very logical assumption.
At any rate, the posts I linked to suggest that the CIA purposely left vague (either because of compartmentalization of intel sources or because of a desire to avoid revealing classified info, please note that this is a benign explanation) and you are seizing on this to defend the administration.
I would also recommend this Yglesias post about how classified information was selectively revealed. Yglesias gets to the heart of the matter when he says
Again, the White House is entitled to ignore the Intelligence Community and put forward some other beliefs. But the unclassified version of the NIE simply omits the stuff about how Iraq wouldn’t launch an unprovoked terrorist attack on the United States. There was no legitimate national security rationale for denying the public access to this information. Rather, there was a clear-cut political rationale — the White House wanted to obscure the extent to which their argument for war was based on claims that were unsupported by professional analysis.
Charles: this post on whether the intelligence from SISMI that led to Wilson’s trip to Niger was a transcript of the forged documents is also worth a look.
Oh, crap, I see that when I had to go back a page, to recover from the “you’ve posted too recently scolding,” it went back to my uncorrected version, the one before I rewrote it, correcting various errors, adding and subtracting a bunch, making it about twice as long. Frack. Frelking frack.
“Fascinating construction, GF.”
That’s an uncorrected draft. Sorry.
“Wilson hurt his own credibility by not putting together a written report,”
You have evidence he was asked to do so by the CIA, I take it? And that he wasn’t in fact specifically asked to not put anything in writing, because that would be a security risk, and in any case it would violate Agency procedure, because Wilson isn’t an employee of the Agency, and thus is treated as any source is, which is to say someone trained to debrief and run a source has to interview him, so as to be able to directly ask questions and then and ask something else depending upon what Wilson says?
Do you have a pointer on that, please?
“Where did Pat Roberts lie, Barry? He informed the committee that there was a delay, caused in part by Democrats on the committee.”
Charles, the report was first promised in February of 2004. Can you explain the delay?
The report was then promised to be delivered immediately after the election in November, 2001. Can you explain the delay?
If you feel it is a reasonable, legitimate, delay, one worthy of taking in good faith, you can explain it. We’ll listen. Go ahead. Imagine how you’d feel if it were the Clinton Administration, or Ted Kennedy in the Senate defending President Hillary Clinton’s Administration, if that helps you.
Jesurgislac: those 16 words in SOTU 2003 were intended to give the impression that Iraq might become a nuclear threat.
Does anyone here on either side of the discussion disagree with this statement?
Does anyone think that Iraq did not have the desire, skills and illegal income to become a nuclear threat?
Is Jesurgislac arguing that Hussein did not desire to develop WMD?
I’m truly baffled.
Jesurgislac does seem to understand the gist of Bush’s statements. Statements which sound reasonable and accurate to both sides.
I must confess I am cofused why Jesurgislac goes on to argue against a logical and accurate conclusion.
“Does anyone think that Iraq did not have the desire, skills and illegal income to become a nuclear threat?”
Yes. Iraq lacked the skill of magically turning oil into weapons-grade uranium. They lacked the skill to use normal technological methods to turn yellowcake into w-g-u invisibly. Sanctioned Iraq was not a mad skillz kind of place. I rather doubt there was any desire to make any effort towards a nuclear program on the part of the remaining Iraqi scientists and engineers. I doubt there was any real desire on Saddam’s part to give the world an excuse to depose him, as a non-imaginary non-invisible effort would have.
Free advice: don’t quit your day job for this.
LB:
There’s a great deal of information that’s not public. One cannot conclude that this information does not, therefore, exist.
There is some notation in the SIC report to that effect, but the report also says some things to the effect that this information was a great deal less solid than the CIA says it was.
Sure, it’s knowable. Whether it’s actually known by anyone likely to tell us, I have no idea. I am all for declassifying and making public the extent of the knowledge in this area, as long as no sources are compromised.
I think it’s possible, yes. Likely? Depending on how deep a brief the SIC gets, I’m leaning toward unlikely. It’s pretty obvious that the SIC is viewing this information with a great deal of skepticism.
Of course, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Gary.
I’ve already noted why I don’t see them as being plausible, Anarch. I’m not going to rehash this with you.
Sure, it’s subjective. I never claimed otherwise, nor did I claim that I had the equivalent of a jug-hold on this point. And, for the record, it was not I that invoked Occam’s Razor.
Interesting. That Prospect piece is dated exactly three weeks from today. I have a hunch this next report is going to involve time-travel.
Or, maybe it’s dated consistent with their print edition; who knows?
And of course this adds a load of fuel to the fire:
This does look a little rumorish, and that last bit is downright…well, when I accuse someone of bad writing, there may be something there to consider.
Via Jeff.
Slarti: I’ve already noted why I don’t see them as being plausible, Anarch.
No, you haven’t: I think, in this long and complicated thread, you’ve got a little confused.
Anarch said: I’m not accusing you of hairsplitting but rather of making a claim that you still haven’t justified, to wit that Wilson had claimed to have seen the documents in question.
This issue is about when Wilson saw the forged Italian documents. You haven’t hashed this once, let alone rehashed it.
Slarti: There’s a great deal of information that’s not public. One cannot conclude that this information does not, therefore, exist.
Ah: the Lone Gunmen argument. “There is evidence somewhere that Bush and Osama bin Laden are covert allies: just because it’s never been made public, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Has Wilson ever seen those documents? Irrelevant, though, because this is at best tangential to the point. Certainly he didn’t see them before he left for Niger.
I suppose it’s futile to point out that I have not, in fact, made this argument.
Slarti: Has Wilson ever seen those documents? Irrelevant, though, because this is at best tangential to the point. Certainly he didn’t see them before he left for Niger.
And he’s never claimed that he did.
I suppose it’s futile to point out that I have not, in fact, made this argument.
Well, yes. Very futile, since you asserted here: There’s a great deal of information that’s not public. One cannot conclude that this information does not, therefore, exist.
The idea that a theory which is disproved by publicly available information can be proved by information which isn’t public is (what I mean by) the Lone Gunmen argument.
Not in so many words, no. But if I were to mention that in the context of being debriefed by the CIA on my trip to Niger, I’d notified them that the names and dates on the aforementioned forgeries were wrong, well, you do the math.
Still a bogus conclusion, J. I’m not asserting that there’s certainly something concrete as regards Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, in the classified pile of paper on Iraq, I’m simply saying that LB cannot assert that there’s nothing there on the basis that she hasn’t yet seen it. And there certainly remains a body of material on the subject that LB has not yet seen.
Wait…surely you’re not asserting that it’s been proven that Iraqis had NOT been shopping around for uranium? Tell me you’re not doing that.
Slarti: But if I were to mention that in the context of being debriefed by the CIA on my trip to Niger, I’d notified them that the names and dates on the aforementioned forgeries were wrong
Well, yes, we know you claim Wilson said this. But you haven’t yet found or cited any instance of Wilson actually saying this. That is the point.
I’m not asserting that there’s certainly something concrete as regards Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, in the classified pile of paper on Iraq, I’m simply saying that LB cannot assert that there’s nothing there on the basis that she hasn’t yet seen it.
Well, sure: Lone Gunman logic. Just because there’s no public evidence showing that Iraq attempted to acquire yellowcake from Africa this century, and considerable public evidence to show that there was no reason for Iraq to attempt to acquire more yellowcake since Iraq had stocks of yellowcake previously acquired which it had no means of processing into weapons grade uranium, that doesn’t prove there isn’t some deeply classified information showing that Iraq did seek yellowcake in Africa.
Similiar logic says that 9/11 was cooked up between George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Just because there’s no public evidence this happened, doesn’t mean there isn’t deeply classified information showing this is what happened.
Also, the lurkers support me in e-mail.
Wrong again, Jesurgislac. I’m coming to the conclusion that you cannot be made to see the point, here. Since repetition doesn’t seem to be working, I give up, and simply note again that you’ve either completely misunderstood what I’ve said, or you’re deliberately mischaracterizing.
Forgive me if I find this particular ad populum somewhat lacking in sway.
Slarti: Forgive me if I find this particular ad populum somewhat lacking in sway.
Well, quite: that’s my point. Just because there’s no public evidence that the lurkers support me in e-mail, doesn’t mean there isn’t deeply classified information showing that the lurkers support me in e-mail. Your logic, which you appear to find perfectly convincing…
Slarti,
Have you ever seen George Will denounce the movie JFK (which I have seen too many times to count on the ABC Sunday morning discussion group)? Every orifice on his face flares as he points out the silliness of the argument that the lack of any evidence of a conspiracy is proof that there is one.
Your argument that there could be classified information that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Africa, in spite of the masses of publicly available evidence against it, seems cut from the same cloth.
Maybe, Dantheman, you could provide a cite to some of this evidence, since you’ve seen fit to throw your lot in with J. I’d be very interested indeed to see evidence that Iraq had not attempted to acquire uranium.
Slarti: I’d be very interested indeed to see evidence that Iraq had not attempted to acquire uranium.
And yet, the only argument you can find against this supposition is that there might be classified evidence showing that it was true after all.
Slarti,
I think LizardBreath has already shown that. It’s not my fault if you’re not processing it.
LizardBreath has provided exactly one link in this thread, and that’s to Tenet’s address. But if you think she has said something at all that supports your contention, please link to it.
Slart–
Well, for one, Wilson’s account, which has gone publicly uncontradicted, that the Nigerien (am I spelling that right?) officials told him no Iraqi offical ever mentioned uranium to them in the relevant time period. (I am again putting no weight on the speculation of one Nigerien official that an Iraqi who did not mention uranium might have been thinking about it.) If Iraq had sought, but not obtained, uranium, there would be witnesses to that fact who had done nothing wrong and would have no obvious reason to keep silent. (Add in the fact that the yellowcake available in Africa was not in a form that would have been useful to Iraq, and that it was tightly accounted for.)
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is not a logical axiom that can be relied on in this setting. The absence of evidence that an eighth continent exists somewhere in the Pacific, is very strong evidence that there is no such continent. The absence of evidence that the Girl Scouts orchestrated the assassination of JFK as revenge for his disrespect of women is good evidence that they didn’t.
Here, there is no evidence that the uranium seeking happened. There is no known reason why all such evidence, if it existed, would have to remain secret (of course, there may be unknown reasons, but they are unknown). If anyone knew of such evidence, it would probably be the US government, and it would be politically advantagious to the Administration to convince people that the uranium seeking happened. This Administration hasn’t generally been shy about releasing secret materials when they were to its political advantage. All of this comes together to strong, and to me absolutely convincing, evidence that the uranium seeking didn’t happen.
Now that I know that you’re taking a radically skeptical position on what can be known about this (“What color is the horse over there?” “White on this side.”) there’s no way to argue with you about it. I think you’re applying a standard that you wouldn’t apply in other circumstances, but as, under that standard, there is literally no way to show that something didn’t happen, there’s no sense shouting at a brick wall. My apologies for taking up your time.
Hmm…curious. You appear to be saying that any claim is true until proven false. Furthermore, you seem to be using precisely the bad logic you claim that I am using in doing so.
That crossed with your last, complaining about my lack of linking. I’m awfully lazy about cites: I believe the facts, rather than the conclusions I draw from them, in my last post are fairly uncontroversial, and that we’re just arguing about what conclusions can be drawn. If I’ve claimed something as a fact that you (a) think is untrue, and (b) would make a difference to your estimation of my argument, tell me and I’ll dig up a cite for you.
There’s rather more leaps of faith in that argument than I’m comfortable with, LB. In particular, I don’t think what you see as reasonable has any bearing in this matter.
Which would be a telling argument, if I were relying on it. But I in turn remind you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
…that you’ve seen.
To you, yes. But I’m going to direct you here, so I don’t have to repeat myself on this. You may continue to disagree with me on this, but don’t say I haven’t addressed your concerns.
And, LB, I’m not arguing with you. You asked me what I thought, I responded, and Jesurgislac thinks she’s taking me to the cleaners over my response.
To me, there’s a rather wide gulf between “of indeterminate veracity” and “disproven” that Jesurgislac is attempting to bridge, here.
Slarti: You appear to be saying that any claim is true until proven false.
No: that’s what you’re saying. Do pay attention, Slarti.
You are arguing that the assertion “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” might be true – because, you think, the evidence that shows it’s false isn’t sufficient (LizardBreath recently summarised the evidence that shows it’s false); and, LoneGunman-ishly, you assert that there might be classified information that shows it is true.
At this point I have moved past rational discussion to cranky sniping. That said, this:
Me: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is not a logical axiom that can be relied on in this setting.
Slart: Which would be a telling argument, if I were relying on it. But I in turn remind you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
actually made my eyes cross, I was was boggling so hard.
Speaking of paying attention, I’ve noted that this conclusion of yours is incorrect a number of times, and you persist. I’m now leaning toward that you’re being deliberately dishonest. You may continue doing your victory dance around the corpse of the fallen strawman, or you can go back upthread, read what I’ve written (for the first time, I’d guess) and correct your error.
Why? It seems to be your contention that because you haven’t layed eyes on something, that means it doesn’t exist.
In other words, you’re making exactly the same bad argument that Jesurgislac is making, and that (highly ironically) you’re criticising me for making exactly the same kind of argument in the other direction, which I’m not.
Slarti: I’ve noted that this conclusion of yours is incorrect a number of times, and you persist.
Which conclusion of mine are you trying to point out is incorrect?
Slarti- Given that you constantly claim that people are misunderstanding you, maybe instead of asking them to re-read what you have written you should seek to explain yourself more carefully.
Sometimes I find you amusing, but I am on the verge of wanting to stop reading your posts even once. I’m certainly not inclined to re-read anything youve written.
You know, Frank, it’d be swell if I could express myself more clearly, but I don’t think that’d stop those who are inclined to do so from attributing arguments to me that I have not made. And I hate, hate, hate repeating myself. About the third time around I lose all patience. Sure, it’s a flaw.
Join the crowd.
Any other request for me to absent myself? It’s not as if you’d lose any front-page articles if I did.
I’d miss you — I don’t talk to enough Republicans (conservatives? right-wingers? not sure what the accurate term is here. People who disagree with me vehemently about this stuff) about politics, because it interferes with maintaining smooth relationships with with them. It’s good having a place like this to go where I can figure out what some of you are thinking about this stuff, and if you left, that’s a big drop in the number of conservatives, and an even bigger drop in the number of conservatives who are willing to engage in argument.
That said, I’d agree that you would be a pleasanter interlocutor if you tried to overcome your hatred of repeating yourself and your tendency to assume bad faith in people who you think are misunderstanding you. It doesn’t matter who you are, your first crack at anything is ambiguous — if you want to communicate a position sucessfully, epecially to people who disagree with you, repeating yourself ad infinitum is the only way to go.
Slarti,
I sincerely hope that you do not believe that a request to explain your positions more clearly should be met by merely repeating yourself.
Slarti- Here’s an example: When I said I was on the verge of stopping reading your posts I meant that I was thinking I might start to skip your posts. Not that I wanted you to leave OW, or to drive you from it, just that I would avoid your posts.
You see how I clarified a previously unclear statement?
I have to say after having read the whole thread I feel less sure of your position than I did near the beginning.
Thanks, LB. Communication is a two-way street, though. Are you STILL of the impression that I’m maintaining there definitely were attempts by Iraq to obtain uranium in the time-frame of interest?
The way I look at it, if someone that’s worthy of some modicum of respect appears to be making a point that’s ridiculous, the polite thing to do would be to ask for clarification: “Are you really saying X? Because it looks to me as if you’re saying X.” Failure to extend that kind of consideration to others I take as a kind of careless contempt. Serial failures of that kind tend to piss me off.
Are you STILL of the impression that I’m maintaining there definitely were attempts by Iraq to obtain uranium in the time-frame of interest?
Nope. Never have been. I am of the impression that you think that it can’t be ruled out in some practical, real-world sense (rather than in the “I can’t rule out the possibility that Nevada doesn’t exist. After all, I’ve never been there — everyone could be lying” sense.)
While you are obviously correct that it hasn’t been proven, in the sense of a logical proof, that Iraq didn’t seek uranium from Africa, it is next thing to impossible to prove that anything, ever didn’t happen. On the basis of the evidence I’ve decribed above, I’m convinced it didn’t happen. If that evidence doesn’t convince you, I don’t think there’s a lot for us to talk about on that issue.
the polite thing to do would be to ask for clarification: “Are you really saying X? Because it looks to me as if you’re saying X.”
Unfortunately, requests for clarification from you are frequently meant by assurances, by you, that what you said was perfectly clear, and we only have to re-read your original comment to figure out what you meant.
Or else, if asked in the format: “Are you really saying X? Because it looks to me as if you’re saying X.” you are quite likely to respond “No” with no further clarification at all.
The polite thing to do when responding to a request for clarification is to clarify what you meant.
I don’t have her email so I’ll say it here: what Jes said.
While I’m sure nothing will be accomplished by my entering into the fray, I can hardly see how I can make things worse at this point.
Slart, if there were secret, classified evidence to support the 16 words, even if for security reasons we could never see the evidence itself, what possible reason would there be for us never hearing of its existence? The Bush administration has every possible motive to trumpet this evidence, and to share it with members of the Senate, or credible non-administration experts, as security permits. Is this not sufficient “evidence of absence” to make a common-sense judgment that they’ve got nothing? Given that this administration was willing to compromise ongoing intelligence operations, burning an undercover WMD expert, in order to push back at Wilson, why would they now be so disciplined with regard to this hypothetical evidence against a regime that no longer exists? It simply doesn’t add up.
And in the eventuality that you ever do request clarification, I swear I’ll provide. And if you request clarification of the clarification, I’ll provide then, too. What I don’t respond well to is repeated applications of this sort of thing, which simply invents a position for me and then proceeds to attack it.
Now, I know I’ve made this very clear in the past: I absolutely loathe this kind of technique. You’ve been around for some of that, so you know*. And given those things, I have to suspect that you’re simply trying to get a rise out of me.
*Sorry, no cite.
“And in the eventuality that you ever do request clarification, I swear I’ll provide. And if you request clarification of the clarification, I’ll provide then, too.”
At the risk of poisoning the well, does this assurance apply to me as well? Because it is my experience that this has not been the case.
And in the eventuality that you ever do request clarification, I swear I’ll provide.
Then perhaps you should write a post explaining the precise terms in which a request for clarification must be expressed before you’ll provide it, since you apparently feel that my request for clarification here was somehow in the wrong format for you to be able to respond to it.
Now, I know I’ve made this very clear in the past: I absolutely loathe this kind of technique.
Well, yes. But what I thought you absolutely loathed was being requested to clarify what you had said. I hadn’t realised that you simply objected to the form in which the request for clarification was presented; and therefore I request that you make clear the format to which you will respond, so that the rest of us, if we want clarification from you, will know how to get it in future.
This comment of yours, above, is not a request for clarification. It is, however, a misrepresentation of what I’ve said. This, then, I ought to interpret as a request for clarification? This holding-up-to-ridicule of a statement I have not made? I’m asking, here: do I take your attack on your interpretation of things as a request for clarification? If so, I’ll make a note.
Um, how did Jes misrepresent you? She said:
You still think that [Iraq sought uranium] “hasn’t been shown to be untrue”, Slarti?
Later on, on the same topic, you said:
I think it’s possible, yes.
What did she misrepresent? If you want to carp about her tone, she was certainly snarky, but I can’t see what she said that you could reasonably call a misrepresentation.
Slarti- You know the Christian thing to do would be to provide clarification when it was needed rather than waiting until you are properly asked.
For instance when you thought I wanted you to go away (Any other request for me to absent myself?) instead of saying I said no such thing and that you needed to re-read my post I simply explained that I wasn’t asking you to go away, but rather saying I would consider avoiding your posts in future.
“Interesting. That Prospect piece is dated exactly three weeks from today. I have a hunch this next report is going to involve time-travel.”
Slart, I know you’re not an idiot, so I conclude that never in your entire life have you noticed that the date on news-stand magazines is the date the item for sale is removed from the stands, not placed on the stands. This has been the practice for at least the past hundred years, so now you’ve caught up. Valuable lesson for the day, I hope.
Now: care to respond on the substance?
Here:
When you implicitly assert that all a politician has to do to convince you that a statement is true, and must be accepted on its face, I assume you don’t distinguish prejudicially.
In other words: why on earth would you accept Pat Roberts’ obviously completely unbelievable statement that he’d been “delayed” (by Democrats, no less!) since February, 2004!?!?
“Where did Pat Roberts lie, Barry? He informed the committee that there was a delay, caused in part by Democrats on the committee.”
And thus if you buy that, why not buy anything a politician ever says, no matter how absurd on its face. Remember: Richard Nixon told us he wasn’t a crook. Also: Bill Clinton never had sexual relations with this woman (which turns out to be correct when “sexual relations” is defined as “intercourse,” but never mind politicians who actually tell narrow truths).
I can’t tell from this if you do or do not recognize the sarcastic intent of the remark that has been a commonplace on Usenet for about a decade.
I’m pretty sure that if someone has a proposition, they need to support it with evidence. The negative is not true, and quite famously people aren’t reasonably asked to prove a negative.
Since you’re aware of this, um, Slart, has anyone ever told you that you tend to perhaps become stubborn in an argument — although I do suspect that this is because your view is so clear in your mind that you don’t understand why others don’t see it the same way, and that also this tends to interfere with your being able to understand at the most optimal level the different way other people are seeing things, and that this is entirely unconcious on your part, and not at all wilful — in a way perhaps not perfectly suited to mutual understanding? (It’s just a hypothesis, mind, and may be all wrong.)
“That Prospect piece is dated exactly three weeks from today.”
Incidentally, that’s false. The issue is so dated, not the article. Apparently “Issue Date: 11.23.05.” is unclear that that’s the, you know, issue date.
LB:
I response to a substantially different question, sure. I’m sure we can dig up quotes of me answering “no” to yet other questions, with even less applicability.
But in the interest of clarification, there’s a substantial difference between “the intel used to make this claim was not solid enough to justify the claim” and “that claim has been proven false”. Again, the CIA once thought that this claim was justifiable, using other intel than the forged memo, and going back to late 2001. All of this is in the Senate Intelligence Committee report that I’ve linked to on more than one occasion. Just about everything relating to the British Intelligence information is redacted, which is why I said upthread that I’d like to get as much as possible about that claim declassified.
Gary:
Or another possible conclusion would be that I was making a little joke that no one thought was funny.
Slarti- Looking back over my comment I think the tone may have sounded hostile. I want you to know that I think you could have a great career ahead of you as a white house press secretary.
Gary, do you mind if I ask why you’re hammering Slarti for illumination on several points — to wit, the following:
that he never made, but that Charles Bird did?
I mean, I suppose it’s possible that you expect Slarti to answer for Charles’ statements and behavior, but I can’t imagine for the life of me why you would expect such a thing. Could you possibly explain it to me?
I recommend you keep that reply tucked in your vest pocket for the occasion on which I do such a thing.
Um, if you can find a place on this thread where I discussed Roberts in any way, please point it out to me.
And here I was thinking that the cross-threading was all my fault. Usenet usages, customs, humor, etc are completely outside of my experience, Gary.
Which proposition are you thinking is unsubstantiated?
As for the rest, I can probably encapsulate a good chunk of it by: you are inclined to pretend any classified information pertaining to this matter does not exist, even if there are public-domain references to it and NIEs written as a result of it. I disagree. If there were references in some Senate Committee hearings on geophysics to classified intelligence to the effect that the Earth is in fact hollow, I’d be inclined to be curious about what that intelligence is based on, rather than maintaining it’s not there. Quirky, I know.
Frank, I used to think you were a pretty nice guy. Think of this as being positively embroidered with laughing smiley-faces.
Jes didn’t claim that you thought Iraq’s uranium seeking was proven; she asked whether you took the position that it hadn’t been shown to be false. You do take that position.
If you think her tone was unacceptably contentious, that’s up to you. Calling what she said misleading is simply incorrect.
“… that he never made, but that Charles Bird did?”
I think that’s a single point, not various, but never mind.
Because I lost track of attributions, that’s why. My apologies, Slartibartfast, for having confused who made that statement, and for responding as if you had made it, rather than because you were, as I understood it, defending it, which might also be a misunderstanding on my part, in which case I have no idea what the hell anyone here is talking about, apparently.
“…you are inclined to pretend any classified information pertaining to this matter does not exist, even if there are public-domain references to it and NIEs written as a result of it.”
I am? How long have I held this inclination? Do I only hold that inclination on this blog, or is it a general tendency?
Gary- You are not alone in feeling that way. Something like this happens every time I get into a discussion with Slarti. I feel less well informed at the end of the discussion than at the beginning.
in which case I have no idea what the hell anyone here is talking about, apparently.
Gets that way sometimes, doesn’t it. I should say that my sympathies on that point are with Slart, who’s actually done very well keeping the arguments straight.
I’ve been one of a very few liberals in a conservative forum (during the run-up to war), and being the only person on one side trying to answer six or seven people each determined to have a separate argument with you can make your head spin. Or, at least, used to make mine.
This comment of yours, above, is not a request for clarification.
Actually, it is: but it’s clearly not a request phrased in a way you find acceptable and will answer. Hence my request to you to provide a given format that we can use when we want you to clarify.
It is, however, a misrepresentation of what I’ve said.
Then I’m completely confused. I asked you “You still think that [Iraq sought uranium] ‘hasn’t been shown to be untrue’?”
Which part of that is a misrepresentation of what you said?
Usenet usages, customs, humor, etc are completely outside of my experience, Gary.
Ah. I was briefly trying to find a short definition of this joke, but the best I could do was the filk of the same name. All jokes become unfunny when explained: but this is such a classic one-liner (even among those of us who were never much on Usenet) that it never occurred to me it needed a footnote.
Wait…are you saying that I hadn’t realised that you simply objected to the form in which the request for clarification was presented is a request for information? I guess there’s a much larger gulf between American English and British than I’d previously suspected.
Speaking of that classified NIE, by the way….
I took Slart to be sarcastic, but I also went back and forth 3-4 times trying to decide, and still amn’t at all sure. If I’d ever actually seen him on Usenet, or he’d clearly mentioned such a history in my sight, I would be, so it’s entirely easy to believe he was being straightforward.
I happen to be one of the world’s greater practioners of deadpan I-like-to-think-it’s-humor, myself, so I’m in no position to criticize its use, but it tends not to work, other than to amuse ourselves, if others don’t possess the knowledge and context to make it funny.
How many folks here know whether Slart has, indeed, no experience and knowledge of Usenet, or lots and lots?
How many folks have no idea?
In context, it doesn’t make sense as a joke. The deadpan humor would only work if he’d understood the ‘lurkers support me’ reference, and was trying to say ‘don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’ In the context of not knowing the reference, the joke doesn’t work.
One vote for Slart having had no Usenet experience.
[Rodney King]Why can’t we all just get along?[/Rodney King]
…never in your entire life have you noticed that the date on news-stand magazines is the date the item for sale is removed from the stands, not placed on the stands.
Well, color me dense. Is this true? I’d always assumed postdating magazines was just a silly marketing trick to make readers feel like they were getting a sneak preview of next month’s news. It never dawned on me that it encoded any concrete information like a sell-by date. It was worth reading all the way down here just for that.
“Why can’t we all just get along?” inquires wise hilzoy. Because the other guy is wrong and I am right, ma foi.
The key to his thread appears to be Slarti’s statement: “The one I had in mind was his claim that he’d seen the forged documents while he was in Niger, which he later recanted.”
now, for some strange reason i have diligently read this entire thread (but not the links), and as best I can tell:
(a) Wilson did not prepare a written report of his trip to Niger, presumably under agency orders;
(b) Wilson was debriefed. It is possible that Wilson (a) had sufficient information from the CIA prior to his trip to Niger and (b) learned sufficient information in Niger to be able to assert that some of the information on which the CIA was relying to send him to Niger was false.
(c) It appears that the CIA had enough info about the source of the info that the CIA could have told Wilson about the existence of certain documents and Wilson could have responded that those document must be forgeries.
(d) It appears, therefore, that Wilson could be wrong when he told the Committee that he misremembered.
We would need to compare the original debrief with the statements made by Wilson in chronological order in order to determine whether Wilson spoke incorrectly when he commented about the forgeries.
It does appear that certain statements were attributed to Wilson (like “i saw the forgeries in Niger”) which, if he said them, were false and which, if he did not say them, nevertheless could not be true yet he left uncorrected.
Despite CB’s insistence to the contrary, I have not seen any evidence that he did in fact make false statements. As to leaving uncorrected those statements which were both (a) attributed to him and (b) provably false, my opinion is that this kind of thing happens all the time in the press and it’s impossible to fix.
So where are we?
a. Wilson is a liar. To prove this, we’ll need links to statements made by Wilson which have later been proven to be false.
or
b. In commenting on what he knew and when, Wilson has from time to time gotten dates wrong as to when he first obtained certain information.
or
c. Reporters have, from time to time, misunderstood precisely what Wilson was saying. The stories issued by these reporters have created false impressions in those reading those stories, especially those reading the early stories in retrospect. Wilson (i) could have gotten a correction issued but didn’t (bad for him) or (ii) didn’t bother because the reported story was incorrect in a detail which seemed at the time insignificant or (iii) couldn’t have gotten a correction issued — that’s not the way reporting works.
Slarti, LJ, Jes — is this about right?
Yes, “hilzoy” is schwa, as is “slartibartfast” (at least Amis say it that way en français.)
Francis, pretty sure I’ve seen comments from Wilson to the effect that “I didn’t get to review my notes at the time which led to some confusion but having done so here’s what happened, which means what I said originally was correct”.
“The deadpan humor would only work if he’d understood the ‘lurkers support me’ reference, and was trying to say ‘don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.'”
I thought that’s what he was saying, but as I said, I went back and forth and concluded that it might just as well be the other way.
I certainly recall the “lurkers” remark being made here before on several occasions, and I’m fairly darn sure I linked here (on this blog) to Jo’s song to explain it, within the last 6 months. (I was part of the conversation with Jo; the whole thing was created on rec.arts.sf.fandom back when my name was a verb there.)
I’d think it was simply obvious without context, actually, but I’m also obviously projecting.
(“Lurkers” are famously those who lurk and don’t comment; even if it’s not “famously,” isn’t it obviously?; and “support me in e-mail” is obviously sarcastic, no?; maybe not.)
I assumed that this was sarcastic because the only other interpretation that strikes me is that Slart thinks Jes is such an idiot as to actually make such a claim.
Oops.
“Well, color me dense. Is this true?”
Quite. What methodology have you supposed people working at newsstands have to know when to take down a periodical? A Master List issued to All The Nation’s Newsstands? 🙂 (Meant to indicate friendly joshing, not withering sarcasm.)
“It was worth reading all the way down here just for that.”
My purpose here on planet Earth is now complete.
“when my name was a verb there”
transitive or intransitive? regular or ir?
Intransigent.
Quite. What methodology have you supposed people working at newsstands have to know when to take down a periodical?
My several years of experience working in a Large Chain Bookstore many years ago informs me that the answer has generally been, “When the next issue arrives from the distributor, even if it is well after the off-sale date on the current issue.”
By the way, distributors that ask you to return whole issues = good; distributors that ask you to waste time stripping covers = the devil.
Francis,
I think that’s right, but a couple of points
(a) Wilson did not prepare a written report of his trip to Niger, presumably under agency orders
I’ve never heard of a situation where someone doing what Wilson did (as an outside source) would be asked to prepare a written report, so it wasn’t that they ordered him not to, it would have never been SOP to write such a report. Presuming that he was ordered to not prepare a report would then be spun as evidence that Wilson was not trusted by the CIA. It is a miniscule point, but seeing how these points are seized on to ‘explain’ things, I feel that it needs to be pointed out.
Since Gary’s about, I should correct myself and say that’s one point, I had written another point concerning the possibility of Wilson asking for a correction, but it got too difficult to explain.
And also, since Gary’s about, I should point out that this
Speaking of that classified NIE, by the way….
is preceded by this (go to the bottom of the comment)
Hopefully, that should close out this thread…
Francis, sounds about right.
Do we want to get back on topic, or shall we discuss whether or not the lurkers support me in e-mail works as a joke if you’ve never been on Usenet?
I lurked, minimally, on Usenet, but never saw the joke before. Nonetheless, its meaning was fairly clear.
Francis, something similar to what I claimed, I think.
Not to throw gasoline on the fire or anything but:
Slarti: And in the eventuality that you ever do request clarification, I swear I’ll provide. And if you request clarification of the clarification, I’ll provide then, too.
Can I get included in this too? It’s rather copiously been false in our earlier conversations, and I’d much prefer to hash out what it is we disagree on than play the (always increasingly-hostile) ellipsis-reading game for umpteen pages.
I was, Gary. Although I’ve been making use of the Internet since as long as there’s been an Internet, and before that I used its predecessors dating back to 1980 or 1981 (can’t recall precisely), I never used it for purposes of discussion, so I’d guess my total time spent reading Usenet is probably on the scale of one hour.
And although it’s probably not all that clear when I’m being unfunny and wry as opposed to unfunny and straightforward, this time it’s the latter.
Not an idiot, precisely, more that she was attempting to provoke. And given that her requests for clarification seem to be, in hindsight, posed as an attack on a caricature of something I’d said, I’d thought that a great deal of her responses to me were attempts to provoke, rather than just a peculiar way of asking me to elaborate.
Francis, mostly true, except that IIRC both the CIA and Wilson (as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee) have noted that Wilson wasn’t briefed on the particulars of the memo, in particular names and dates, before visiting Niger. But I think you’ve captured most of the flavor, here, and although we could even further discuss the detail of what I think of Wilson, I’d (as I stated originally) lean well away from “Wilson is a liar” and more toward “Wilson told a story that wasn’t 100% true because he misremembered or inadvertently conflated events” and perhaps even “Wilson made arguments that don’t apply”. And probably “Wilson overestimated the value of his trip as a contribution to the determination that Iraq was seeking Uranium”, but that’s just a guess (although the Senate Intelligence Committee report says as much, only in more words). In any event, I imagine Wilson now has the same access to the Op-Ed column to clarify himself as he always has had, and there’s any number of news outlets he could use to get his version of things into print. Given that Pincus has told the same story about Wilson TWICE (once at the time, once in the last week), it’s incumbent on Wilson to correct him if Pincus is misrepresenting him. And Pincus recalls that Wilson made his names and dates wrong comment in the context that it was said during the CIA debrief.
Now, y’all can proceed to argue and dissect and attempt to represent Wilson as an eternal, consistent font of the true nature of things (as opposed to the vicious, mendacious caricature of him occurring elsewhere), but to me Wilson’s just another human being with all the assorted flaws that come with being human. He did the country a service, and was publicly excoriated for his (in my view, misguided) op-ed, and likely his wife was exposed in some sort of bizarre retaliation. What ought to have happened was a calm, public clarification of Wilson’s role in the grand scheme of things, along with a heartfelt thanks from the government for Wilson doing them service. Had that been done, I believe that would have been the end of Joseph Wilson’s fifteen minutes. Politics, though, seems to invite the blood sacrifice*.
I’ve got the driveway plus about 200 feet of sidewalk to pressure clean today, and about six cubic yards of mulch to cart around, so you’re just going to have to talk excitedly amongst yourselves without me. Have fun.
*Which I’m sure that some will take as an excuse; it certainly is not. At a minimum, it appears someone broke a superset of the laws that Sandy Berger did; in this case the classified information in question is available to everyone who might be interested.
Slarti: I’d thought that a great deal of her responses to me were attempts to provoke, rather than just a peculiar way of asking me to elaborate.
Which is why I am asking you again, if there’s a format in which you will respond to requests for clarification by providing clarification, will you please outline that format? Various other people have pointed out that you haven’t, in the past, been in the least inclined to clarify what you meant, no matter how many times people ask you to.
and more toward “Wilson told a story that wasn’t 100% true because he misremembered or inadvertently conflated events” and perhaps even “Wilson made arguments that don’t apply”.
Except you’ve never yet managed to quote Wilson. In order to prove “Wilson told a story that wasn’t 100% true” you do have to come up with a quote from Wilson that isn’t 100% true. You haven’t done that.
He did the country a service, and was publicly excoriated for his (in my view, misguided) op-ed, and likely his wife was exposed in some sort of bizarre retaliation.
We can disagree about the op-ed, but that’s a fair summary of the situation.
I’ve got the driveway plus about 200 feet of sidewalk to pressure clean today, and about six cubic yards of mulch to cart around
Sounds like… fun. I’d offer to make you a coffee, but you’re a little too far for delivery.
As a city person, I’m always bemused by what homeowners have to do. People clean driveways? I suppose they do get dirty, It just never entered my mind as a possible task.
It’s Florida, LB, and pretty much everything that doesn’t get sterilized by direct sunlight (and much that does) is covered by mold and mildew.
I’m just peeking in while I’m eating lunch and letting the washer cool down. Jesurgislac: all you have to do is ask. I may not have been very good in clarifying myself in the past, but you should take this as resolve to do better in the future. I think it ought to be clear that requests that aren’t actually requests don’t stand a chance of being honored, and I’m not going to make any effort to change that unless I know how to decode it in advance.
And no, I’m not bothered not having the entire thing inside of quotations. If Pincus quoted Wilson out of context, it’s incumbent on Wilson to set the record straight. If you’re unsatisfied with this, you’re going to have to remain that way.
Jesurgislac: all you have to do is ask. I may not have been very good in clarifying myself in the past, but you should take this as resolve to do better in the future.
Okay. More no one can ask. 🙂
If Pincus quoted Wilson out of context, it’s incumbent on Wilson to set the record straight. If you’re unsatisfied with this, you’re going to have to remain that way.
Except that Pincus didn’t quote Wilson. That’s my point: if you’re going to accuse Wilson of telling porkies, or even of misremembering, you first of all have to come up with a direct statement from Wilson, whether in an article by him or by someone else, that doesn’t fit the facts as we know them now. You haven’t done that.
Personally, I think that in light of Slart’s response here, insisting on trying to establish the exact nature of the trivial details he believes Wilson was in error upon at one point or another (and who does not make trivial errors of detail from time to time) is a quite pointless endeavor, unless the goal is simply to harry Slart, but perhaps I’m missing some essential of why further carrying on on this topic would be fruitful and enlightening to anyone (rather than some odd quest after a Perry Mason moment, in which Slart breaks down weeping on the stand, confessing that, yes, he did slander Joe Wilson with wretched calumny).
As a city person, I’m always bemused by what homeowners have to do.
What, nobody in your city owns their home? 😉
“What, nobody in your city owns their home? ;)”
I translate LB’s remark to something like “As a big city apartment-dweller….”
There are plenty of houses in the city she lives in, to be sure. Hundreds of thousands, at the least. (PBS Newshour had a longish piece on Brooklyn last night and I had a sudden flood of terrible nostalgia; I’ve not been back to the city since December, 2001, I realize.)
I suppose, if you count owning shares in a co-op as owning a home, I’m a homeowner — it’s just that in my neighborhood (rather than my city, which is of course riddled with one-family homes) the idea of personally washing the outside of the building I live in isn’t the sort of thing anyone would be likely to do.
When I was there last month, both Broadway and Herald Square asked me to give their regards, Gary. 42nd Street, not so much.