And remember, Cheney wanted a pardon last week for Scooter Libby

Remember Valerie Plame, the CIA NOC operative that the winguts all said was "just a pencil pusher" but who turned out to be investigating trafficking of weapons in and out of Iran? The then Vice President decided it was more important to get petty revenge against Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, for debunking the Iraq/yellowcake/Niger claim of the Bush Administration than to, uh, KEEP ACTUAL WEAPONS OUT OF THE HANDS OF ROGUE NATIONS.

These are the guys that we were told for eight years were "keeping us safe."

Well, now the chickens unleashed by Cheney's vindictive, petty revenge have come home to roost:

Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.

If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

Perhaps if Cheney and Scooter Libby had allowed Valerie Plame to do her job, we wouldn't be in this mess today.

Just something to think about the next time Cheney decides to shoot his mouth off again.

So now we know. Now what?

Scott McClellan spills the beans and reveals what all thinking people knew already:

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

I've long said, as I've watched this Bush Administration commit atrocity after atrocity against the Constitution, the law, the American people, the soldiers he sends off to die, and common human decency, that the weakness in our system is that it presupposes that our leaders will take their responsibilities seriously, that they will "do no harm" -- at least not deliberately. But whether it's pre-emptive war against a country that did nothing to us, or funnelling billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to fight that war into the pockets of campaign contributors, or blowing the cover of a CIA asset working to ensure Americans' safety for cheap petty revenge, there's been almost no outrage.

Part of it is that we have a compliant media run by giant corporations that stand to benefit from chummy relations with those who are corrupt and fronted by people who want access to power, who want to hobnob with and eat cocktail weenies with the very same people they're supposed to cover. But part of it is that there is indeed a tipping point of evil, and if a leader, or group of leaders can just reach that tipping point, the consequences for Americans of believing that people we elect (or who take office even if we don't elect them) can be as corrupt as the leaders of the banana republics and the dictatorships and the theocracies we've always regarded as enemies, are just too monstrous for Americans to face. So we turn off the news, and we watch Heroes and American Idol and Survivor and Dexter and fade away into an imaginary world. Because we live in a country populated with other people doing just that. And they don't want to hear how in just six years, this president and those around him have turned the last world superpower into Argentina circa 2000. They don't want to hear how we are bankrupt; how the machinations of the stock market over the last two weeks are indicative of what they can expect for the foreseeable future; how the Treasury Secretary continues to crow about our strong dollar policy while our currency is in a free-fall; how we are mired in a conflict in the Middle East from which we are unlikely to ever extricate ourselves, how we are more likely to be attacked from without because of our weakened position within, and how your children -- if you have them -- are going to face futures that are in all likelihood going to be nasty, brutish, and short.

The Bush Administration's payback to Valerie Plame

It's worse than you thought. Larry Johnson, who worked with Plame, explains how:

In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat. This was just more “good” news piled on the fact that her intelligence career was in shambles, that intelligence assets she had recruited/managed were destroyed, and that she was unable to rebut publicly false and malicious smears of her character and reputation by a bunch of partisan Republican hacks. As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.

When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.

Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own.

Before learning of this I credited George Tenet with doing a good job of restoring morale at the CIA but criticized him strongly for playing politics with the White House and helping set the table for scamming the American public into the Iraq war. Now, in light of this revelation, I realize the man is a despicable coward. He refused to come to the aid of one of his CIA officers who faced a specific death threat. In fact, Georgie boy never once reached out to Valerie to provide any comfort or encouragement. He wanted to stay on good terms with the White House so he effectively cut her loose.

So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help. I don’t know about you, but that fries my ass.

And don't talk to me about the Vanity Fair photo. The threat to Valerie Plame wasn't a result of a magazine photo, it was a result of the Bush Administration's cheap political payback against a public servant whose husband, another public servant, dared to call the Administration on its lies. By the time of that photo shoot, Robert Novak, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, and Scooter Libby had already done the damage to both Plame's career and to her work on keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Yes, Katie Couric did her best in last night's interview, being the good, corporatist, Viacom hack that she is, to play the "Joe Wilson Outed His Own Wife" card, but it didn't fly. Allowing the photo shoot may not have been the best judgment in the world, but let's not forget that Plame's career was already over and her assets already compromised by the time it took place.

The vitriol that the right has had towards the Wilsons has always reminded me of Clinton hatred, and I suspect it's for the same reasons, having less to do with policy disagreements and more to do with jealousy. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are smart, telegenic, sexy as hell, and successful. It seems just another manifestation of the Republicans' behaving like the kid who got beaten up every day in high school and then went home and masturbated to the Playboy centerfold while the captain of the football was getting all the girls -- and they're still angry.

Heckuva job, Scooter

Raw Story has a preview of the hatchet job interview Katie Couric is doing with Valerie Plame on tomorrow night's 60 Minutes. In the interview, Plame confirms that she "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons." Nice work, Scooter. And Karl, and everyone else in the Administration who decided that petty revenge outweighed national security; and Tweety and Matt Cooper and Judith Miller and all the other media lapdogs who insisted on sucking up to this bunch of crooks for the last six years because having cocktail weenies with the president was more important than doing their fucking job and asking the right fucking questions. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the Bush Administration WANTED to foil the work Plame was doing so that they could have an excuse to bomb Iran. But then I'd have to believe that Bush really DID see himself as God's Anointed Architect of Armageddon, and was determined to have as many wars in the Middle East as it takes to bring it about....

Oh, yeah. I do believe that. Here's a preview (from Raw Story):

So, Ms. Pelosi...is impeachment still off the table? Who exactly is playing fast and loose with national security? I'll tell you who -- it's YOU -- as long as you insist on refusing to allow this bunch of lunatics and criminals in the White House to continue to control the reins of this country.

Not that this will matter one iota to the apologists for the Bush Administration

Well, well, well, so Valerie Plame was covert at the time she was outed by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Scooter Libby after all. Not just a secretary, or a desk jockey, or the coffee girl, or whatever pejorative the wingnuts have thought fit to use to describe her:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

The nature of Plame's CIA employment never came up in Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."

So, there we have it. Valerie Plame was a covert agent, always using official or nonofficial cover, and the Bush Administration put her life and her work at risk for cheap political revenge.

There's no way to put lipstick on this pig. This is treason, plain and simple -- treason and impeachable. And that the Democrats lack the balls to do something about it is appalling.

UPDATE: Just in case the gasbags on the right start denying that they ever said Valerie Plame was not covert, Glenn Greenwald kindly documents many of the instances of wingnuts talking out of their asses on the subject -- to save you the trouble of looking them up yourself.

Mean, nasty, ugly people

I'm at home today, having taken the day off for some medical things for both myself and Maggie the Great Huntress of Already Dead Squirrels, who had a follow-up blood test to make sure her preventive vitamin K1 shot on Wednesday had worked properly. I watched about as much of the CIA leak hearings as I've had time for, and my immediate observation is what a mean, partisan bunch these Republicans are. These people will prostitute not just the safety of this country, but the safety of the entire world, if it means partisan advantage for them.

Victoria Toensing looked like she'd swallowed a lemon as she piously insisted that no crime had been committed, sticking to her story that everyone in the immediate universe knew who Valerie Plame was, despite Plame's powerful earlier testimony about her covert status. Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia seemed to be living on Republican time, trying to smear Plame by asking whether it had been wise to appear in a photograph in an article in Vanity Fair -- conveniently forgetting that her cover had already been blown by that time. But by far the worst was Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who asked Plame duruing the hearing to which political party she belonged.

Here is a woman who put her very life on the line to investigate the prevalence -- or lack of same -- of nuclear weapons in the Middle East -- and this fuckwad is asking her what political party she belongs to? Sorry, Rep. Gooberville, but that's YOUR party that bases policy solely on what serves its political advantage, and YOUR party that's steeped in political revenge. This little redneck chickenshit doesn't have an e-mail contact form on his web site, so if you want to tell him that one doesn't ask people in the intelligence service about their political affiliation, call his office: 202-225-5901.

Meanwhile, Brad Friedman has been liveblogging the whole thing here and here.

UPDATE: Jane reminds us that Lynn Westmoreland is the nimrod who co-sponsored the Ten Commandments bill and then showed on The Colbert Report that he doesn't even know what they are.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here is the loathsome Ms. Toensing's testimony, with commentary by Randi Rhodes, followed by the even more loathsome Rep. Westmoreland. In case you didn't believe it:



AND YET MORE: Here is Valerie Plame's testimony, from PoliticsTV:

Meanwhile, here is what Fox News regards as the most important story of the day:

What if Al Gore had done this?

You'd never know from the mainstream news outlets that Scooter Libby is on trial for perjury. If you haven't had time to plow through the comprehensive liveblogging being done by the Firedoglake team, Nicholas Kristof distills the major questions that someone needs to ask Dick Cheney about why the Bush Administration decided that blowing the cover of a nonofficial cover CIA operative to get back at her husband was so vital to national security:

Mr. Vice President, did you push Mr. Libby to dig into Joe Wilson’s background and discredit him? Mr. Libby made such a major effort to gather materials from the C.I.A. and State Department about Mr. Wilson — both before and after you told him on June 12, 2003, that his wife worked at the C.I.A. — that it seems likely that you commanded the effort. True?

What did you mean when you wrote, in a note to Scott McClellan that has been entered into evidence, “not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy the Pres. that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others.”

First, you wrote that it was “the Pres.” who had asked Mr. Libby to do this, and then you crossed out those two words. Did President Bush indeed ask that Mr. Libby take charge of the effort to discredit Ambassador Wilson? And is it true, as was hinted at in the trial, that the White House tried to block the release of this document?

When you discussed Joe Wilson with Mr. Libby on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, what instructions did you give him?

Trial testimony indicates that on that flight, Mr. Libby looked over some questions a reporter had sent in about Mr. Wilson and then said: “Let me go talk to the boss and I’ll be back.” After consulting with you, Mr. Libby later called reporters to feed them a skewed version of Mr. Wilson’s trip.

Mr. Cheney, on that plane, did you specifically tell Mr. Libby to leak to reporters the fact that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the C.I.A.?

Deborah Bond of the F.B.I. has testified that Mr. Libby acknowledged in one of his interviews that on that flight, he might have talked to you about whether to tell the news media about Valerie Wilson. So did he?

Since Mr. Libby is renowned for his caution, it seems highly unlikely that he would have leaked classified information twice to reporters right after talking to you, unless you had sanctioned the leak.

During the leak investigation, were you aware that Mr. Libby was telling the F.B.I. apparently false information?

You rode to work with him nearly every day in your limousine, and the issue never came up? Or did you ask Mr. Libby to protect you because you didn’t want it known that in fact you were the one who had told him about Ms. Wilson? Was there some other information you wanted kept secret?

Were you trying to cover up your own reliance on misinformation about Iraqi W.M.D. by blaming the C.I.A. and anybody else within range, like Mr. Wilson?

More than anybody, Mr. Vice President, you made the argument in the run-up to the war that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And one senses, in the indictment and the trial testimony, that by the early summer of 2003, there was panic in your office that the W.M.D. had failed to materialize.

So when Ambassador Wilson came forward, you seem to have been infuriated. You tried to blame the C.I.A., and then your office tried to discredit Mr. Wilson by arguing that he had simply enjoyed a junket arranged by his wife.

Robert Grenier, a C.I.A. official, told the court that he thought the White House was “trying to avoid responsibility for positions that they took with regard to the truth about whether or not Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger.” So did this all arise from an attempted cover-up?

So when are you going to come clean?

When Richard Nixon was accused of misusing campaign contributions in 1952, he gave his famous Checkers speech. When questions rose about Spiro Agnew’s conduct in 1973, he repeatedly addressed them in public. (Look, you know you’re in trouble when the press tries to hold you to the same standards of transparency and integrity as Nixon and Agnew.)

I’m not accusing you of committing a crime. But there are serious questions here, and you owe the nation not legalisms, but that “stiff dose of truth.” If you continue to stonewall, then you don’t belong in office and you should resign.