quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

Just what is it that Assange did that was so dangerous? The Bush administration was far more dangerous and harmful to US interests in lying about Iraq, then blowing the cover of CIA officer Valerie Plame and her under cover operations.

As far as the CIA bringing Assange 'to room temperature' what do you think the rape charges are about? They (CIA) sent a woman to seduce him and then claim rape, convincing another Assange gf to claim 'rape' also, well after such alleged incidence. A female Swedish prosecutor determined that the charges had no merit, but subsequently some apparently 'convincing' back channel pressure (wonder by whom?) forced Sweden to re-open and then pursue the case.


Assange is no 'hero' to me, and certainly not a person of high character, but anything leaked by him pales in comparison to actions that Bush administration employees Lewis Libby and Richard Armitage et. al. actively pursued in destroying the operations run by Valerie Plame by directly releasing classified information to reporters and ending the CIA career of their under cover officer.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

The issue concerning Valerie Plame is well supported and indeed confirmed by responsible parties. She ran a counter-proliferation operation. The CIA paid for her two Masters degrees obtained in Europe. The belief in anything contrary is all yours.

Your 'projection' upon another concerning belief is pitiful enough, but then using TV characters to make your point (I had to look up who they were, not aware of them at all here, being that I hardly watch the tube) is truly laughable. Not to mention quite telling.


Pardon me for not running out and getting a subscription to People Magazine so as to understand your perspective.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

I agree about the character (or lack of, rather) concerning Assange. But not about the supposed 'damage' he has done to US interests, as claimed by some. Nothing let out by him that wasn't already known by interested parties aside from a few embarrassing sordid but essentially inconsequential details.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

I wouldn't venture into such territory as either Assange or Plame with out due diligence, however.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

My efforts in those or any other matters are a process of getting around and/or reading through various 'beliefs' as begot by political ideologies or popular culture.


(Looks at the end of that last sentence and says to myself: "You mean there's a difference?")

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

Thank you, sir.

Regarding the Plame affair; however deeply I dug into it, I could not find any credible evidence against the fact that she was a CIA officer and under-cover operative running a counter-proliferation operation. The CIA will only allow that she worked for them, it being a classified operation making this understandable on their part. But her task in running the operation and the leaking of classified information by administration officials to the press are verified sufficiently enough that that is what the prosecutors and all other lawyers in the case are going on as they proceed with several law suits in the matter.

quote:

ORIGINAL: xssve

This just in: the cold war is over baby!

quote:

ORIGINAL: popeye1250

This guy is a dangerous idiot.
Why hasn't the CIA or,..."No Such Agency" brought him to room temperature?

quote:

Oh, brother ....!

Assange was and is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing useful idiot and hypocrite.

Self-agrandizing means someone who is interested in making money for themselves...do you think that is a bad thing?
Being useful is probably what makes him the money wouldn't you think?
Being an idiot is genetic and not changable...so why the comment?
What has he done that is hypocritical? Do you feel he is more or less hypocritical than dubya or obama?

Your unsupported belief that Plame was running any operations is ludicrious. Almost as ludicrous as the belief that the Bush admin had any interest or plan in sabotaging her. Plame and husband were the political version of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, and their machinations finally caught up with them, and they cried a river and got even more attention.

The facts seem to contradict your opinion.

Geeezzz.

Geezzz indeed

Firm

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

..., but I started this thread in answer to some who have held him up as some sort of "hero" in the entire affair.

Firm

quote:

ORIGINAL: BoxwineForBrunch

bradley manning, on the other hand, is absolutely a hero.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

The Breathtaking Hypocrisy of Julian Assange, Kremlin Pawn
1/25/2012 @ 12:07PM

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

quote:

ORIGINAL: BoxwineForBrunch

bradley manning, on the other hand, is absolutely a hero.

Well, that's one perspective. Another is that Bradley Manning is a sniveling little shit who violated his contract, and his oath, and if he thinks having to remain closeted about his sexual confusion while on active duty was an "awkward place," let's just wait until he gets a taste of general population in Leavenworth.

quote:

Your unsupported belief that Plame was running any operations is ludicrious. Almost as ludicrous as the belief that the Bush admin had any interest or plan in sabotaging her.

quote:

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." Napoleon Bonaparte

There was plenty of stupidity and incompetence - and politics - involved with the entire Plame Affair, including hers, the CIAs, Armitage, The V-Ps office, and certainly and especially Joe Wilson.

quote:

United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby" (Case No. 1:2005-cr-00394-RBW) is the federal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration.

Libby served as Assistant to the President under George W. Bush and Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs under Dick Cheney from 2001 to 2005. Libby resigned from his government positions hours after his indictment on October 28, 2005.

Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury on five felony counts of making false statements to federal investigators, perjury for lying to a federal grand jury, and obstruction of justice for impeding the course of a federal grand jury investigation concerned with the possibly-illegal leaking by government officials of the classified identity of a covert agent of the CIA, Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Pursuant to the grand jury leak investigation, Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007, on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. He was acquitted of one count of making false statements.

Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000. The sentence was commuted in June 2007 by President Bush, voiding the prison term. The convictions still stand on the record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby

quote:

ORIGINAL: leonine

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

The Breathtaking Hypocrisy of Julian Assange, Kremlin Pawn
1/25/2012 @ 12:07PM

Good grief, is it still 1970 where you live?  Next you'll be telling the guy to get a haircut.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

quote:

Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury on five felony counts of making false statements to federal investigators, perjury for lying to a federal grand jury, and obstruction of justice for impeding the course of a federal grand jury investigation concerned with the possibly-illegal leaking by government officials of the classified identity of a covert agent of the CIA,

Argue as you like, but use real facts to prove your point, please.

The real facts are that Bush sent Wilson to Niger to 'confirm' certain documents. Wilson found them to be forged, and so reported. This was not convenient, so the President lied to Congress and Congress voted for war. $4,000,000,000,000 later, here we are.

Julian Assange and Bradly Manning are mere footnotes to these much larger issues. So are the million casualties. And, of course, the destruction.

REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S
PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ
Ordered Reported on July 7, 2004
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
UNITED STATES SENATE
108th CONGRESS

Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.

At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador's comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents "may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,'" could not have been based on the former ambassador's actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador's trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador's trip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA's reports and said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.

Following the Vice President's review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger. The former ambassador's public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President's request for the Agency's analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003, said, "The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there." The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.

These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report "debunked" the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public's understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.

During Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had "debunked" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT "debunk" the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it m ay be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.

In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair." The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so.

1.  Bush didn't send Wilson to Niger, btw, He was chosen by the CIA.  His wife, in fact (that's in the report as well, in her own words).

2. Wilson wasn't sent to Niger to confirm any documents.  The CIA didn't even have the documents at the time he was sent to Niger.

3. Wilson's report - according to CIA sources - tended to confirm, not deny that Iraq had bought yellow-cake.

4.  All the rest of your assumptions and claims about Bush lying about the entire thing is based on political motivated lies of Wilson and the other politicians that benefited (or thought they'd benefit) from the lies.

Fleischer: Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.

Rice: What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.

Tenet: These 16 words should never have been included in the text written
for the President.