Politics As Usual

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And would France have a problem with this if it were anti-Semitic? I think not. It wouldn't care, would it? In fact, France would be good with it.

I don't know what you mean. In France synagouges are been vandalised, Jewish kids are been assulted, etc. If yuo want I'll start posting news items so you have a sense. France has something like 5 million muslim immigrants. If even a small percentage become militant anti-jewish, the Jews in France are in for some tough times. Since France would like to maintain an image of a civilized country ran by the rule of law, the frequent attacks will be a problem.

Or did i use a word wrong so you're trying to one up me with your better education?

[SlaveNoMore]

I really didn't have time to catch up from the weekend, so let me change the topic to the following:

"Joe Wilson, partisan hack, revealed as a fraud and exposed as covering for his CIA wife, who, contrary to his repeated assertions, was indeed sent to Africa per Plame's suggestion"


Please discuss. Feel free to use charts and graphs from Josh's spin cycle or all the blogs countering.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I really didn't have time to catch up from the weekend, so let me change the topic to the following:

"Joe Wilson, partisan hack, revealed as a fraud and exposed as covering for his CIA wife, who, contrary to his repeated assertions, was indeed sent to Africa per Plame's suggestion"


Please discuss. Feel free to use charts and graphs from Josh's spin cycle or all the blogs countering.

Feel free to post whatever you read that you think is so compelling -- does anything change the facts that (1) the CIA thought the Nigerian uranium thing was bogus and shouldn't be in presidential speeches, and (2) White House officials busted the cover of a CIA operative to get revenge on her husband?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I really didn't have time to catch up from the weekend, so let me change the topic to the following:

"Joe Wilson, partisan hack, revealed as a fraud and exposed as covering for his CIA wife, who, contrary to his repeated assertions, was indeed sent to Africa per Plame's suggestion"


Please discuss. Feel free to use charts and graphs from Josh's spin cycle or all the blogs countering.

I must've been in a cave the last few days, because this is new to me. Is there a good link that summarizes this?

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Feel free to post whatever you read that you think is so compelling -- does anything change the facts that (1) the CIA thought the Nigerian uranium thing was bogus and shouldn't be in presidential speeches, and (2) White House officials busted the cover of a CIA operative to get revenge on her husband?

1) The CIA did nothing when offered a text of the speech. In light of the of SSCI report, how you can say this is beyond me. They cleared the language.

2) White House officials offered her name - not as revenge - but to rebut his partisan attacks and to demonstrate the clear motive behind his appointment. Hardly the same thing.

Some interesting analysis here

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
1) The CIA did nothing when offered a text of the speech. In light of the of SSCI report, how you can say this is beyond me. They cleared the language.

2) White House officials offered her name - not as revenge - but to rebut his partisan attacks and to demonstrate the clear motive behind his appointment. Hardly the same thing.

Some interesting analysis here

Your earlier post and this one makes me think that you are posting about Susan Schmidt's article in the Washington Post, and that you already have read Josh Marshall's response. To recap the bidding, then, for everyone else, Schmidt wrote the above. Marshall points out:

(1) The text of the Senate report contradicts Schmidt's characterization of it, and it appears that she didn't bother to read the report itself, and instead relied on what a (Republican?) staffer told her. Page 56 of the report says:

• Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI drafted a memo for the NSC outlining the facts that the CIA believed needed to be changed, and faxed it to the Deputy Natoinal Security Advisor and the speech writers. Referring to the sentence on uranium from Africa the CIA said, "remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."
  
  ... Later that day, the NSC staff prepared draft seven of the Cincinnati speech which contained the line, "and the regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa." Draft seven was sent to CIA for coordination.
  
  ... The ADDI told Committee staff he received the new draft on October 6, 2002 and noticed that the uranium information had "not been addressed," so he alerted the DCI. The DCI called the Deputy National Security Advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. On July 16, 2003, the DCI testified before the SSCI that he told the Deputy National Security Advisor that the "President should not be a fact witness on this issue," because his analysts had told him the "reporting was weak." The NSC then removed the uranium reference from the draft of the speech.
  
  Although the NSC had already removed the uranium reference from the speech, later on October 6th, 2002 the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, "more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine city by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British."

This is the opposite of "clearing the language."

(2) Whatever their motive, what they did was a crime. And it hardly rebutted his "partisan attacks." It was a case of kill the messenger's wife.

[andViolins]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And would France have a problem with this if it were anti-Semitic? I think not. It wouldn't care, would it? In fact, France would be good with it.

Nice try, but it seems to me that with the way the French have attempted to deny that many of these attacks are anti-Semitic in nature (as opposed to just being bad French people attacking other French people who, suprisingly, happen to be Jewish), in addition to the fact that even when stories like this break in the news, we see that the fine French people do little, if anything to help their fellow Jewish Frenchmen (or women) when being viciously attacked, leads me to believe that quite a few of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys are, in fact, good with it.

aV

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by andViolins
Nice try, but it seems to me that with the way the French have attempted to deny that many of these attacks are anti-Semitic in nature (as opposed to just being bad French people attacking other French people who, suprisingly, happen to be Jewish), in addition to the fact that even when stories like this break in the news, we see that the fine French people do little, if anything to help their fellow Jewish Frenchmen (or women) when being viciously attacked, leads me to believe that quite a few of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys are, in fact, good with it.

aV

Nobody came to help Kitty Genovese, but that does not make Americans murderers, or anti-Italian, etc. I don't disagree that there are anti-Semites in France, and that it's a problem. (My last post was a joke, obviously.) It is worth noting that a lot of the anti-Semitism -- including the case of the woman and baby who were just attacked -- involve North African immigrants. It suggests something more complicated is going on here.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by andViolins
Nice try, but it seems to me that with the way the French have attempted to deny that many of these attacks are anti-Semitic in nature (as opposed to just being bad French people attacking other French people who, suprisingly, happen to be Jewish), in addition to the fact that even when stories like this break in the news, we see that the fine French people do little, if anything to help their fellow Jewish Frenchmen (or women) when being viciously attacked, leads me to believe that quite a few of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys are, in fact, good with it.

aV

Ty was attacked my sloppy wording, not defending the French.

But point well taken on the people sitting on the train watching. Perhaps the other French people on the train were older, and had flashbacks to the 40's when they assisted the genocide of their Jewish countrymen. Of course, the woman who was attacked wasn't even Jewish after all.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Ty was attacked my sloppy wording, not defending the French.

But point well taken on the people sitting on the train watching. Perhaps the other French people on the train were older, and had flashbacks to the 40's when they assisted the genocide of their Jewish countrymen. Of course, the woman who was attacked wasn't even Jewish after all.

The attackers didn't even suggest she was Jewish until they saw where she lived -- which suggests to me that the anti-Semitism was tied up in class issues.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I really didn't have time to catch up from the weekend, so let me change the topic to the following:

"Joe Wilson, partisan hack, revealed as a fraud and exposed as covering for his CIA wife, who, contrary to his repeated assertions, was indeed sent to Africa per Plame's suggestion"


Please discuss. Feel free to use charts and graphs from Josh's spin cycle or all the blogs countering.

We may as well discuss W's cross-dressing.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The attackers didn't even suggest she was Jewish until they saw where she lived -- which suggests to me that the anti-Semitism was tied up in class issues.

the quote doesn't mean they didn't start messing with her because they saw her as Jewish-looking (isn't anti-semetic also anti-arab? Atticus?). What sort of nightmearish shits would attack a mom and baby for class reasons. By class reasons I assume you mean it was just going to be a robbery, and then got racist once they saw where she lived. Problem with your story is, a robber tends to leave after grabbing the purse. these guys were looking for a name to "prove it" since her name apparently was "jewish-sounding" they fell back to neighborhood.

Of course the story doesn't include all my details either but my details fit better than your's for sure.

France is facing some serious problems here. Read what Chirac said about this attack. Immigration of Jews to Israel doubled last year. despite the intifada they are safer in Israel?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore

2) White House officials offered her name - not as revenge - but to rebut his partisan attacks and to demonstrate the clear motive behind his appointment. Hardly the same thing.

So now you're admitting that the White House broke the law and exposed a CIA operative for purely political purposes?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
So now you're admitting that the White House broke the law and exposed a CIA operative for purely political purposes?

Look. You guys with your purely political purposes crap....

Vote to re-elect W. then for 4 years he won't be worrying about purely political purposes. Kerry will. Can you see the difference?

[SlaveNoMore]

Shape Shifter
So now you're admitting that the White House broke the law and exposed a CIA operative for purely political purposes?

If you are saying that I am reiterating that someone leaked the name of a non-field operative (who, as Joe himself said repeatedly to Josh, is nothing more that a house wife taking care of 2 screaming kids) to impeach his credibility. ie. that he was not this appointed, disinterested public servant - but some opportunist that used his wife's credentials to mudsling the White House and lie about his findings, then yes, that is what I am saying.