Payback? How did Bush officials get back at Ambassador Joseph Wilson for talking publicly two weeks ago about his trip to Niger to investigate claims of an Iraqi uranium deal? By outing his wife as an undercover CIA operative. As David Corn of The Nation says, "...the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it..... a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as 'nonofficial cover' and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration." The exposure of an undercover CIA agent is in fact a federal crime.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Jul 17, 2003 - 159 comments

Maybe there are no weapons, after all... "On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that "raises questions about whether the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist," the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims...." This is the same defector cited by the Bush administration numerous times as a reliable informant on the scope of Saddam's long-term WMD plans.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Feb 28, 2003 - 49 comments