Taking Aim is an extremely left-wing radio show… I recently heard a piece supporting the recent “out-ing” of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in their show “Outing the
Gentlemen Killers of the CIA, Part I.” Yikes.
Their argument is, the wrong questions are being asked… the law that makes the leaking of Plame’s involvement illegal is itself regressive, since its only purpose is to mask atrocities the CIA is committing on a daily basis.
It’s an interesting take, since the Democrats are using this incident in its more traditional setting of “someone on the Bush administration broke the law and needlessly endagered the life of someone who didn’t agree with them,” which is of course valid… but it makes you re-examine the more basic questions, like “should the American taxpayers be sponsoring terrorism in the form of the CIA’s operations abroad?”
In case you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, Joseph Wilson is an ex-ambassador to Iraq (under the Bush Sr. administration) and a generally credible person, who recently debunked the current administration’s assertion that Iraq was getting uranium from Niger. At the time of the investigation, Wilson did the research, as directed by the White House… he came back with a negative report- such a thing was very unlikely. The White House used the information anyway in, among other places, the State of the Union address.
Months later, Wilson went public with this gap between what he advised and what the White House wanted to hear. Then, seemingly in retribution, administration officials then blew the cover of his wife (Valerie Plame), who was apparently a CIA agent. Incidentally, this act in itself is illegal under a law passed under the previous Bush administration… but you can read all about that in the mainstream press.