Juan Cole about the Valerie Plame Affair

Starting with "An 21st Century Caligula..." on November 2, 2005, on this blog, I followed the deployment of the 2003 Valerie Plame affair closely. In my opinion, the primary target of the White House smearing campaign was not, as commonly thought, Plame's husband Wilson, but the liquidation of the CIA front store in Istanbul, led by Plame.
The CIA-Agency involved, was a branch of a CIA-created American firm. Its Istanbul bureau monitored Middle East nuclear efforts. That includes: Turkey, Israel, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. And, maybe, Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf States, as well as Egypt.

It is more than probable, that the Plame-Agency produced embarrassing information about Iraq: No nuclear program there, confirming the El-Baradei assessments. But the main embarrassment came from reports about Turkish-Israeli nuclear collaboration, that Cheney did not want to disturb, while the Iranian efforts to obtain a nuclear capacity should not, at that moment be too much published, for that would undermine the reasoning for an attack on Iraq.

Cheney saw a CIA conspiration against his designs. So, when Plame-spouse Wilson, former US ambassador to Iraq and presented as a hero in 1990, when Saddam Hussein took Western nationals as hostages, went public with a denial of Saddam's supposed deal with the Central African Republic for yellowcake, in June 2003, Cheney reacted as if the CIA were using the same methods as he does: His marginal remarks on the Wilson Op-Ed in the New York Times, revealed at the Libby trial, show a hysteric and revengeful psychopath, cought in his own intrigues.

Meanwhile, the CIA has been more or less dismantled. I have no reason to deplore that. The Agency was during 50 years across my way, in Holland and in Europe. But it's liquidation means also more freedom for the Bush cabal to manipulate information from abroad so as to lure the US into extremely dangerous adventures.

Juan Cole, the indefatigable Middle East Professor from the University of Michigan, daily blogger about Iraq and the Middle East region, produced Saturday an analysis, concise and clear, about the Plame affair. I left out the paragraphs about the details of the US juridical system. The main message is evident: The affair is not about an error of judgment, but it is about high treason. The US have been unnecessarily endangered by the Cheney intrigue. In my view, it is not by chance, that, in June 2003, Cheney obtained the (hitherto) presidential privilege of being allowed to mention undercover US agents.

Juan Cole:

Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: the Plame Affair

Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted destroyed in a fit of pique, was finally allowed to testify before Congress on Friday.
Some in the blogosphere are arguing that the outing of Plame Wilson was an impeachable offense. Defenders of Rove and Cheney say that if they did not know that Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover operative, then they did not break the law by trying to out her.
[..]
Moreover, they did know that Plame Wilson was involved in counter-proliferation efforts, including against Iran. By leaking her name with the intent that journalists such as Judy Miller publish it, they were conveying information about a CIA operation to Iran. That is high treason, even if they did not know she was covert. All they had to know is that she was trying to impede Iran's nuclear program, and that the Iranians did not know that that was what she was doing. You can't make her public without also letting the Iranians know.
[..]
It aided and comforted Iran to know that Valerie Plame Wilson and her dummy CIA corporation, Brewster Jennings & Associates, had been engaged in counter-proliferation efforts against it. Bush put Iran in the Axis of Evil, thus declaring it an enemy of the US.
Therefore, Rove and Cheney (and maybe Bush himself) gave aid and comfort to an enemy of these United States by a deliberate act of outing a CIA operative who was not known to Iran and whose cover and activities had not been.
That's treason. That warrants impeachment.

With an internally divided and short Democrat majority in Congress, an impeachment of the Vice-President, and the more so of the President, is not soon to be expected.
As a two-thirds majority in the Senate is necessary, this option is still far away.

The European Union, endangered by the liquidation of the CIA anti-proliferation outpost in Istanbul, should act on its own now. The nuclear configuration of the Middle East, with Israel at it's core, should be monitored daily, for it is on Europe's doorstep. US adventurism, launching Israeli (and Turkish?) nuclear strikes against Iran, would provoke a nuclear response against Europe, the South-East (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Turkey) in the first place.
Where is our plan?