By the way, this all happened because Republicans are weak on terror when it counts.

It’s starting to sink in: #43 is an idiot. And like the Kiss Float defined the CT primary, the screenshot from Scarborough’s show with the crawl headline â€Is Bush an Idiot?†could come to define this whole era. The popular, collective mind is becoming fixed on this, and it will be irrefutable wisdom soon. I’d bet my house on it.

Tony Blair may be many oily things, but I don’t believe he’s an idiot and I don’t think he wants to go down in history as the pm who was taken in BY an idiot. It’s got to be clear to him now that that will be his legacy. Our alliance with the UK will be difficult until 2009 at the earliest.

Took the weekend off and hung out with the in-laws, but as I understand it the Ockham-compliant Condensed Storyline now looks like this:

1) with various potentially awkward electoral moments coming up (CT Dem primary looking like a watershed, warrantless surveillance court rulings, yet-more congressional corruption, war in Afghanistan Iraq Lebanon not going well, yadda yadda) somebody clever decides that the GOP needs a newsworthy hook on which to hang a â€Dems are weak on terror†PR blitz

2) well aware of the Pakistani Brits, who fit into the plot a lot better than dreadlocked Florida rudeboys (plus having the advantage of having their own money and boots), the US asks the UK to arrest some people (with much fanfare if possible, but if not no big deal, we can create the fanfare)

3) the UK, not unreasonably, declines, points out that there is no immediate threat, and not enough evidence, and explains yet again to the Bushies about using small fish to catch bigger fish, not killing the goose that lays the golden eggs etc etc…

4) approaching the end of July and with time a-wastin’ the Bushies go straight to Musharraf et al, and possibly also to an unidentified â€British security agency’s informer in Pakistan with contacts with Rauf,†and lean hard on them

5) Musharraf et al come through with an arrest, and lean even harder on Rauf in turn, while Tony, blissfully unaware of how directly and effectively he has been undermined, dreams about relaxing on the beach with a pina colada in a cocounut shell

6) Rauf’s arrest causes Rauf’s â€unidentified associate†(who may or may not be the same person mentioned above) to call the High Wycombe cell with something along the lines of â€please destroy ten airliners at your earliest convenience, and send expense account receipts to head office†thereby forcing the UK’s hand

7) Lo and behold! Heathrow shut down, Dems weak on terror, warrantless surveillance essential, etc etc…

Am I missing anything?

radish, somebody clever is Rover
and landreau, to late for Tony Blair

At the risk of dregging up mossy old theories here (and you DID mention Plame, EW) BushCo loves to think that â€leaks†are good business when BushCo holds the valve. Yeah the Brit Bombs-on-a-plane scare smells like fish in a can.

And speaking of moldy old theories, I still say that (whatever the real motive) Plame’s outing was an opportunity hitched to a passing crisis. So, IMHO, l’Affaire Plame was MIHOP all the way. it fits the BushCo MO to a tee.

OT, but I believe the AP has today confirmed that Armitage met with Woodward for one hour on June 13, 2003. Basically confirms what’s already been known/suspected. Apologies if this AP thing is actually an older story that I’d missed.

This is not prompted specifically by this news, but I have been thinking lately about how Armitage’s role presents a challenge to emptywheel’s incipiently famous remark at the Plame panel about not wanting to repeat with Plame the fiasco of Iran-Contra: it’s too complicated to explain to the American people. Because the reality is that Armitage does complicate the story, and there are idiots – let’s just call him Christopher Hitchens – not even waiting in the wings, but already on stage declaring that Armitage’s role annihilates the idea of a White House conspiracy. Of course, it does no such thing, but it does complicate things – and my working hypothesis for several months (since becoming convinced that Armitage was Woodward’s source and, especially, Novak’s first source) has been that what we had was a coordinated attack on the Wilsons out of OVP plus whatever it was that Armitage was doing, which was relatively autonomous of what OVP was doing. (We can debate whether Armitage was running down Wilson, as I suspect, or genuinely slipping up while defending Wilson and so on, but that’s irrelevant at the moment.) It violates Occam’s razor – which I have never believed in in human affairs, just as William Ockham around here – but it is not difficult to imagine that there was a lot of activity around the Wilsons in the administration in June-July 2003, not all of it coordinated or part of what set of actions. And that is what I suspect we got.

It does give a little bit of a flavor of a comedy of errors to the whole thing, which of course does not take away from the seriousness of the thing either, but Novak sort of ends up as this weird character – a clown – in the middle, while, in my view, Miller was Libby’s target of opportunity all along, and she didn’t publish in the end, preempted by Novak’s column and prevented by her bosses (and ultimately by her own poor previous reporting).

I think you can, in retrospect, see some of this reflected in Fitzgerald’s press conference on the day of Libby’s indictment. First, his specifying that Novak’s column on July 14 was the first sign that Plame’s cover was blown, not the actual blowing of the cover itself. Second, I think Fitzgerald may have in mind something like the comedy of errors I’m describing when he says

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts

and then especially when he illustrates the point with

Agent Eckenrode doesn’t send people out when $1 million is missing from the bank and tell them, â€Just come back if you find wire fraud.†If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that. That’s the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA offier’s identity was blown, it was known there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

In other words, I’m suggesting, Fitzgerald is saying, Plame’s cover was blown, as we learned from Novak’s column, but Agent Eckenrode didn’t send people out to find out just who leaked to Novak (wire fraud), he sent them out to find how her cover was blown through leaks (the missing $1 million), and he found various leaks, and then (departing from the analogy) had to answer all the difficult questions about motive and mode and so on. In this way, Fitzgerald is seeking to put Libby’s underlying actions, which apparently had no direct bearing on Novak’s column, at the center of the actions that led to Plame’s cover being blown, even as seemingly Novak’s first source gets off, presumably because of motive issues, plus he apparently told the truth about it.

So all in all, Armitage complicates the story, but most certainly does not annihilate the idea of a coordinated White Hous effort to get the Wilsons, the irrepressible Mr. Hitchens notwithstanding.

Armitage confuses the story, not least because your average American isn’t going to understand how antagonistic was the relationship between Armitage and OVP.

Funny thing about that, though, is that that confusion comes from oversimplifying the story, insofar as people might miss the fact that it’s unlikely Armitage was outing Plame as part of the same set of actions as OVP’s.

But for the idiotic literati like Hitchens, that complication means there was no coordinated White House effort to get the Wilsons and out her.

It’s true that revealing the contours of Armitage’s cooperation would clarify things, but if I’m right and Armitage really was acting independently of Libby et al – and wasn’t being used by them, as you’ve suggested – then it just clarifies the somewhat complicated nature of the story, it doesn’t remove that complication. Of course, if you’re right and Armitage was Libby’s patsy, then it clarifies and simplifies things. It would be extra sweet if Armitage lied to the AP about the content of his June 6ish colloquy with Libby in order to hide from Libby the nature of his cooperation with Fitzgerald. But I doubt it. Alternately, it’s possible that Woodward actually did tell Libby about Armitage, triggering Libby to tell Rove to tell Novak to ask Armitage, or some such. But I doubt that too – and that will hardly simplify the story.

That’s true, but again that speaks to the nature of his cooperation with the investigation, not the nature of his own actions back in June-July 2003, which remain a complicating factor in the story even if he is cooperating. And anyway, why would Armitage have been receiving confirmation calls unless Libby et al knew that Armitage either had blown Plame’s cover with Woodward or Armitage had had some kind of conversation with Libby where it was clear not only that Armitage knew but that he was likely to loose his lips with reporters?

I’m sorry to be so thoroughly cynical, but I don’t trust a single one of them, not Woodward or Armitage either.

I find it questionable that Bob Woodward didn’t mention his conversation with Armitage in which Plame’s name came up, until after Fitz announced Libby’s indictment and he suddenly remembered that he had had this conversation prior to the date which Fitz identified as the first known mention of Plame’s name. It felt fishy, almost like they had a pre-ordained fall back position to come up with an â€earlier date†than Libby’s leak.

Surely during the lead up to the Libby indictment, Woodward must have checked his date book and notes. I’d like to think otherwise about Woodward, but it remains questionable to me.