The Consortiumnews.com

Editor's Note: Below are readers' comments about recent developments in the investigation of how the Bush administration leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, including our stories about the Rove-Armitage connection:

It seems to me a little more than coincidence that Plame was outted as a consequence of damaging Wilson. I'm suspicious that cheney wanted to neutralize her, too. Her group wasn't finding the evidence cheney wanted. Her biggest fault was that she knew otherwise.

In all the talk shows, newsprint, mags, bloggers, etc, I never hear anyone quote Karl Rove's comment that "Joe Wilson's wife is fair game". Why not?
Kenneth Wharton

Bob, I try to be a logical person. I assume you do, too ... though sometimes I think you come up short, unfortunately.

This isn't to rag on you, or play "Gotcha!" I'm just someone who, when he sees contradictions, seeks an explanation.

And for the life of me, I can't figure out why you keep writing that the corpress and attendant punditry are "snookered" by this administration's acts of deceit.

They know the reality ... they're idiots if they don't, right? Perhaps there's some element of willful ignorance involved ... but to me that's just as damnable. These folks have been around the power players for years ... some for decades. Hell, many of them *are* power players, wouldn't you say?

So I can't conceive of any scenario in which they are being misled into their "conventional wisdom". They intentionally seek to create that alternate universe because it ultimately serves their interests, doesn't it?

Isn't that the only logical way to view it? How do you see it
differently? I honestly would like to know, 'cause it's truly
frustrating to see someone who gets so much right seemingly so off-base on such a fundamental question.

I'm sorry the fundraising's going so slowly. Despite the qualms I have with some of your work, I still get quite a bit of important information from it, and would hate to see the site close.

Regards
Doug Latimer
Oakland

To the editor:
I think the major logical fallacy being promoted about Armitage's involvement in the Plame Affair is the notion that the earliest revelation of a covert agent is the only culpable count. In fact, every instance, by any knowledgeable source, is a separate federal felony count. The existence of an earlier revelation should not in any way disqualify Rove or Libby from prosecution. Fitzgerald's acceptance of this argument calls his own independence into doubt. In a murder with multiple agents (as with Agatha Christie's Orient Express), it hardly exonerates the subsequent wielders of the knife to know that some other has stabbed before them. Indeed, their subsequent stabbing is all the more guilty, having been perpetrated against one who is already injured and helpless.

Ben Burrows
Elkins Park, PA

Good job! How they wiggle and wiggle! The CIA outing is really stuck in their craw--it's such a dead giveaway that they don't believe what they profess, don't walk their talk! I'm glad Novak is as forthcoming now as he is; he was "played," and he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. In effect, he allowed himself to become Rove/Cheney & Company's "hit man"; and he's been around so long he can't argue he had no idea what was afoot.

The wigglers do, however, worry me. David Broder's famed impartiality seems to be morphing into indifference to truth and a lazy tolerance. Tolerance of Karl Rove is, of course, a very convenient thing to exercise in D.C.

In general though I see signs of a dawning of awareness. You are less alone, less an exception, than you once were. Not only are there literally millions of Internet readers who have been thinking with you and along your lines for a long time now, but now--to my astonishment--similar sentiments are alive and apparently "well" (pending a mysterious run-over by a taxi-cab) on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann; AP is reporting on dissenting New Yorkers regarding the official version of 9/11; senators are refusing to endorse a practice of using "co-erced testimony" (yeah--should be a no-brainer); CNN is looking into what our government was doing 9/11--with a surprisingly open-minded interview of the Loose Change kids; the Inspector-General for the Department of Interior is saying the Gale Norton crew nurtured an altogether amoral culture at Interior; etc.

While it could still be argued that those against secrecy and privilege have yet to win even one significant battle, there does seem to be a sea change transpiring. For this, you deserve credit, and I hope it buoys your spirits and speeds your efforts toward a restoration of something like democracy in this deeply pained country of ours.

Tom O'Neill