What Did the President Know? Everything.

Murray Waas is one of those journalists conservatives love to hate because he actually checks his facts like his mentor Jack Anderson used to. "Ummmm...well....ya see...." Shut up cracker! Anyway, Murray has his own blog (http://whateveralready.blogspot.com) which is always informative. The early posts are pretty funny too.

So Mur (mind if I call you Mur) has been writing for the National Journal and recently published a piece called "Insulating Bush" that ties the whole Niger Uranium/Valerie Plame/Lewis Libby debacle together so well even Little Georgie B. could understand it. Or as Daithí Mac Lochlainn (that's David McLoughlin for you non-Irish speaking type folk) over at The Gaelic Starover (http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com) calls him "The Bushling".

The way Mur puts the pieces together they actually appear to fit. And they actually appear to be causing a little -- shall we say discomfort -- in certain political circles. Why? Because at the center of the Uranium/Plame/Libby triangle is a little piece of paper: a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, a "President's Summary" written specifically for Bush in October 2002. That's three months before the infamous State of the Union address where Bush said the Iraqies were trying to buy aluminum tubes to make nuclear weapons. The summary says, "that although 'most agencies judge' that the aluminum tubes were 'related to a uranium enrichment effort,' the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch 'believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.'

So three months before the speech that cemented the US's reasons for going to war, Bush knew that the story being bandied about was a bunch of hooey. Big shock right? Not really -- everyone has known for years that Bush, Cheney & Co. lied through their teeth to get the war machine rolling.

So, according to the National Journal piece, prior to the 2004 election, Karl Rove starts getting antsy about this NIE summary being leaked. Why? Because Joe Wilson--a former ambassador who had been sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to find out if the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium "Yellowcake" used for making nuke-ular bombs-- is rattling the cage and saying things like, "Uunh unh. No way-hay" and writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times about it. The Bush gang has already decided that Joe Tenant and the CIA will take the fall for "faulty" intelligence on Niger, but there's still that nagging issue of Wilson and his doubts about the tubes. This is starting to sound like "The Caine Mutiny". "Ah but the tubes...thats where I had them..."

Anyway, the plan was hatched to discredit Wilson and his position in Niger through his wife, Valerie Plame, the CIA operative who "was responsible" for his position. As we now know, Bush told Cheney, who told Rove, who told Libby, who told Novak, Miller, Cooper, Woodward...and so on, and so on, and so on to "out" Valerie Plame.

You can read the whole thing for yourself at http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm.

Its a helluva yarn. Can't wait to find out how it ends. Great job Mur. Keep up the good work.