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November 08, 2005

General Vallely (Ret'd): Wilson Outed His Wife To Me Three Times In 2002

Sounds like a witness in Libby's trial to me... to prove the non-materiality of the alleged lies:

A retired Army general says the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, revealed his wife Valerie Plame's employment with the agency in a casual conversation more than a year before she allegedly was "outed" by the White House through a columnist.
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.

Strata-Sphere has found at least four occasions when Vallely and Wilson were guests on Fox at about the same time.

posted by Ace at 01:58 PM

Comments

Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?!?

Huh.

BTW, dunno if you caught Drudge. . . sounds like there might be a chance that *somebody* in Congress is unable to differentiate between "good leaks" and "bad leaks," and instead just sees "leaks."

Whaddya know-- classified info might actually be. . . CLASSIFIED!

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 8, 2005 02:08 PM

Ahh.. World Net Daily, great source.

Kinda Like the National Enquirer for bedwetters.

Posted by: X. on November 8, 2005 02:17 PM

Oh, Tubinoooooooo.

Posted by: JackStraw on November 8, 2005 02:17 PM

Vallely was on Hannity's show yesterday too. Said he'd be happy to testify under oath.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on November 8, 2005 02:42 PM

Nice try - you can't distract from Libby's indictment!

I'l put my hands over my ears and say LALALALALALALALALALA now...

Posted by: The Dying Hopes of an Increasingly Unhinged Left on November 8, 2005 02:52 PM

Hmmm ... a battle royal of trustworthiness and political credibility, huh? Sounds interesting.

"In the black (ops) corner, weighing in with years of actual battlefield and intelligence experience ... General Paul Vallely!

... and in the (Commie-symp) red corner, weighing in with a pink-diaper-baby wife who's employed by a seditionist government agency actively campaigning against a sitting President during wartime ... (Pot) Smokin' Joe Wilson!"

Frankly, I like the General's odds in this one.

Posted by: 12" Saturday Night on November 8, 2005 02:53 PM

I don't want to seem petty towards the General here, but isn't this something he could have maybe mentioned, I don't know, a YEAR AGO!?

Posted by: Tony B on November 8, 2005 02:54 PM

TonyB, are you questioning the timing?

Seriously, though, that's a valid point. Mentioning this earlier would have been really, really helpful.

Posted by: utron on November 8, 2005 02:58 PM

I figure this is a good time to point out that there is a defense contained with the IIPA, "It is contained in Section 422 (of Title 50, U.S. Code), and it provides that an accused leaker is in the clear if, sometime before the leak, "the United States ha[s] publicly acknowledged or revealed" the covert agent's "intelligence relationship to the United States[.]"

It sort of fits in with Wilson's loose lips as well.

However, someone else had earlier pointed out that Josh Marshal had wished it weren't so, so I am countering with this link. I was going to link to my ferret, but its been down in the dumps ever since the Wash Post outed our black ops jails.

Posted by: joeindc44 on November 8, 2005 02:59 PM

but its been down in the dumps ever since the Wash Post outed our black ops jails.

But Drudge says they're going after the leakers.

Posted by: geoff on November 8, 2005 03:04 PM

But Drudge says they're going after the leakers.

Bring it on. Imagine months and months of reminders of govt secrecy, to hide a policy that our president denies even exists.

It won't take long before the GOP realizes they don't really want a debate on torture, or on some right to preserve secret gulags.

Wasn't it just a few months ago that there was OUTRAGE that Amnesty International used the word GULAG about Gitmo?

And now we're supposed to switch from denying the existence, to not only accepting it, but being outraged at this non-news being made official by leaks?

Honestly, who can keep up?

Posted by: tubino on November 9, 2005 11:24 AM

TonyB, are you questioning the timing?
Seriously, though, that's a valid point. Mentioning this earlier would have been really, really helpful.

Gee, ya think? And not just ONE year ago, but two.

Of course, if we're going to play THAT game, then why didn't Bush get the truth from Rove TWO years ago? And from Cheney? Ari Fleischer? Libby?

Have you all forgotten that your president confirmed that his staff had not leaked? Libby, technically, reports to Bush as well as to Cheney, BTW.

Wouldn't it have been helpful if they had told the truth then?

Or maybe they did -- but then Bush has been lying for two years.

Anyway, I think these folks who suddenly found their repressed memories can still testify to the FBI. Who can then have a chat with Victor Davis Hanson.

Anyone ready to place a bet? I'm betting these new slimers will never offer their testimony to the FBI or Fitzgerald. If they were willing, they would have done it TWO YEARS AGO, and Fitz could have subpoenaed Hanson and the rest.

Posted by: tubino on November 9, 2005 11:37 AM

Everyone is a liar EXCEPT for Wilson.
Wilson's story is unraveling like a loose thread on a wool sweater, but that's only the rightwingnut smear machine working with the biased corporate media like the NYT.

Posted by: Toobeano on November 9, 2005 07:58 PM

Vallely is a lying sack of crap.

Posted by: Hesiod on November 10, 2005 09:31 AM

Yes! Media Matters! There’s an unimpeachable source.

I particularly like the part where Joe Wilson calls somebody a liar.

Irony is so, ironic.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on November 10, 2005 09:42 AM

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Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
Batman is still workshopping his Bat-Voice

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.