Did the outing of non-spy Valerie Plame expose two huge CIA operations? Embarass any allies? Set the Europeans off on an investigation to find where we're holding Al Qaeda terrorists?

No.

What's your point?

Of course those are not as important. These lovers of freedom who are such ardent supporters of our troops wouldn't dream of weakening our country in any way, any time, any how. Why, don'tchaknow that protest is the sincerest form of love of our country?

They are so determined to prove we are evil they can't see the evil they commit.

well said. as always.

i posted on this here

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-bad-fallout-from-secret-cia.html

last week.

the weird thing is that anti-Semite/anti-neo-con/anti-Bushie - and total failure as head of the binLaden desk of the CIA - Michael Scheuer has repeatedly praised rendition and been very critical of these leaks.

he says it's the single most effective weapon the cia has.

i belive that the folks who LEAK these things are NOT DUMB; THEY KNOW THIS.

and they leak anyway. they are probably MOLES.

don't laugh: the USSR - who had less doremi than the Saudis - bought Ames and hannsen - the chiefs of counter espionage for the CIA and FBI respectively.

certainly some megarich Saudis who sympathsize with alqaeda cohld have donetyed enough moola to buy a few well-placed underlings in apsition to know things - AND LEAK THINGS.

that doesn't piss me off; i expect the enemy to use anything ands everything against us. including buying moles.

the freakin' enraging part is that the left-wing dominated MSM plays along.

WHY!?!?!?

i think because (1) they hate bush more than they want our side to win; and (2) as post-modern Leftists (folks rasied in the Left sionce the 1960's; the "counter-culture Left") they have been brainwashed to basically hate the West, to hate bourgoise values and tradition and Judeo-Christian values.

I use the word hate advisedly.

anyone who oppses traditonal Western judeo-Christian values is an ally for them in the culture wars.

that's why they are basically sympathetic to jihadofascism. radical islam hates the West as much as the Left does.

this convergence is so powerful for them that they sweep all the other differences under the rug: the homophobia; misogyny; slavery; beheadings; and of course the anti-Semitism is EASY to ignore!

the remedy is locking the leaskers up - boith the moles and their WILLING ACCOMPLICES IN THE MSM.

more on the ENORMOU$ financing of jihadoterorism

here:

http://www.aina.org/news/20051108101117.htm

buying moles is very cost effective.

it is cheaper and easier to demolish secret prsions with a leak than to try to take them out militarily or woith a terro attack.

and the MSM who publish these leaks are either deliberately complicit or willing stooges.

a difference without a distinction because the folks in the MSM are smart enough to know that they harm our side and help the enemy in the GWOT.

sadly, publishing a leak which hurts our national security is a GOOD CAREER move in the MSM --- which prizes notoriety more than patriotism.

and which loves to exploit notoriety.

Ace: I am SHOCKED SHOCKED I tell ya. The N.Y. Times acting in their own interest and against the interests of our country? Why next thing you'll tell me it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer ; that my dog often has bad breath and pigeons sometimes poop on my car.

Why are the CIA using these prisons in the first place? Why not just ship the prisoners to Gitmo?

Aside from the annoying double-standard of leaks, etc, what jumps out at me in this story is the apparently unnecessary cloak-and-dagger stuff from the CIA. Am I missing something?

The good guess is plausible deniabilty. Prisoners we don't want to admit to having (perhaps because an agent is actively spoofing them, or they were delivered/captured through comprimisable means) and prisoners who could actually be enduring something a bit harsher than a strip tease and belly smack (hopefully for good reasons) would be the ones warehoused there.
We can't store them on US territory or possesions since we're one court decsion away from giving the detanees full voting rights, but we just don't want to put a bullet in their heads yet. So where do we keep them? Inside friendly countries who want our bases of course.

Howard:
We can't store them on US territory or possesions since we're one court decsion away from giving the detanees full voting rights

All that makes sense. But then we ought to fight that domestic battle openly rather than try to hide from it.

Same goes for Gitmo. Holding them in Cuba is a dodge. Most Americans have no idea why we can't just treat them either as criminals or as POWs, because Bush has never made the case to us.

The net result is that criticism of Gitmo happens in an information vacuum and the public doesn't know what to make of it, and then we find out about the CIA running secret prisons and the like. It doesn't look good, and it's completely unnecessary. Unnecessary secrecy cost us a lot of public support during the Vietnam war; we do not need that happening now.

Bush needs to spend some political capital explaining what we're trying to do and what our constraints actually are. The American people aren't stupid. If it's laid out to the public clearly, Bush will get enough support. Most Americans want to win this war.

Our captured enemies belong in prisons on US soil.

too bad this kind of energy isnt expended looking for saddams wmds in syria etc

I don't know if there's any evidence about this info being leaked by moles. It looks like the US has been transiting prisoners through allied countries (e.g. Spain) which are liberal democracies with a functioning judicial system. Even if the local government covers the CIA's use of air bases with no questions asked, suspicious locals can institute legal proceedings, which is what happened in the case of Spain.

Moral of the story : if you're going to do stuff that decent people consider to be human rights abuses (to the extent that you couldn't do it on US soil), be careful to implicate only client dictatorships.

alistair nails it.

Spain takes human rights abuses seriously. Remember the Pinochet case?

US could be quite insistent on applying its laws to planes landing on US territory.

EU can too.

Also, as has been mentioned many times before, the planes used by the CIA have been identified for decades. EVERYONE knew in Central America which planes were CIA. It seems to be impossible to keep a secret, for fairly obvious reasons.

OT:

I know many here are fans of Star Wars/Trek. Can't say I share your passion. But to each his own...

Free Internet "Star Trek" spoof is top Finnish film

I have no doubt Americans would support whatever means we used to park prisoners under the current circumstances. But that would mean fuck-all once you got these prisoners in front of a judge, who would rule on the law and not public opinion.

Don't bring these sub-human terror scum anywhere near here unless you want to see them grandstanding in court, blowing covert ops and telegraphing their capture to their fellow conspirators.

Nah. Europe is fussy about these things. They take human rights abuses seriously when they come from the Right and are none of their goddamned business, and not at all when they come from the Left and are largely their own doing. An elderly Pinochet gets nailed by Spain while on invitation in England for crimes against Chile. But the Arafats and Mugabes of the world are wined and dined across Europe while the blood on their hands ain't dry.

Still merrily breaking eggs and nobody's seen an omelette yet.

The press is doing it's job, which is reporting the news. This is undeniably news.

If the war requires a suppression of reporting, then the Congress should declare war and openly suppress it. Then when the war ends they can unsuppress it. In the long run, that would be less damaging to the institution of the free press than some vague idea that the media should not undermine the interests of the country.

As a general rule, I don't want the NYTimes censoring the news for me on the basis of their idea about what's "good for the country." That's not their job.

Goddamit. "its" not "it's"

Ha! Now add a misspelling to my list of crimes.

So how far does this 'right to know' extend? Should the press report troop movements? Should the press report on military deployments? There does have to be some point at which editors, producers and reporters say - wait.

In the end, this story is going to be bad for the press, because I'll bet they've burned bridges by reporting this. Burning a source for the sake of a story sounds noble, but in the end it means less access and less information.

It's a balancing act, not a black and white equation of right to know versus government secrecy.

There does, but I'd like a more concrete principle than "bad for the interests of the country."

And I didn't say anything about a right to know. I think a vigorous free press is just as much about the interests of the country.

There does, but I'd like a more concrete principle than "bad for the interests of the country."

Really?

Jamie...

I think a vigorous free press is just as much about the interests of the country.

I think the problem most people have is that the free press never seems to act vigorously in defense of our country, only to implicate the government for various things which will harm our reputation around the globe.

There does, but I'd like a more concrete principle than "bad for the interests of the country."

Since the right to a free press is guaranteed by the American constitution, one would hope the press has the interests of the country that protects its rights in mind.

Since the right to a free press is guaranteed by the American constitution, one would hope the press has the interests of the country that protects its rights in mind.

But by that standard we would expect women & the gay community to be much more monolithic anc constant in their support for the GWOT.

"Since the right to a free press is guaranteed by the American constitution, one would hope the press has the interests of the country that protects its rights in mind."

You'd hope. But sometimes I think that the press wants a situation more like what is in France - where the leftists have all the free speech there is, but any opposing view is "hate speech" and therefore suppressed. Back to the old "free speech for me but not for thee" meme. Todays MSM media just don't see themselves as threatened by anything but contrary opinions.

This whole thing has nothing to do with secrecy vs. open governing. If it did, the press (NYT) would have been howling at Uncle Joe instead of lavishing heaping praises upon his head.

The entire question is whether the press is guaranteed the right in the Constitution to undermine the interests of the United States with impugnity. I say not, but try finding a prosecutor with the gall to indict, or a judge to rule with anything that approaches common sense interpretation of the law.

When the Constitution was written and adopted, life expectancy was much shorter than now, and term-for-life was not a bad thing for the judicial. Now that life expectancy is approximately twice what it was then, I would support a move to appoint judges to a set (long) term, but leave it so they would have to live with the consequenses of their own decisions as "regular" citizens at some point in their natural life.

But that's a question for another thread.

But the Arafats and Mugabes of the world are wined and dined across Europe while the blood on their hands ain't dry.

I don't think Arafat or Mugabe were violating rights on EU soil, or were abusing EU citizens.

IIRC, some of the Pinochet case involved Spanish citizens...

If more people knew the name of Ronnie Moffitt, I'd have something apropos to say about the US and Pinochet.

Seems to me the question is whether sovereign nations have any say on what the US does on their territory in regards to international law, and treaties to which the US is a signatory.

Is anyone here arguing against that?

STARVE IT.

spongeworthy:
But that would mean fuck-all once you got these prisoners in front of a judge, who would rule on the law and not public opinion.

I know. But what I'm really trying to get at is that the Bush administration should have done the legwork and built a completely new legal framework for dealing with suspected al-Qaeda types.

The reason a judge would mess it up today is because a judge has no choice but to interpret existing laws, which are probably going to peg the prisoner as either a criminal or a POW, which doesn't work for reasons we all know.

What needed to be done (but, sadly, was not) was some fairly unprecedented new laws. It would have been hard to do right. But we've had years, had they made it a priority. (And, for that matter, the "loyal opposition", instead of unhelpful and unrealistic sniping, could have actually stepped up to the plate and made a proposal for something like this. A bipartisan effort to win the war on terror would be sweet.)

Bush administration should have done the legwork and built a completely new legal framework for dealing with suspected al-Qaeda types.

I thought we already had precedents from WWII. Am I mistaken? There is no need for, and prudence argues against, creating novel classifications until someone throws out the old ones.

Well, the WWII precedents are so...
warrish
Which is a problem for most leftwing lawyers.
People got so upset when one suggested that internment camps are still constitutional, merely because noone has bothered to rule them unconstitutional. But that's changed.
I think the Sandra Day O'connor Supreme Court would have eventually given full 4th and 5th amendment rights to enemy combatants. That's why Bush's Court picks have arguably had impeccable GWOT credentials.