Coddling Kofi Annan

[BigBadBrian]

Coddling Kofi Annan
Robert Novak


December 27, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Norm Coleman bit his lip and kept silent when the State Department expressed confidence in United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The Bush administration seemed to be repudiating the freshman Republican senator from Minnesota, who had called for Annan's resignation. But Coleman was well aware that his investigation of UN corruption is trumped for now by a transcendent issue.

When Annan made a hurried trip to Washington Dec. 16, his non-cooperation with the Jan. 30 election in Iraq was manifest. His attitude changed markedly after Secretary of State Colin Powell declared: "We have confidence in the secretary-general." With that, Annan began to provide the UN's desperately needed help on the elections.

That looks like a big-time deal in the best interests of the United States. Nothing is more important to President Bush than the Iraqi election, dwarfing even full exposure of the UN's oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, including the secretary-general's complicity. But Annan has not bought permanent immunity by belatedly helping in Iraq. The U.S. government includes an independent legislative branch, and Norm Coleman is biding his time.

Just finishing his second year as a senator, Coleman would be invisible in the old Senate. But as chairman of the Senate's permanent investigations subcommittee, Coleman has become the leading congressional watchdog over UN abuses. Despite Powell's avowed confidence in Annan, Coleman is standing by his Dec. 1 column in the Wall Street Journal, which concluded: "If this widespread corruption had occurred in any legitimate organization around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in disgrace. Why is the UN different?"

The corruption was documented in October by chief U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer's report. It shows Saddam Hussein "subverting" the $60 billion oil-for-food program to generate still uncounted billions for the Iraqi dictator's own purposes.

Annan's defense has been his appointment of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to conduct an independent inquiry. But Volcker's report will go directly to Annan, who has promulgated procedures permitting him to hack away at the findings.

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Annan asserted that the Volcker report "will be made available to the public in a form that will take into account the rights of staff members and, where necessary, respect any undertakings as to confidentiality that may have been granted by the inquiry." What will result from the report? "I will take such action as I may deem appropriate," Annan said. It is as if Enron executives could edit and act on the Justice Department investigation.

This arrangement does not bother the bulk of UN member nations, who want nothing unpleasant to happen to their friend Kofi. Two permanent Security Council members, France and Russia, profited so much from the oil-for-food scam that they desire no vigorous investigation.

The question is how rigorous the U.S. government will be toward Annan after the Iraqi election. Powell has a long-standing relationship with Annan, but he is leaving. Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, has been characteristically prudent in reacting to the UN scandal. According to Capitol Hill sources, she remained mute after Coleman briefed her on Annan and the scandal.

Senior senators are similarly silent, partly not to discourage the UN from helping a little in the Iraq elections but also mostly not to look like yahoo isolationists. During a long interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" Dec. 19, Tim Russert asked four high-ranking senators whether they "still have confidence" in Kofi Annan. Sen. John Warner, Armed Services Committee chairman, answered that "we've got to wait until the Volcker report." "Anyone disagree?" asked Russert. Nobody did.

Sen. Carl Levin, who is ranking Democrat on both Armed Services and Coleman's investigations subcommittee, specifically answered that he did not disagree. That contradicted a tough letter last month to Annan co-signed by Coleman and Levin, accusing the Volcker inquiry of obstructing the Senate investigation. Instead, at a Nov. 15 hearing, Levin reverted to partisanship in trying to pin culpability for the scandal on the Bush administration. It seems impossible for Kofi Annan to escape unscathed from this scandal, but peculiar things happen at Turtle Bay.

[DrMaddVibe]

I have an idea....move the UN out of the United States!

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
I have an idea....move the UN out of the United States!

Or drastically increase their rent...and I mean drastically. They fucking come here and we pony up the largest share for their existence. Fuck that. The UN is a good idea gone bad. :mad:

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Or drastically increase their rent...and I mean drastically. They fucking come here and we pony up the largest share for their existence. Fuck that. The UN is a good idea gone bad. :mad:

At least you admit that it WAS ONCE a GOOD idea!

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
I have an idea....move the UN out of the United States!


Geneva


no wait......


Baghdad!!!!!

[ODShowtime]

At least we have Annan's balls in a vice now. We need UN help for the elections in Iraq. We probably still won't get it.

Regardless of the blame for the mess in Iraq, with gw&friends firmly lodged into power for four more terrible years, they should pull their head's out of each other's asses and help us and the Iraqis.

[DEMON CUNT]

DISTRACTION!

The Iraq mess is Bush's fault.

1326 dead Americans and rising!

[DrMaddVibe]

Oh yeah, I see distraction all right!

How many years did the Iraqi's suffer because you had global politicians robbing from them and thinking nobody would get hep to what they were doing?

You're a distraction too. Your sig is a bag of one sided opinions.

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Oh yeah, I see distraction all right!

How many years did the Iraqi's suffer because you had global politicians robbing from them and thinking nobody would get hep to what they were doing?

You're a distraction too. Your sig is a bag of one sided opinions.

So all of a sudden you care about the Iraqis?!? I didn't have any global politicians doing jack shit. I have always been against the sanctions.

This ain't about my sig. It's about dead human beings.

And then you sucked my balls.

[DrMaddVibe]

You have to have a set!

You're a screaming attention whore with attention defecit problems.

[ODShowtime]

Dr. Madd Vibe versus Demon Cunt should be a good one...

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
You have to have a set!

You're a screaming attention whore with attention defecit problems.

And you can type with a mouth full of balls!

[DrMaddVibe]

You don't have a set of balls...CUNT!

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
You don't have a set of balls...CUNT!

Argued like a true conservative supergenius!

[DEMON CUNT]

Who in their right mind pays attention to Novak (R Treasonous Sack of Shit) anyway?

[ODShowtime]

ok, time to tune out until 5

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DEMON CUNT
Who in their right mind pays attention to Novak (R Treasonous Sack of Shit) anyway?

That's a good point...Doesn't he have better things to do like revealing CIA agents names so they can be killed by our enemies?

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by DEMON CUNT
So all of a sudden you care about the Iraqis?!? I didn't have any global politicians doing jack shit. I have always been against the sanctions.

This ain't about my sig. It's about dead human beings.

And then you sucked my balls.

How can a "Demon Cunt" have balls? Hmm? :gulp:

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
That's a good point...Doesn't he have better things to do like revealing CIA agents names so they can be killed by our enemies?

IF you ever did any research ( I know that's asking a bit too much), you'd realize that agent was revealed by her OWN HUSBAND. Go look it up...I won't do your work for you. :gulp:

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
IF you ever did any research ( I know that's asking a bit too much), you'd realize that agent was revealed by her OWN HUSBAND. Go look it up...I won't do your work for you. :gulp:

Yeah, sure...That's why Novak was interviewed by the FBI.

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
IF you ever did any research ( I know that's asking a bit too much), you'd realize that agent was revealed by her OWN HUSBAND. Go look it up...I won't do your work for you. :gulp:

What the fuck? See! Conservatives simply make shit up! If they repeat it enough, it becomes their truth.

And I cannot figure out why BigBlandbrian always drinks that cup of poop at the end of each post.

And then you sucked my balls.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
IF you ever did any research ( I know that's asking a bit too much), you'd realize that agent was revealed by her OWN HUSBAND. Go look it up...I won't do your work for you. :gulp:

No matter what you say, or "research" indicates, that cunt broke the story and then got off scott free while a REAL (Time magazine) journalist will languish in prison.

And by the way, it's still under investigation by the FBI.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by DEMON CUNT
What the fuck? See! Conservatives simply make shit up! If they repeat it enough, it becomes their truth.



Tit for Tat. :gulp:

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
IF you ever did any research ( I know that's asking a bit too much), you'd realize that agent was revealed by her OWN HUSBAND. Go look it up...I won't do your work for you. :gulp:

Fucking BullSHIT:eek:

But you know that.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Tit for Tat. :gulp:

That's about as good a reason to make shit up as you've ever had:D


But mom, they did it first

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Tit for Tat.

Douche for bag.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
Fucking BullSHIT:eek:

But you know that.

Uh Uh. Go do it. ;)

[LoungeMachine]

At Leak Inquiry's Center, a Circumspect Columnist
By LORNE MANLY and ADAM LIPTAK

Published: December 31, 2004


n 41 years as a pundit, Robert D. Novak has rarely shied from controversy.

As a syndicated columnist and fixture on cable-news shoutfests, Mr. Novak has opined from the right about some of the biggest stories of his time. He has been a stout cold warrior, a critic of Israeli policies and a passionate defender of military veterans who criticized Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record.

Advertisement


But now Mr. Novak, 73, finds himself a central figure in perhaps the gravest confrontation between the government and the press in a generation, and he has been uncharacteristically circumspect.

With a federal judge having ordered two reporters to jail for refusing to name their sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer, Mr. Novak, whose column identifying the officer set off this showdown, has been under increasing pressure in recent weeks to explain his role.

But he determinedly maintains his own counsel. On the C-Span "Washington Journal" this month, he calmly swatted away one caller who asked how it felt to watch others face jail. Then, when queried by Brian Lamb, the program's host, about the matter, he referred dismissively to the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

"I don't know why they're upset with me," Mr. Novak said. "They ought to worry about themselves. I worry about myself."

The confrontation began when Mr. Novak revealed the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, in his column in July 2003. Mr. Novak's column is not one for grand ideological pronouncements. His stock in trade is whispered inside-the-Beltway tidbits, from an undoubtedly conservative - and sharp - point of view. Outing Ms. Plame, the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who had written an Op-Ed article for The Times the week before that was critical of the Bush administration, was a prime one.

Mr. Wilson had written that based on a trip he made to Niger sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency, he thought some intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program that the administration had relied on as a basis to go to war was "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Mr. Novak responded in his column: "Wilson never worked for the C.I.A., but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger."

It can be a crime to name a covert C.I.A. officer, and a federal grand jury and a special prosecutor have been pursuing administration officials who may have leaked the information to Mr. Novak. The investigators have also reached into the White House and drawn in other journalists as they seek information about conversations about Ms. Plame.

Although grand jury proceedings are secret, people called before them are free to talk about how they responded to grand jury subpoenas. All five of the other reporters known to be caught up in the investigation have done that. Some testified, with what they said was their sources' blessings. Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper have been held in contempt for refusing to do so.

Mr. Cooper and two colleagues at Time wrote an article questioning the administration's motives for disclosing Ms. Plame's identity. Ms. Miller conducted interviews for a potential article but did not write one.

But, Mr. Novak has not revealed whether he was subpoenaed and if so how he responded. He has said he is staying mum on the advice of counsel. His office declined to make him available for this article and referred questions to his lawyer, James Hamilton, who declined to comment.

Lawyers for other reporters in the investigation say Mr. Novak's role is a mystery. It is inconceivable, they say, that he has not received a subpoena from the independent prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

But they add that none of his possible responses - naming his sources, objecting on First Amendment grounds or asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination - seem to fit any plausible scenario in this case, given Mr. Novak's few cryptic statements. A spokeswoman for Mr. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

A growing number of media ethics specialists, lawyers and journalists are criticizing Mr. Novak as failing as a journalist by not outlining for the public his dealings with the investigation.

"He has become part of the story," said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "He should disclose what's going on. Everyone else has."

[LoungeMachine]

SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY, B3

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY, B3

Your column says nothing of what I said. It only says something of what you are saying. Get my drift?

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Your column says nothing of what I said. It only says something of what you are saying. Get my drift?

No I don't.

I'm thick, ignorant, myopic, and dense.

I'm also tired of playing "get the hint"

If you've got something other than pithy torts to offer, show 'em.

You claim that Wilson outted his wife BEFORE Novak.

Prove it or bite me:D

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
No I don't.

I'm thick, ignorant, myopic, and dense.

I'm also tired of playing "get the hint"

If you've got something other than pithy torts to offer, show 'em.

You claim that Wilson outted his wife BEFORE Novak.

Prove it or bite me:D

The Yellowcake Con

By The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

The Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2004

So now the British government has published its own inquiry into the intelligence behind the invasion of Iraq, with equally devastating implications for the credibility of the Bush-Blair "lied" crowd. Like last week's 511-page document from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the exhaustive British study found some flawed intelligence but no evidence of "deliberate distortion." Inquiry leader Lord Butler told reporters that Prime Minister Tony Blair had "acted in good faith."

What's more, Lord Butler was not ready to dismiss Saddam Hussein as a threat merely because no large "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction have been found. The report concludes that Saddam probably intended to pursue his banned programs, including the nuclear one, if and when U.N. sanctions were lifted; that research, development and procurement continued so WMD capabilities could be sustained; and that he was pursuing the development of WMD delivery systems--missiles--of longer range than the U.N. permitted.

But the part that may prove most salient in the U.S. is that, like the Senate Intelligence findings, the Butler report vindicates President Bush on the allegedly misleading "16 words" regarding uranium from Africa: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded." (Click here for more excerpts.)





We're awaiting apologies from former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and all those who championed him, after his July 2003 New York Times op-ed alleging that Mr. Bush had "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The news is also relevant to the question of whether any crime was committed when a still unknown Administration official told columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee and that's why he had been recommended for a sensitive mission to Niger. A Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating the case, with especially paralyzing effect on the office of the Vice President.
In that New York Times piece, readers will recall, Mr. Wilson outed himself as the person who had been sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq might have been seeking yellowcake ore for its weapons program. Vice President Dick Cheney had asked for the CIA's opinion on the issue after reading a Defense intelligence report.

Mr. Wilson wrote that "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." He claimed he informed the CIA of his findings upon his return, was certain reports of his debrief had circulated through appropriate channels, and that the Administration had chosen to ignore his debunking of the story.


After the Novak column appeared, Mr. Wilson charged that his wife was outed solely as punishment for his daring dissent from White House policy. To that end, he has repeatedly denied that his wife played a role in his selection for the mission. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote in his book "The Politics of Truth." "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." A huge political uproar ensued.

But very little of what Mr. Wilson has said has turned out to be true. For starters, his wife did recommend him for that trip. The Senate report quotes from a February 12, 2002, memo from Ms. Plame: "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

This matters a lot. There's a big difference both legally and ethically between revealing an agent's identity for the revenge purpose of ruining her career, and citing nepotism (truthfully!) to explain to a puzzled reporter why an undistinguished and obviously partisan former ambassador had been sent to investigate this "crazy report" (his wife's words to the Senate). We'd argue that once her husband broke his own cover to become a partisan actor, Ms. Plame's own motives in recommending her husband deserved to become part of the public debate. She had herself become political.

Mr. Wilson also seems to have dissembled about how he concluded that there was nothing to the Iraq-Niger uranium story, serving for example as the anonymous source for a June 12, 2003, Washington Post story saying "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.' " There were some forged documents related to an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Trouble was, such documents had not even come to the intelligence community (never mind to Mr. Wilson's attention) by the time of his trip, and obviously hadn't been the basis of the report he'd been sent to investigate. He told the Senate he may have "mispoken"--at some length we guess--on this issue.





The Senate Intelligence Committee found, finally, that far from debunking the Iraq-Niger story, Mr. Wilson's debrief was interpreted as providing "some confirmation of foreign government service reporting" that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. Why? Because he'd reported that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki had told him of a 1999 visit by the Iraqis to discuss "commercial relations," which the leader of the one-industry country logically interpreted as interest in uranium.
Remember that Messrs. Bush and Blair only said that Iraq had "sought" or was "trying to buy" uranium, not that it had succeeded. It now appears that both leaders have been far more scrupulous in discussing this and related issues than much of the media in either of their countries, which would embarrass the journalistic profession, if that were possible.

All of this matters because Mr. Wilson's disinformation became the vanguard of a year-long assault on Mr. Bush's credibility. The political goal was to portray the President as a "liar," regardless of the facts. Now that we know those facts, Americans can decide who the real liars are.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian


In that New York Times piece, readers will recall, Mr. Wilson outed himself as the person who had been sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq might have been seeking yellowcake ore for its weapons program. Vice President Dick Cheney had asked for the CIA's opinion on the issue after reading a Defense intelligence report.
.

Where in this article does it say Joe Wilson OUTTED HIS WIFE BEFORE NOVAK AS YOU CLAIM?

:confused:

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Your column says nothing of what I said. It only says something of what you are saying. Get my drift?

Yeah, we get it.