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Just spent a good 2 hours reading a lot of terrific posts on the Plame Affair, to say this stuff is explosive would be like saying a 10 Megaton Nuclear device is sort of loud. These are the people you need to be reading to find out the truth on what is going on. AJ over at Strata-Sphere, MacRanger at Macsmind, Sue in the comments section and a mysterious and brilliant commentator at Free-Republic with the Nom de Guerre of Fedora all of these folks have the ability to sift through mountainous volumes of information and like the Data Miners from ABLE DANGER pull out the information that brings sense out of chaos.

Below is a snippet of information from Fedora who seems to only post at Free Republic.

What Wilson Didn't Say About Africa: Joseph Wilson's Silent Partners: " COGEMA, as the managing partner, would have had to know and be complicit.'37 This seems to rule out a priori the very thing Wilson was sent to investigate, and in the process,
to rule out the possibility of French complicity in arming Saddam Hussein's regime, which seems a hasty exoneration in light of the fact that France had a long history of selling Iraq military equipment and resisting UN sanctions against Iraq.38 It is now known that in fact French companies were helping Iraq skirt UN sanctions.39"

Notice that Joseph Wilson went in believing that it was impossible for a French Company to knowingly sell Yellowcake to Iraq. As if selling Iraq the methods of constructing nuclear weapons was beyond the pale of consideration for the French. Everyone apparently completely ignoring that the Nuclear plant destroyed by Israelis Jets in 81 was sold to it and constructed by the French. Specifically Jacques Chirac was the enabler who insisted that exactly the sort of plant needed for weapons production be sold to the Iraqis.

Fedora hints at the corruption that MacRanger plunges into in this article.

MacRanger: Of course there would be one caveat and this is key and not surprising. The IAEA would have had to have "blinked" once in a while. Scandalous? Yes, but that the IAEA might not have been so suspect if frustrated by the Bush Administration killing the Golden Goose, they showed their hand in October of 2004 by leaking the story of missing munitions at Al-Qaqaa. Make no mistake, the move was to defeat Bush and thus, get the 'heat off" as a Kerry Administration would have canned any further scrutiny into the Oil for Food Scandal.

MacRanger proceeds to give the best reason I have heard yet for the CIA to have been so at odds with the Bush administration. Sit down before you read this article. The implications are so serious and dire that the warnings of treachery and deceit Laurie Mylroie has been sounding for years, as strident as they were regarding the CIA's outright war against the President, were not strident enough by half.

Consider this quote that starts off MacRangers other article on the "Plame Game"

"Since it’s creation in 1947, the CIA has been a service dominated by a handful of individuals who carried out their activities as they saw fit, some honestly trying to serve the national interest, others focusing enormous amounts of energy on personal political advantage, even personal profit." - Prelude to Terror: the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence - Robert Trento

So there it is, as it always has been, right in front of us. Occam's razor in all of its glory, instead of conspiracies of competing philosophies we have the most mighty Intelligence Agency in history scrabbling around and lying to make a buck. Perfect. We have Joseph Wilson putting on airs of gentle society while making deals with the most murderous of scum. Marvelous.

MacRanger proceeds to answer the most essential question of the war, why has the CIA been so steadfastly against the war. Some complex theories have been proposed and yet of them all MacRanger seems to have nailed it. I say MacRanger but its clear that AJ over at Strata-Sphere also has the right of it.

Take a look at this post by AJ and weep for our country. We are being protected by evil men who put mere money ahead of this countries continued existence. For those who declare this to be overwrought consider what will happen if those forces that the CIA has aligned itself with, win. Iraq will again descend into the madness that defined Saddam's reign, Iran will be free to produce whatever it see's fit. And one day soon one or more of our cities will evaporate into a mushroom cloud followed by a list of demands that will effectively kill this country of ours.

This is one of the reasons that the Blogsphere is so valuable original reporting done by those capable at looking into massive volumes of data and extracting nuggets.

UPDATED: Hat tip Cliff Kincaid over a Media Monitor for this amazing article by Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post. Consider this snippet from the article, Jim Hoagland talking about the CIA:

People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you.

But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.

The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency. Where else do you think the one-page crime report that triggered the investigation and then the pressure-building leaks disclosing its existence came from?

Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their failures to yours.

Consider for a moment just how outrageous it is that a major reporter, for arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States, after the NYT meltdown,is stating out in the open that the CIA is in open revolt. Color me surprised I thought they worked for us and that President Bush was our representative. If they start having an agenda completely independent of the will of the people then something has gotten way out of whack.

Remind me again why it is we cannot simply put them all out in the streets?

Reference Article