October 31, 2007

Valerie Plame

Simply put, the BuzzFlash reader who nominated Valerie Plame for this week's Wings of Justice Award noted, "This is a Patriotic American woman who stood up to this regime and is still standing up to it."

After being the first Internet site (to our knowledge) to interview Valerie Plame about her new book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," we can only admire how she has endured a disingenuous, treasonous assault on her approximately 20-year career with the CIA.

We will say it again: The Bush/Cheney White House, to show that Chickenhawks can act like tough guys, significantly compromised our national security by outing a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, who specialized in tracking the illicit possession and sale of WMDs in Iraq -- and reportedly Iran. In doing so, just to get vengeance on Joe Wilson for revealing the truth about a major Bush pre-Iraq War lie, they compromised the very effort against WMDs they claimed was the purpose of going to war with Iraq.

It is incomprehensible how the executive branch of the United States of America could commit such treason while claming, to boot, that Plame's husband, Wilson, lied when he merely confirmed what George Tenet told the White House months before Bush's infamous 16 words about Niger were uttered in a State of the Union Address. (As a result, the CIA actually succeeded in getting the false Niger-Iraq uranium claim removed from a prior Bush speech, but it inexplicably reappeared in the SOTU.)

Valerie Plame joined the CIA out of idealism and patriotism. She wanted to lend her skills to protecting the people of the United States of America.

As we interviewed her over the phone, we were struck by her poise and self-assurance. She's a person upset at how the country has been betrayed, but is at peace with herself and happy in her private life.

Yet she revealed to BuzzFlash that she would still be in the CIA, probably as a WMD analyst, if it weren't for the "hit" -- carried out by the White House -- on her national security work.

The "neuterization" of Plame and her network is our loss as a nation (if Osama bin Laden was responsible for it, Bush would be quick to call it a heinous act of treason), but for her service to America and for her determination to continue to get the truth out, she more than merits this week's BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award.

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