Reply #18: democraticinsurgent: yes, I agree. There could be many things that the [View All]

CIA counter-proliferation network was investigating, that would have made Plame/BJ a target of any number of people in the Bush junta, and all of them collectively. The WMD planting theory could be wrong--it's just a guess, although a good one, I think. It reminds me of the Bushites and election fraud. Are we to think that the Bushites set up a non-transparent new electronic voting system, with Bushite corporations (Diebold and ES&S) having control of vote tabulation with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls--and then DIDN'T USE IT to stay in power (especially given nearly 60% of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, and even higher opposition on other issues)???

It doesn't seem likely that they would resist that temptation, do you think? Similarly, they set up the public expectation of a "find" of WMDs, they invade Iraq with a huge military machine, and deliberately create vast chaos, and they get Judith Miller all in place with the US troops "hunting" for the WMDs with a special "embed" contract signed by Donald Rumsfeld, and they have billions in cash to do anything they want, and they DIDN'T USE THIS SET-UP to just PLANT the WMDs there and claim that they'd "found" them?

So the theory has emotional resonance--and when you lay it all out, it makes a lot of sense (and clears up many puzzles in both the Plame and Kelly events). But I don't think we should get attached to it as a theory--just use it as a plausible working hypothesis, and look at the other possibilities, too. One thing that seems clear, though, is that the current story of Rovian political revenge is a cover story. (And I think there may be some evidence that it was Libby trying to set Rove up to take the fall--not that Rove is innocent, but that he wasn't the instigator of the Plame outing; that likely went to the top, involving at least Cheney and Rumsfeld, and possibly Bush.)