Fox's lame Plame lies & distortions

Like this was predictable. Fox News had its inaccurate take on the first day of the Valerie Plame testimony, so it bears a closer examination. I got this clip and info. for this post from Media Matters.

Thank God for Media Matters - a truly great organization founded by recovering Republican hate monger David Brock. MM is dedicated to uncovering the spin, hypocrisy and outright lies of the Right Wing Noise Machine that is so prevalent in our mainstream media today.

Anyway, watch the clip above before reading on. (Since YouTube is now getting suckier by the minute, thanks to corporate attorneys, it may be removed by the time you view this. If the clip isn't available, lemme know and I'll try reposting it.)

In this clip, Republican strategist Edwina Rogers appeared on the March 16 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto to "discuss" (distort) the testimony of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. During her appearance, Rogers falsely claimed that Plame "had been in Vanity Fair before any of this came out, sitting in a Jaguar, and she did not get permission from the CIA, which is required." As usual, a complete and total lie, fabrication, whatever you want to call it. But hey, it's Fox News, so what are the odds that it was an honest mistake? About as low as the president's approval ratings.

Rogers also states that posing in such a photo "was unacceptable for the CIA."

Rogers also claimed that Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who went to Niger to discover whether or not Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium for his phantom nuclear program, "had come back and didn't give the report to the CIA, but he turned it over in an Op-Ed to The New York Times." Another total lie, and testimony from the Libby trial bears this out. A CIA agent testified in the Libby trial that Wilson's findings were described in detail to the CIA more than a year before his Op-Ed was published in the Times. I

n his Op-Ed, Wilson asserted that "[i]n early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau."

It's painfully evident that this hack Rogers did no reporting or researching of her own, simply read off a script that Fox News gave her, or simply intentionally lied in another clumsy attempt to smear Plame. Does the right think that no one on the "left" side of things does any research or checks on these things? Anyway, Rogers alleges that because of these missteps, Plame "was already in the hot seat with the CIA."

The fact is, Plame's photos appeared in Vanity Fair several months after Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column disclosed her identity, and Wilson's July 6, 2003, Times Op-Ed appeared long after he delivered his report on Niger to the CIA.

After all of these inaccuracies, host Neil Cavuto asked: "But [Plame] was in the hot seat - she was in the hot seat after she was in the hot seat, right? I mean, after this stuff came out, right?" But other than that, he let Rogers' inept assertions stand without correcting her numerous inaccuracies.

More facts that destroy the otherwise minuscule credibility of Rogers and Cavuto, from Media Matters:

Plame and Wilson appeared in the January 2004 issue of Vanity Fair, and the pictures in which she and Wilson appeared "in a convertible Jaguar" were taken on November 18, 2003 - a full four months after Robert Novak revealed Plame's identity in his column.

Media Matters also previously noted that on the October 11, 2005, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, nationally syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham similarly suggested that White House senior adviser Karl Rove could not have outed Plame as an undercover agent because her identity was already known after she appeared "in Vanity Fair with her scarf and her sunglasses on."

These morons don't ever let facts get in the way of a good smear campaign, do they?

The unfortunate part about all of this is that there are plenty of sheep out there who willfully watch Faux News and believe whatever they see and hear at face value. (I know many of these people.) The lies just don't seem to matter, or Fox-o-philes simply dismiss the real facts as liberal lies presented to counter-argue the Fox lies.

These lies are intentional, too. Another example that readily comes to mind of Fox intentionally lying to make a Republican look better - the Mark Foley scandal. I'll never forget Sean Insanity, with nothing left to say and no way to spin the Foley mess, saying during a broadcast of Hannity and Colmes, "I don't mean to bring Clinton into this, but Monica Lewinsky was 19 when they had an affair." She was 22, but by saying she was 19, a total, intentional lie, it brought Monica's age closer to the age of the underage teenagers Foley was trying to bang.

As a Democrat, I realize that there are often people who aren't going to see things my way, and that's fine. But, have difference based on philosophy and beliefs, not lies.

Oh well - no one is above being smeared by the right-wing noise machine. If they can smear a presidential candidate with three Purple Hearts, they sure as hell can go after the likes of Plame.

As I watched the rest of this clip, it just amazed me how these arrogant imbeciles smear Plame. She's the victim here. Her identity was revealed in a national column, planted by members of the Bush Administration, to try and even a political score.

Lost in this whole thing, and certainly ignored by Repubes, is how her outing could have caused the her death, or other agents. Who knows if she's even in danger now? Or her husband? Kids? I've seen nothing in the mainstream media about that. She was simply a civil servant, doing her duty, and then her cover was blown.

Yet, there are a remarkable number of people who treat Scooter Libby, Robert Novak and Dick Cheney as victims.

To restate - Fox and its roster of right-wing hacks are smearing Plame for being outed as a CIA Agent. This has to anger all but the most extreme Republicans.