Dems need crystal clear talking points to counter the mud RNC is slinging.

[BurtWorm]

Want to get them together in this thread and forward them to Dems?

1. Joe Wilson found no evidence that Iraq bought yellow cake uranium in Niger. His findings corroborated those of others looking into a document (that proved to be a forgery) that suggested Iraq bought 550 metric tons of yellowcake in 1999.

2. It makes no difference who sent Joe Wilson to Niger. The fact is he went, his information was good, and it was put into the mix of analysis disproving, specifically, an African connection to any Iraqi nuclear program and, generally, that Iraq was an immanent nuclear threat.

3. Wilson went to Niger in March 2002. Tony Blair learned in April 2002 that Bush was going to have war whether anyone liked it or not. Bush claimed as late as February 2003 that he was doing everything to avoid war in Iraq. Do Republicans think Wilson and his wife knew before Tony Blair that Bush was hot to go to war in Iraq, like it or not? Doesn't this mean that Wilson, Blair, and many others in government knew before the American people that the Iraq war was on before a case was made to have it?

4. Whoever outed Plame committed a federal crime. No spinning that.

[BurtWorm]

1. Please add or refine points

[jsamuel]

2. I made this ealier but no one posted, talking about Wilson isa DISTRACTION

Reporters have to stop repeating Political Spin as if it is "one side of the case".

Reporters need to deal with facts and the facts say that what the Republicans are spinning is off base, wrong, and distracting from the real case.

1. Karl Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife was CIA dealing with WMD's.
2. Karl Rove told Chris Mattews that Valerie Plame was "fair game".
3. Whether Wilson was right or wrong has nothing to do with the case. (but he was right, the Niger docs were fakes)
4. Bush said he would fire anyone that had anything to do with the leak.
5. Rove at the very least had something to do with the leak.
6. Rove has not been fired.
7. The leak came of the political motivation (MOTIVE) to attack Wilson for hurting the "White House Iraqi Group's" case for war.
8. This is a big deal, no matter how you look at it. One of the US's networks that looked for WMD's in terrorists' hands has been destroyed.
9. John Kerry is not currently running for president and any mention of him in regards to this case is a dead giveaway of spin.

Anything else is distracting from the truth, not "the other side of the case". If it were the other side they could say, "but Rove didn't do it."

Questions:
Who is Miller protecting?
Who else in the WH contributed to the outing?
Is the WH covering for Rove?
Why does the WH refuse to answer questions about the case, yet it sends out talking points to all Republicans dealing only with this case?

Lets face it reporters, they are trying to dupe you.

[BlakeB]

4. Good points.

[dogday]

7. Very good points, might I add one more

Rove should of checked Valerie's background at the CIA before he talked with anyone.

[KittyWampus]

28. Rove Put Cooper Under Super Double Secrecy. If Plame Wasn't Covert

then why the super-duper secrecy?

[punpirate]

3. The first, and simplest, ought to be...

... that a special prosecutor is determining evidence now to bring charges against unnamed members of the White House for violating law against exposing undercover CIA agents, for perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy charges, along with possible violation of the Espionage Act.

That's pretty much it. And it sounds a whole lot more serious than charges that Wilson fudged on his report.

Cheers.

[maxsolomon]

5. easy, simple point #1:

the GOP is SOFT ON TREASON.

[BurtWorm]

6. That is spin.

What's needed are plain, crystal clear facts.

(Not that they aren't soft on treason, but, slogans don't work on people's reasoning capacities the way facts do.)

[maxsolomon]

8. au contraire, burt worm

slogans & spin are the reason we have a president who's a narcissistic, pre-senile demented, anti-intellectual cretin.

spin works very well on "people", especially lazy americans who don't want to think. facts take thought. predjudice is pre-cognitive.

[BurtWorm]

9. Don't you think it's time to stop the spin cycle?

I mean, what does the word "treason" really mean to most people? I doubt very much more than "bad behavior."

Instead of saying what you recommended, I think it would be more effective to say: "What the outing of Valerie Wilson did exposed undercover counter-terror agents around the globe, and therefore endangered, not only hundreds of human beings but also the very structure of the nation's (and its allies') counter-terror network. This kind of destructiveness is the very definition of treason."

[maxsolomon]

11. no, it wouldn't be more effective

in an ideal world, i'd agree. but this is anti-intellectual america. if you're going to use them fancy 10 dollar words, construct the sentences simply.

see dick run. see jane run. see spot run. and so on.

no commas, no "therefores", no parentheses. &, as the spin cycle is just another component of what guy debord called "the spectacle", it will never stop. it will only morph.

[BurtWorm]

12. But Guy Debord would advise detourning intelligently, right?

I mean a slogan can't work unless it makes someone think. The Situationists weren't fatalists. Of course they lived in Paris, where people actually admire the intellect. But their program was creative and active.

[maxsolomon]

39. that's the rub

the situationists had the ear of the French public for what, a month? may 1968.

they weren't fatalists then. but given debord's suicide...

the dem message must be concise & provacative, we agree. i remain unconvinced that the leadership of the party will ever articulate consistently & forcefully the immense folly of the GOP's methods to the public. or that the public, presented with a compelling, clear message, won't just tune out because it makes them feel bad to think about it.

mundus vult decipi.

[Walt Starr]

10. I made some in GDP

1) This leak had grave consequences.

2) This leak had direct effects on our ability to fight the war on terror.

3) Terrorists are proliferating WMDs as a direct consequence of this leak.

4) The evidence of how badly we were harmed by this leak could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

5) In essence, the leaker has gassed his own people.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1926218

[Cocoa]

13. I like the talking points the dems are using better

imo, your talking points are letting the RNC define the issue. For example, Wilson is NOT the issue, Rove is. The republicans are of course trying to make Wilson the issue, we shouldn't let them.

The dems have been pounding on the national security issue, which withstands any of the RNC's finessing.

For example, your #4 is very much up to debate, and will be decided in court, not by the republicans or democrats. There's not anything to be gained by prejudging the legal case, only the grand jury knows the entire case anyway.

[BurtWorm]

14. The National Security issue isn't taking up the Republicans points?

Isn't that what Kerry's "strategy" was last year, arguing that the Dems would be even better Republicans than the Republicans were?

How does changing the subject to National Security address the specific Republican points about Rove-Plame?

PS: You may be right about 4, though.

[Cocoa]

19. yes, and this fits right in to Kerry vs. Bush

it's the first thing I thought of when Kerry made his comments this week. Everyone remembers that Bush called Kerry soft on national security, and now here we have a case where Bush is enabling an ACTUAL national security breach. Did Kerry do anything remotely like this? Would he conceivably do anything remotely like this if he were president? I think a lot of people are asking and answering that question as they listen to Kerry.

And by the way, REAL national security is a completely valid issue, probably the most important issue. Kerry was right to emphasize it, not to cede it to the republicans and their phony version of it. This story has the potential to illustrate the difference.

[BurtWorm]

21. This is going way off topic, but...

can you define national security?

[Cocoa]

22. I'll personify it

Valerie Plame. She dedicated her professional life to protecting the American people against weapons of mass destruction.

She was a national security asset of this country, and Rove chose to sacrifice that asset for his political ends.

Olbermann puts it pretty good...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

[BurtWorm]

26. I made a similar point to maxsolomon above.

But I still think national security is a largely empty construct. It conjures images of a fortress America, but there are all sorts of holes in the country's defenses. The Republicans exploit this by talking about beefing up those defenses technologically and even putting some of them in space (which does a lot of good against box cutters and hacker attacks). The Democrats talk about strictly interpreting the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, as though they're handed down from Mt. Sinai.

It seems to me "National Security" is largely shorthand for "toughness," and it's almost always a phony issue meant only to appeal to the irrational fears of voters.

[Cocoa]

29. I disagree with that characterization

the dems are making common sense recommendations, like Schumer's calling for quadrupling rail security in the wake of the London bombings.

And it's being done in a common sense and practical way, without the "Sept. 11 commission as Gospel" or the "toughness" that you're talking about, it's being done in the way it should be done.

They're not saying the empty "we have to be tough" that you refer to, they're saying "there are things we have to do, let's do them already."

And it's their job to do it, and I want them to do it.

[BurtWorm]

31. Fine, but it still has nothing to do with a response to the Rove-Plame

talking points the RNC is dishing out.

[Cocoa]

33. don't respond to them

they're getting their OWN points out, which the RNC hasn't, and can't, address. :toast:

[BurtWorm]

36. You mean let them twist in the wind a la Schiavo?

That would be nice, but I think this story is too complicated to let the RNC define and frame it.

[LSK]

15. 5. Wilson NEVER SAID Cheney sent him

This just did not happen EVER.

[Ilsa]

16. Rove and the Wilsons attended the same church. Of course he

knew who she was.

[BurtWorm]

17. Really?

:wow:

[Ilsa]

37. I don't know how accurate it is,...

http://www.hannity.com/index/news-app/story.171/menu./sec./home.

Rove has maintained he neither knew Plame's name nor leaked it to anyone. In an interview yesterday, Wilson said his wife goes by Mrs. Wilson, so it would be clear who Rove was talking about, and noted how Rove attends the same church as the Wilson family. Wilson said Rove was part of a "smear campaign" designed to discredit him and others who undercut Bush's justification for war.

[Ganja Ninja]

18. Rove can spew talking points until he's blue in the face.

Talking points aren't going to help him when he's in front of a judge.

[yurbud]

20. your photo deserves a thread of it's own. I'm going to post it on my blog

Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[Ganja Ninja]

23. It's not mine I found it at Bartcop. n/t

[TWiley]

24. From an earlier post by NAO

This is from an earlier post on a different thread here at DU by someone who uses the name NAO. I think they explain the motive rather nicely.

.....snip......

If that was the case, then the REAL reason she was outed by Rove was not MERE VENGEANCE against Wilson, but to prevent Bush's phony justification for taking us to war from being exposed. If Plame had not been exposed, there might be 2,000 more US soldiers alive today, and $200 Billion more dollars in our treasury, and we would not be trapped in an intractable quagmire.

Smearing Joe Wilson was just a bonus, and furnished a plausible "cover story" with a much more mundane, much less insidious and criminal motive.

***

Let us remember, and often remind the American People (for example in 30 second TV spots and/or Democratic Talking Points) of the words of George H.W. Bush: "Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors." -- George Herbert Walker Bush, 1999

....end quote

[ailsagirl]

25. The Left Coaster pretty much has all those points covered...

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004870.php#more

Now if we could just get the Dems to read them!!

[BurtWorm]

27. That is an excellent list! Thanks, ailsagirl!

:toast:

[H2O Man]

30. On #2:

It makes a huge difference who sent him. The CIA did. He has always said the CIA did. He never said Cheney did. It is important to confront lies. The lies being told are evidence of consciousness of guilt.

[BurtWorm]

34. You're completely right that the CIA sent him, and that he never said

anyone but the CIA sent him. But the point is, he went on behalf of the US government. It doesn't matter who in the US government sent him--his wife, Cheney, Karl Rove or whoever--because the Bushists' real beef is over what Wilson said long *after* he returned on that mission. Who sent him there is a complete red herring. It doesn't even have any bearing on the question of whether it was legitimate in any sense to expose Valerie Plame as an undercover agent. It is utterly irrelevant.

[Stirk]

32. I think they need to be purely offensive, personally- with no

acknowledgement of the RW spin.

1. Wilson found that the Bush Administration's claims of Nigerian "yellowcake" were based on forged documents.

2. Who forged those documents?

3. Karl Rove wanted to intimidate Joe Wilson (a whistle blower) into silence, and to discredit him. Rove leaked the identity of Wilson's CIA operative wife for these reasons.

4. Did Rove act alone, or were others in Bush Administration also involved in this act of treason?

The criminality of the act must be assumed. The question should not be "did Rove commit a crime", but rather, "what should be done about Rove's crime, and is the rest of the Administration involved?".

The line of debate should be pushed. They are playing defense- this is the time hit them hard and take ground.

[The Stranger]

35. Start on the OFFENSE: Karl Rove exposed a CIA operative. Not disputed.

Exposing a CIA operative is a crime. Not disputed.

Ergo, Karl Rove committed a crime.

Karl Rove exposed a CIA operative. Not disputed.

Chimp promised to fire anyone who exposed a CIA operative. Not disputed.

Ergo, Karl Rove should be fired.

Ergo, Chimp's refusal is obstructing justice, which is a crime.

[Jane Austin]

38. You can read a great summary of the story here:

http://digbig.com/4dyrx

It's the Sidney Blumenthal piece from today's Salon, called Rove's War.