VALERIE PLAME....ARE WE MISSING THE POINT?

From: "spiker"
[VeteransRights] VALERIE PLAME....ARE WE MISSING THE POINT?

Source:
T.U.F.F.
http://www.uncle-scam.com/

VALERIE PLAME
ARE WE MISSING THE POINT?
http://www.uncle-scam.com/Breaking/oct-03/br-1.html

By Ed Henry

With all the news about someone needing to thoroughly investigate the White
House for vengefully leaking the identity of Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA
operative or analyst specializing in weapons of mass destruction, are we
missing the main point?

These investigations generally end up going nowhere. Does it really matter
whether she was an operative or an analyst? So what if her cover is blown?
The CIA has plenty of other operatives. The real question should be why we
need people like this in the first place.

The obvious answer to that question is that we need them because there's a
market for the illicit sale or smuggling of weapons of mass destruction and
we, the United States of America, are the inventors and producers of most
of these killing devices. All we would have to do is to stop inventing and
producing them and there would be no market, at least not a market where we
have to worry about protecting our share.

But this isn't ever going to happen is it? President Bush walked out of the
Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, reopened Reagan's infamous "star wars"
program, opened space to warfare, now wants to resume nuclear bomb testing
to make certain our stockpiles are still workable, and wants to develop
smaller "field nukes" so the infantry can take out 50,000 people at a
time-smaller portable nukes with one-third the power of the atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After Pearl Harbor, American industry made the phenomenal overnight
conversion to wartime production and we've never gone back. Companies kept
their armaments divisions and now our economy is hopelessly linked to the
continued development and production of weaponry. If a nuclear swat team
descended on the United States with the power to shoot anyone within 50
feet of a nuclear component at least a third of our workforce would be
forced to hide.

In other words, we need clandestine operatives to protect or stem the flow
of our nuclear secrets and we will always need them. These career
operatives have the duty to ferret out both buyers and sellers of our
nuclear expertise and open the door for sting operations just like Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) operatives try to intercept the enormous flow of
drugs into the largest market in the world.

None of this would work if the buyers and sellers didn't expect it.

Ionesco summed this situation up nicely in a comedy play about a house of
ill repute that allowed customers to play any role they wished. If a man
wanted to be a judge, robes and a courtroom setting would be provided. If
he wanted to be a Bishop or a priest, clerical garb and a church setting
would be provided. A general could have a uniform, troops and a barracks,
and so forth.

Trouble was that the girls often tired of these games and wanted to get
down to business. Time is money you know. The judge would then plead that
he couldn't be a judge unless the girl was a criminal ready for trial and
sentencing; the priests couldn't play their role unless the girls were
willing to confess their sins and accept penance, and the general couldn't
be a general unless the girls remembered their oaths to follow orders
without question.

It's the same with CIA operatives. They have no function unless there are
engineers, scientists, and others willing to sell nuclear secrets and
customers willing to buy them on the other end. Without this, the game is
over.

The operative's job is to become known as a buyer or seller of such secrets
without tipping his or her hand by establishing contact and a certain
amount of rapport with the bad guys so they can be flushed out.

The whole thing becomes as much of a dangerous game as picking a politician
you can trust, with possible entrapment every step of the way. Lives are at
stake.

Exposing an undercover operative is a serious offense and should be
punished, but what does this say about the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction? What good is a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty between nations
if we know and expect a market for the back door buying and selling of
nuclear secrets?

When George Bush has his mini-nukes, how long will it be before everyone
else has them and aren't we then increasing the potential for terrorism?

If you think George W. Bush has made a debacle of Iraq and our economy,
stand by for what may be his crowning achievement by spreading the
potential for nuclear holocaust.