I can't believe how long I waited for those indictments, and how much speculation I read. I now agree with all of those who were saying that we should stop speculating to the skies about what was coming, because now that it is Libby (not Cheney and not yet Rove) and for obstruction of justice, not the 1982 intelligence identities protection act, not treason, not investigations of Niger forgeries. I'm feeling kind of let down. My expectations were at the Watergate level last week, but I think now if it gets to that point that it's going to be a LONG slow process.
Meanwhile, I was happy to see on the NYT front page an article about non-event of the The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which as far as I'm concerned, had already been exposed long ago. Daniel Ellsberg opens his magnificent memoir, Secrets with his experience of receiving cables from the ship on his first day at work in the Pentagon. His conclusion by late in the afternoon on August 4, 1965 was that it was likely that there had been no attack. It was in 1981, says Ellsberg, that Robert Scheer finally convinced even the ship's captain, Herrick, that he had been wrong to report the first torpedo attack.
So, if released cables revealed the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin "non-event" over twenty years ago, why the front page treatment now? Because the in-house NSA historian who has finally copped to what independent journalists have been saying for years, is officially being suppressed because the agency is worried that people will make "uncomfortable comparisons" between this lie and the current Iraq war...but secrecy historian, Matthew Aid, has just gone public about the suppression. Unsurprisingly, Hanyok finds the "mistake" in intelligence to non-political.
Hmmmm.
Can we expect to read about Niger forgeries, Yellowcake, and the rest of the lies of the Iraq war in an NSA report in 2045? I hope it's sooner, and that by the time it all does come out, that people still care.
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