The Disloyalists
Frank Gaffney | September 06, 2006
There was only one thing truly astonishing about the revelation last week that Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department during George W. Bush's first term, was the source of Bob Novak's first column about Iraq war critic Amb. Joe Wilson and his CIA agent wife, Valery Plame. That was the fact that Novak subsequently described the man who first "outed" Plame's place of employment as "no partisan gunslinger."

The truth is that Rich Armitage is the consummate partisan gunslinger. It's just that his partisanship is not usually defined by his allegiance to the Republican Party and certainly not to its current standard-bearer, President Bush. Rather, more often than not, Armitage slings his gun -- or, more accurately, wields his stiletto -- in the other sense of a partisan: one who wages war from behind enemy lines.

During the first term, Colin Powell and Rich Armitage lost policy battle after battle to the President's loyal subordinates. It fell to Armitage to try to overturn or undermine those policies Powell opposed, in the interagency process, through leaks to the press (whose appreciation has been reflected in generally kid-glove treatment of the revelation of his role in the Plame affair), via back-channels with foreign governments and, not least, through attacks on his bureaucratic rivals.

A prime example of such attacks was the Armitage-encouraged campaign against John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. During their four years together in the Powell State Department, the Deputy Secretary made no secret of his hostility towards then-Under Secretary Bolton. He encouraged insubordination, bureaucratic end-runs and personal attacks against Mr. Bolton by individuals assigned to State's powerful regional bureaus and its intelligence organization.

Some of those responsible for such behavior -- like Armitage cronies Carl Ford and Tom Fingar -- subsequently sought publicly to sabotage the Bolton nomination, engendering a Senate filibuster that was only ended when Mr. Bush gave his choice for the UN a recess appointment. It is to be hoped that the Foreign Relations Committee will rectify this travesty by voting this week to confirm the re-nominated Amb. Bolton , whose past year of service at the United Nations has forcefully demonstrated the baseless nature of the partisans' attacks on this outstanding public servant.

Rich Armitage's mean-spirited partisanship is especially evident in the fact that neither he, nor Mr. Powell nor their lawyer, then-State Department Legal Advisor William Taft IV, saw fit to inform the White House that Armitage was the source of the Novak leak. The reason, according to reporters Michael Isikoff and David Korn: Armitage did not want to give the White House a pretext for placing the blame where it belonged -- with the disloyal denizens of the State Department's seventh floor.

To be sure, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was informed, in the hopes of minimizing the danger that the Deputy Secretary would be indicted and tried. But, in an act of real betrayal, the elected President who appointed Messrs. Powell, Armitage and Taft and his senior subordinates were kept in the dark -- even as Fitzgerald's inquiry subjected several of the latter, and the administration more generally, to relentless hectoring from Democrats and the media, career-imperiling grand jury appearances and dangerous distractions in time of war. Had the White House known the truth, the whole inquisition may have come to a screeching halt virtually at its outset.

Which brings us back to the point about the partisan at the center of this scandal. It was no accident that the people who came under most intense scrutiny thanks to Rich Armitage's disloyalty were presidential advisor Karl Rove and the Vice President's then-chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Both recognized that the Powell-Armitage State Department was not on the President's team with respect to virtually any aspect of the administration's post-9/11 foreign and defense policies. Weakening, if not removing, such counterweights to Foggy Bottom's influence and agenda would have been a fringe benefit arising from the Deputy Secretary's lack of transparency.

Unfortunately, the sort of destructive and disloyal behavior Deputy Secretary Armitage epitomized continues to be practiced in high reaches of the State Department. Notably, Under Secretary of State Nick Burns has pursued in recent months diplomatic initiatives on such sensitive matters as North Korea 's missile tests and Iran 's nuclear weapons ambitions that have mutated the President's policies beyond recognition -- and played into the hands of critics who accuse the Bush national security team of lacking coherence and competence.

Indeed, it is one of the great ironies of this presidency that an administration which prides itself on loyalty has for so long tolerated its systematic practice in the breach by the Department of State. The costs of such disloyalty have already been high: a government seen by friends and foes alike as distracted, at best, and, at worst, paralyzed by divided counsel, communicating mixed signals and signaling an irresolution that invites contempt and aggression.

Recent speeches by two of the people most loyal to Mr. Bush and his policies, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and by the President himself, have squarely addressed the danger we face: Islamic fascists are on the march and we dare not ignore their menace -- or fail to meet it effectively. These brave men have made clear that appeasement is not an option. If they wish to be taken seriously, let alone to secure the support of the American people for their policies, however, they must ensure that the President's team is no longer undercut by disloyalists among the administration's own senior ranks.

"Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld"

"These brave men have made clear that appeasement is not an option"

What war were they brave in??? I can't seem to remember...

Flippant use of the word bravery on these two ass clowns is ridiculous!

I think the next ones to be "outed" are, in no particular order...

Donald Rumsfeld
George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Paul Wolfowitz

As soon as the whole bunch of loyal lapdogs in the Congress are voted out for their apologist support of the Bush Administration, and a real HoR gets to work and actually demands answers from those arrogant lying sacks at the top of the Republican dung heap, and unlike the past five years, actually don't take "no" for an answer when they ask those questions, the criminals lying and cheating their way around any semblance of a democratic government will get their come uppance.

Fish on...

Todd

Tell us how you really feel Todd!!!!

You know yesterday Cheney was on one of the Sunday talk shows. He repeated that the intel was bad and that we would have gone to Iraq anyway. He asked the rhetorical question, "What would it be like if we didn't" (or something like that). This really worries me. I cannot believe that these guys are asking us to imagine what it would be like if we did not go to Iraq. Do they really believe that we won't come up with the following set of answers? :

1. 2500 American soldiers would not have died.
2. Thousands more would not have been injured both physically and psychologically.
3. Our resources would be available to us to deal with real threats like Iran and N. Korea.
4. My kids and their kids would not end up paying for this war.
5. The sectarian violence that is truly terrorizing the Iraqi people would not exist.

To be fair - there are a couple of other answers as well:

1. Sadaam would be enriching himself on the backs of his people.
2. We would still be searching for a miltary base in the Muslim world (if Afghanistan was not enough).

I always thought of this Administration as being competent in execution of a terribly flawed policy. Now I'm beginning to believe they have lost touch with reality.

Aunty, do you really believe that if we had not invaded Iraq, Iran would have? Most folks have memories that are longer than a generation and the Iran/Iraq War from the 1980's was particularly bloody. It is clear that your scenario is quite likely if we were to pull up stakes now.

I think their true goal is our demise. Their New Caliphate will see to it if possible.
I see the dems are all excited that Bush was political in his 911 address. What a tub of pyroclastic crap. Anything the President says is political at this time. The elections are not far off and dems must have a media issue.

Aunty, how much oil do we get from the Middle East? How much do we get from Iraq or Iran? The theory doesn't make much sense when we examine the facts of the situation. Iraq, prior to the invasion, did not represent enough of a strategic asset to the US for us to invade to keep it from the hands of another. It would be akin to us invading Poland in August of 1939 to keep the Nazis from launching their attack.

BTW - we get less than 5% of our oil from Iraq and that is significantly more than we got prior to the invasion.

golly KK I'm sure glad nihilism isn't your bag. I will allow that the electorate in this country needs reminding every once in a while, what it is that started the mess. And no it wasn't our behaviour, just our existence.