(Updated) WaPo Editorial Strives to Debunk "Fair Game" Big Screen Version of Plame-Gate

UPDATED: The debunking of the WaPo editorial has now commenced: "Eight Years Later, Washington Post Still Defending The Saddam-Niger-Yellowcake Story (The Wonk Room)."

WaPo (editorial):

WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: "For people who have short memories or don't read, this is the only way they will remember that period."

We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. MORE...

Howie P.S.: I want to thank the editors at the WaPo for this Hanukkah present. You are now covered for all eight nights. Anything that puts this issue on the table for further review is fine with me. Any side-by-side comparison of reality as told by Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame versus G.W. Bush (or the WaPo editors) is a slam-dunk for my team.

"Bush Photoshops Rove Out of Plame Scandal"

David Corn (Mother Jones):

In his book, Bush Photoshops Rove out of this scandal. By doing so, Bush doesn't have to explain why he took no action against Rove or justify why he did nothing after his press secretary falsely told the public that Rove was not connected to the Plame leak.

Bush ardently defends his decision to commute Libby's sentence without pardoning him, revealing that most of his advisers "believed that the jury verdict was correct and should remain in place." He recalls that this led to a showdown with Cheney. Libby had been Cheney's chief of staff, and the vice president was a forceful advocate of a pardon. At one meeting with Bush, Cheney declared, "I can't believe you're going to leave a soldier on the battlefield." Bush writes that in eight years he had never seen Cheney so worked up. But in Bush's telling, he stood his ground, striking a tough position only because he believed it was the right one. The whole point of this episode—which appears in a chapter called "Personnel"—seems to be that Bush was his own man in the Oval Office and was willing to say no to Cheney.

Yet the CIA leak case was about much more than Bush's ability to stare down the veep. The questions that remain concern Bush's willingness to tolerate a White House campaign to discredit an administration critic (a campaign that led to the exposure of a CIA officer who had overseen efforts to gather intelligence on WMDs in Iraq and elsewhere) and Bush's decision to do nothing about both Rove's involvement in that effort and Rove's attempt to cover up his role. Bush has nothing to say about any of this. (A much fuller and more accurate account of the CIA leak case can be found in the new movie Fair Game, even if this Hollywood picture fictionalizes aspects of the story.) For Bush, the Plame case is only a tale of a difficult decision about a pardon. It is not about political skulduggery or dishonesty at the highest levels of the government. MORE...

"Broken: From Watergate to yellowcake"

Laurence Lewis' front pager on Kos:

By interesting coincidence, the Bush mendacity road show is on the airwaves just when the film about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson is in the theaters. Fair Game is well-written, well-acted, and well-directed, and it's hard to sit through without clenching one's fists in fury, as the entire nightmare again unfolds before you: the slow, unstoppable strategy of lying the nation into a war that has killed and devastated millions of innocent lives; the deliberate destruction of an important national security asset's career as retribution for her courageous husband's daring to tell the truth; and the right wing media machine, reflexively protecting its ideological allies by smearing and attempting to destroy two national heroes, caring not a whit for the truth, and once again putting the lie to its perpetual posturing of patriotic rectitude.

About halfway through the film, I recalled an earlier film about an earlier national scandal. But All The President's Men had a feeling of exultance about it. Because it had a sort of happy ending. A corrupt administration was forced from office. Criminals went to prison. The system worked. In some ways the current film is haunted by its earlier counterpart, because both films are so well done but only one recounts a story where the reality was well done. And with Bush on the road, hawking "his" book, one of the main stories making the rounds is of the supposedly difficult decision he made about commuting the sentence of rather than pardoning Scooter Libby. Poor Dick Cheney. Poor Scooter. And of course none of the media foofs interviewing Bush will go beyond that sordid level about personal loyalty and dare ask what Bush thought about an important national security asset's career being destroyed as retribution for her courageous husband's daring to tell the truth about Bush's lies. MORE...

(Updated) "Wilson and Plame React to Bush Memoir" (video)

MSNBC-The Last Word (O'Donnell), video (09:31).

Howie P.S.: More on Valerie Plame--"I Am Really Good with an AK-47" (Vanity Fair):

If Tuesday’s election didn’t sate your thirst for back-stabbing politics and blatant public deceit, then the cineplex has just the thing for you this weekend: Fair Game. With the gritty, hyperkinetic sensibility that he demonstrated in The Bourne Identity, director Doug Liman’s film re-creates L’Affaire Valerie Plame and hearkens back to great 70s political thrillers such as Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and All The President’s Men. Part political exposé, part spy thriller, Fair Game aims to remind you that the government once used trumped-up claims of nuclear Armageddon to justify a protracted and destructive ground war in the Middle East—in case you forgot. Liman’s father was chief counsel for the Senate during the Iran-Contra scandal, and he uses his intimate understanding of America’s intelligence network to paint a detailed picture of how the C.I.A. really works. MORE...