plame, iran, larisa and wilson

(update - see my interview with larisa about Plame and Iran here)

I just stumbled again across this July 05 interview between larisa and Joe Wilson (edit)

This is kinda interesting, although I'm not quite sure what Wilson was trying to say:

Raw Story: Then Novak runs a second article outing the front company that your wife was using, falsely connecting it to a campaign donation.

Wilson: Right, he runs a second article exposing her front company.

Raw Story: Just in case the first article did not take, one can assume.

Wilson: Actually, that indicates a pattern of disclosure there.

This is also interesting given Larisa's latest reporting:

Raw Story: And now we see that Iraq and Iran have just signed a military treaty. Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Iran is the big winner in this.

Raw Story: Is the goal a fundamentalist military conglomerate? Is that what we wanted?

Wilson: Sitting right on the border of the Kuwait and eastern Saudi oil fields...

Raw Story: Right, if that is what we wanted…

Wilson: Then we have achieved it.

Larisa's series on Plame and Pat Roberts et al began just a month after this interview with Wilson... I don't wanna read too much into it, and at first pass that last bit that I quoted from the interview appears to be tongue in cheek and/or sarcastic - by both of them - but maybe it wasnt... (it was a common scoff at the time).

Also note that Wilson kinda threw in the kuwait/saudi oil-field thing outta nowhere - as i said, it's probably nothing...

Here's one of the first paragraphs in Larisa's first article in the series:

"In a sense, the pre-invasion of Iraq and the post-invasion intelligence blame game can be seen through the lens of a chess game, with the pieces in place well before any troops set foot on the ground."

Incidentally, there were two issues that I could never quite work out because of the competing spin, and probably therefore largely ignored. Both include chalabi - and at least one of them includes iran directly. Firstly there was the issue of someone apparently drunkenly telling chalabi that the americans had broken iran's crypto-codes, leading to Chalabi telling the iranians. The other episode was the raid on chalabi's home. I still don't know how those episodes contribute to the story, but they've both been nagging in the deep recesses of my brain these last couple of days.

While I'm disconnectedly throwing ideas out there, one other thing. Yesterday, i said:

"The three relevant (Plame) questions seem to be: 1) by whom? 2) why? 3) why in July 2003?"

That third question has been bubbling away in the back of my mind for a while - the presumption had generally been that Plame's outing was reactive and had something to do with either iraq (e.g. larisa's article about Feith planting WMD in iraq) or somehow related to Sibel's arms/drugs trafficking network. Larisa's latest article states that Plame's work was "focusing almost entirely on Iran." (h/t miguel).

I presume that means that Plame was actually tracking the network globally, but with a focus on Iran as a destination (and would therefore include Sibel's claims that there was a route through Turkey (and probably the 'stans)). My question for the day, then, is whether Plame 's outing was related to Iraq, or perhaps was a proactive measure related to the proposed Iran invasion.

That, in turn, raises another couple of questions - (taking this speculation further) was plame outed because the CIA knew that there wasn't any trafficking of WMD into Iran, which would therefore negate the scary AIPAC story that Iran wants to kill anyone & everyone? Or had brewsterjennings learnt that the neocons were trying to plant wmd in iran in order to create a cassus belli? or is there an option C?

i'm still waiting for the penny to drop... i havent worked it out. stay tuned for more unsubstantiated speculation...