Who Will Rule Rome?

Warren Pollock
The Macroeconomic Newsletter
email: pollock.warren@verizon.net
Jul 6, 2005

This chapter in our story of Rome's latter days starts with Joseph C Wilson having to be brought down and destroyed at all costs. Our imperial family did not take kindly to informed sources telling the truth about Iraq.

Wilson was not directly vulnerable. However, his wife Valerie Plame was. You see, his wife was a covert CIA operative. It's great to apply the screws of pressure to an anonymous person, a secret operative, someone who cannot fight back.

But integrity can be a funny thing. Threats did not stop Wilson.

He saw a jugular moment, when the president told us in his State of the Union address that Niger was shipping uranium to Iraq. Wilson knew this to be untrue. With CIA support, he went on a diplomatic mission to Niger to confirm the fact.

Once again, in the media's view, truth and lie did not reconcile. The Bush administration was embarrassed. Invasion plans might be thwarted and domestic credibility would be lost. It was time to put Wilson down. The tools of the job were happy to oblige. Robert Novak syndicated a press leak: Medusa would turn Wilson to stone.

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him." [my emphasis]

The CIA of old was in America's corner. Before and after 9-11, they wanted to defend this country against terror attack. With Novak's disclosure, operatives in the CIA were compromised. The very CIA operatives and leadership we need to defend us from atomic or asymmetric attack were fired, purged.

This is where Charles Schumer stepped in. He wants to go gunning for the "two senior administration officials" responsible for this leak. He wants to take the executive branch down. Fox News will not readily oblige, although Schumer knows that the Watergate break-in and the Lewinsky scandal pale in comparison to what has been happening in Rome this time.

The courts want to find this information out as well, a good source of information being the notepads of investigative reporters. Thus, Judith Miller (of the New York Times) and Matthew Cooper (Time) were found in contempt of court for not revealing information related to witnessing a federal crime. The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal. In this case, Miller and Cooper have no right to journalistic confidentiality. The media outlets that these individuals work for will comply with the court by handing over documents; it might be treasonable not to do so.

Is the court able or willing to defend the constitutional republic? We will leave that question for another day.

It was no surprise that Karl Rove has been implicated. It was no surprise he was flagged as a probable offender on a holiday weekend, between news cycles. It's easier to undertake political damage control when the press is shooting off fireworks, drinking beer, and singing the Star Spangled Banner.

This brings me to the title of this essay. Who will rule Rome? The Senate and the Roman People, or Romulus?

Romulus and Remus were the progeny of Mars, the god of war. They were twins abandoned to die, only to find succor from the teats of a she-wolf who raised them. After founding Rome, Romulus slew Remus and became the sole ruler of the empire.

In modern-day America, who will rule Rome? We are at war, the republic has been abandoned, checks and balances are gone, we are burning. The American people were outraged when Nixon covered up the truth about a petty political break-in. This time around the entire republic has been stolen. It's easier for the American people to get riled up about a president's affair with an intern than to understand that they themselves, their rights to self-government, have been rendered impotent and insignificant.

Again, the illegalities of Rome's current circumstance have no precedent. It's not certain that Rome will be saved, thus I would not bet on Schumer's crusade. It's more likely that Remus will win, with economic dislocation and civil war to follow.

Who Will rule Rome after Schumer Plame Rove;

EXCERPTS

Here is part of an interview between Bill Moyers and Joseph Wilson in February 2003, http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_wilson.html

MOYERS: Does it seem to you that the President, George Bush, is prepared to accept a disarmed Hussein? Or does he want a dead Hussein?

WILSON: I think he wants a dead Hussein. I don't think there's any doubt about it.

MOYERS: You think war is inevitable?

WILSON: I think war is inevitable. Essentially, the speech that the President gave at the American Enterprise Institute was so much on the overthrow of the regime and the liberation of the Iraqi people that I suspect that Saddam understands that this is not about disarmament.

MOYERS: So this is not just about weapons of mass destruction.

WILSON: Oh, no, I think it's far more about re-growing the political map of the Middle East.

MOYERS: So this was drawn up during the '90s...

WILSON: Right. During the '90s, absolutely.

CIA FACTBOOK ON NIGER

"Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, a landlocked sub-Saharan nation, whose economy centers on subsistence crops, livestock, and some of the world's largest uranium deposits. Drought cycles, desertification, a 3.3 per cent population growth rate, and the drop in world demand for uranium have undercut the economy. Niger shares a common currency, the CFA franc, and a common central bank, the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), with seven other members of the West African Monetary Union. In December 2000, Niger qualified for enhanced debt relief under the International Monetary Fund program for Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and concluded an agreement with the Fund on a Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). Debt relief provided under the enhanced HIPC initiative significantly reduces Niger's annual debt service obligations, freeing funds for expenditures on basic health care, primary education, HIV/AIDS prevention, rural infrastructure, and other programs geared at poverty reduction. Nearly half of the government's budget is derived from foreign donor resources. Future growth may be sustained by exploitation of oil, gold, coal, and other mineral resources."

MISSION TO NIGER
by Robert Novak, July 14, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, prior to his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government. That the British relied on forged documents made Wilson's mission, nearly a year earlier, the basis of furious Democratic accusations of burying intelligence though the report was forgotten by the time the president spoke.

Reluctance at the White House to admit a mistake has led Democrats ever closer to saying the president lied the country into war. Even after a belated admission of error last Monday, finger-pointing between Bush administration agencies continued. Messages between Washington and the presidential entourage traveling in Africa hashed over the mission to Niger.

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the US government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as US charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." President George H W Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

After eight days in the Niger capital of Niamey (where he once served), Wilson made an oral report in Langley that an Iraqi uranium purchase was "highly unlikely," though he also mentioned in passing that a 1988 Iraqi delegation tried to establish commercial contacts. CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive, being based primarily on what the Niger officials told him and probably would have claimed under any circumstances. The CIA report of Wilson's briefing remains classified.

All this was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post June 12 that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public on July 6, however, did his finding ignite the firestorm.

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position - viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action as a last resort. He has seemed much more critical of the administration since revealing his role in Niger. In the Washington Post July 6, he talked about the Bush team "misrepresenting the facts," asking: "What else are they lying about?"

After the White House admitted error, Wilson declined all television and radio interviews. "The story was never me," he told me, "it was always the statement in (Bush's) speech." The story, actually, is whether the administration deliberately ignored Wilson's advice, and that requires scrutinizing the CIA summary of what their envoy reported. The Agency never before has declassified that kind of information, but the White House would like it to do just that now - in its and in the public's interest.

ROMULUS AND REMUS

Romulus and Remus were the twin sons of Rhea Silvia and Mars. They were, together with their mother, cast into the Tiber. The god Tiberinus saved Rhea Silvia from drowning, and the brothers were miraculously rescued by a she-wolf. The wolf reared the twins together with her cubs underneath a fig tree (the "ruminalus ficus"). After a few years they were found by the shepherd Faustulus, who took the brothers home and gave them to his wife Acca Larentia to raise. When they reached maturity they killed Amelius, the brother of their grandfather, and built a settlement on the Palatine Hill. During a quarrel where Remus mocked the height of the walls, Romulus slew Remus and became the sole ruler of the new Rome, which he had named after himself. He took Hersilia as his wife.

To enlarge his empire, he allowed exiles and refugees, homicides and runaway slaves to populate the area. The shortage of women he solved by stealing Sabine women whom he invited to a festival. After a few wars, the Sabines agreed to accept Romulus as their king. Upon his death he was taken to the heavens by his father Mars. He is later revered as the god. Qirinus.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/r/romulus.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame

[Editing services by Jeremy Irwin, jc9cz@yahoo.com]

Warren Pollock
The Macroeconomic Newsletter
email: pollock.warren@verizon.net

This generalized publication seeks to discuss macroeconomics, technical analysis, investing theory, politics, news and markets. It does not provide specific advice to any individual. It is our recommendation and opinion that individuals seek the counsel of a licensed financial adviser who can design a plan appropriate to specific financial conditions, objectives and risk tolerance. The publisher of this newsletter may purchase, hold, and dispose of positions in financial instruments discussed herein at will.

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