Countdown Started For Discovery Launch

NASA started the countdown for Discovery's Wednesday launch countdown at 6 p.m. EDT.

The launch, set for 3:51 p.m. EDT (1951 GMT) on Wednesday, will be NASA's first since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Comments

[nikita demosthenes]

We should remember where the whole Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame story started:

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"Valerie Plame should be 'frog-marched' out of Washington"

"... Joe Wilson's wife is not a foreign spy - she's a desk jockey at Langley (with a cushy place in Georgetown) who's responsible for ... wait for it ... tracking down WMD for our country!"

"Why on earth did someone with that very important responsbility pre-judge the Niger-Iraq-yellowcake story as "this crazy story"? I mean, its only our national security and stuff - no biggie."

"Someone let Val Plame know: the Niger-Iraq-yellowcake "crazy story" turned out to be true."

"How many other WMD leads has Ms. Plame given short shrift? Do you know about any more "crazy" WMD leads, Val? Maybe you should go look at those files again. Does her high security clearance prevent her from getting fired for not giving a whit about national security risks for which she's the responsbile agent?"

"Not only did Ms. Plame dismiss one of the key pieces of intelligence regarding Iraq potentially creating the Arab bomb - she successfuly recommended her gadfly husband to be the sole investigator to go check out the lead! How many millions of dollars go to the CIA for intelligence gathering each year? And yet the only person we have to send to Niger to see if Saddam is building a nuke is ... the house husband of an agent at Langley?"

"What's next? Will Valerie Plame send the family golden retriever to look for missle silos in North Korea?"

"This is the real story that the mainstream press won't touch with a ten-foot-pole. What heads should roll at Langley for entrusting our national security to the whims of the Wilson-Plame family travelogue?"

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Unbelievable. Shameful. Putting nepotism above national security.

Fire Valerie Plame now. She's a very real risk to our national security.

-nikita demosthenes