Wilson lied, not Bush

[willy]

Of course, after shouting "Bush Lied" from page one for months the NYT and the Washington Post mention this at the back of the paper. Don't expect the mainstream media to focus on this much, if at all. There's an election coming up and an agenda to follow. Inconvenient facts must be ignored for the good of the country, especially when they contradict the lies the mainstream press has been spewing out for months...

Typical...


From townhall.com



The 'Bush Lied' folks can't be taken seriously

Michael Barone


July 19, 2004


Official reports issued the last two weeks have conclusively refuted those who have been arguing that "BUSH LIED" about the dangers from Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. The first report was that of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That committee has been rent by partisan divisions over the last year, but the report was unanimous.

One prime conclusion of the report is that American intelligence organizations, like those of every other major country, did indeed believe that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ongoing WMD programs. That intelligence seems to have been mistaken.

But given Saddam Hussein's documented development, possession and use of WMDs, and his refusal to account for their disposal, what intelligence evidence could have convinced a reasonable analyst that he no longer had them?

As the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon -- a frequent Bush critic -- puts it, "It would have taken an overwhelming body of evidence for any reasonable person in 2002 to think that Saddam did not possess stockpiles of chemical and biological agents."

So Bush was justified in relying on the intelligence. And "the committee did not fund any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities."

So much for the wild charges that Bush manipulated intelligence and lied about weapons of mass destruction. He simply said what was believed by every informed person -- including leading members of the Clinton administration before 2001 and Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards in their speeches in October 2002 supporting military action in Iraq.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report also refuted completely the charges by former diplomat Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration ignored his conclusion, based on several days in Niger, that Iraq had not sought to buy uranium in that country. Democrats and many in the press claimed that Wilson refuted the 16-word sentence Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, noting that British intelligence reported that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

But British intelligence stands by that finding, and the committee noted that Wilson confirmed that Iraq had approached Niger, whose main exports are uranium and goats, and intelligence analysts concluded that his report added nothing else to their previous knowledge. And the report flatly denied Wilson's statements that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, had nothing to do with his mission to Niger -- it quotes Plame's memo taking credit for the appointment.

The report issued last week in Britain by former civil servant Lord Butler reaches similar conclusions. It finds that Prime Minister Tony Blair did not pressure intelligence organizations to change their findings and that there was no "deliberate distortion" of intelligence or "culpable negligence." It supported the conclusion of British intelligence that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa.

All this is significant because for the past year most leading Democrats and many in the determinedly anti-Bush media have been harping on the "BUSH LIED" theme. Their aim clearly has been to discredit and defeat Bush. The media continue to fight this battle: contrast the way The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times front-paged the Wilson charges last year with the way they're downplaying the proof that Wilson lied deep inside the paper this year.

Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has argued that George W. Bush has transformed American foreign policy, in response to the threat of Islamist terrorism, more than any president since Harry Truman transformed our foreign policy in response to the threat of aggressive communism.

But there is one big difference. In the late 1940s, Truman got bipartisan support from Republicans like Arthur Vandenberg and Thomas Dewey, even at a time when there were bitter differences between the parties on domestic policy, and received generally sympathetic treatment in the press. This time, George W. Bush has encountered determined opposition from most Democrats and the old-line media. They have charged that "BUSH LIED" even when he relied on the same intelligence as they did; they have headlined wild and spurious charges by the likes of Joseph Wilson; they have embraced the wild-eyed propaganda of the likes of Michael Moore.

They have done these things with, at best, reckless disregard of the effect their arguments have had on American strength in the world. Are they entitled to be taken seriously?


Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.

[willy]

Also from townhall.com



Hit 'Em Again, Harder, Harder

Jay Bryant


July 19, 2004

In the official reports of bipartisan committees in two nations, Mr. Joseph Wilson has been revealed as a liar.

So what are you going to do about it?

The Bush campaign had better do something about it, and the something had better be big.

If you are not up to date on the separate reports by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and British Parliamentary Inquiry headed by Lord Butler, and what they had to say about Mr. Wilson, I could detail them for you, but as a number of other commentators have already done so, including Mark Steyn, Michael Barone, William Safire, and Richard Benedetto, I will leave it up to you to catch up. I will simply summarize that the reports confirm Saddam Hussein did try to buy uranium from Niger, that Wilson knew it, and that his wife, the celebrated Valerie Plame of CIA fame did indeed recommend him for his mission to that country, in spite of his specific denials thereto.

Like Richard Clarke, Wilson has now been exposed as having been used (willingly or otherwise) by the Democrats and their fellow-travelers in the media to provide the news hook for their partisan attacks against Bush policy in Iraq, and, of equal importance, to allow John Kerry, John Edwards and other Democratic Senators to escape their own responsibility for that policy – given that they voted for the war.

If Bush hadn't lied to them, they wouldn't have voted that way, they now claim, at least implicitly.

But Bush did not lie; Wilson did.

Lies, like ideas, have consequences, and the lies of Joseph Wilson have had devastating consequences not just for Bush's re-election prospects, but also for the War on Terrorism, the prospects for a free, peaceful and prosperous Iraq, and the security of the American people.

There is absolutely no way the media are going to get the message of Wilson's lies across to the American public. Messrs Steyn, Barone, Safire, Benedetto and Bryant can write all they want, but when the Washington Post can do its front page report on the release of the Senate document without ever referencing the section on Wilson, it's clear the fix is in – as if anyone doubted it.

In mid-2003, Democrats wanted no part of criticizing Bush on the war issue, and the big question was whether (as with his father) Bush might be undone by a bad economy even though he had been highly successful at war against Iraq. But the Democrats also knew that the economy was likely to get better rather than worse – and there wasn't much they could do about it.

Their only other hope was to turn Bush's accomplishment in Iraq into a negative. In that regard, there was a real chance events would help them, because lots of people, in as well as out of the administration, were predicting ongoing security problems. The Democrats needed two things: a way to wiggle out of their pre-war support and a deteriorating situation in Iraq. As it turned out, the first would aid and abet the second.

As in Vietnam, the more the enemy saw America divided, the bolder they became. By abandoning the national interest for their narrow partisan interest, the Democrats have made the job of pacification in Iraq immeasurably more difficult. Kerry's actual, stated policy as to what he would do – now – in Iraq differs little from Bush's. But that's not what he's campaigning on. What he's campaigning on is a fanciful scenario that goes something like this: an evil President – motivated by either neocon pipe dreams, avenging his father, enriching American oil companies, or nothing but his own stupidity – dragged America into an unnecessary war which has resulted in the deaths of many and had nothing to do with the "real" war on terror.

That's the Kerry message, and it is working. But now, right now at this moment, Bush has the opportunity to deal it a mortal blow. But he cannot be a girly man about it. He must be as blunt as Cheney was to Senator Leahy, and he must do it himself.

He must take the Wilson opportunity to attack with implacable fury both Kerry and the un-American left-wing fringe that surrounds him, from Michael Moore to Whoopi Goldberg. The media will not help. In fact, it will hurt. It will accuse him of negativism, notwithstanding that it has not whimpered even the slightest protest at the perfidious calumnies of the other side.

The message must be carried through schedule events, massive media advertising, and – very importantly – a skillful use of the viral nature of the Internet through which supporters can disseminate the campaign message with ever increasing reach and frequency.

And if the media objects, do like the cheerleaders implore their team. Hit 'em again. Hit 'em again. Harder. Harder.


Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.'

[willy]

More on our lying buddy Joseph Wilson. From the Wall Street Journal



Mr. Wilson's Defense

Why the Plame special prosecutor should close up shop.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

After U.S. and British intelligence reports exposed his falsehoods in the last 10 days, Joe Wilson is finally defending himself. We're therefore glad to return to this story one more time, because there are some larger lessons here about the law, and for the Beltway media and Bush White House.

Mr. Wilson's defense, in essence, is that the "Republican-written" Senate Intelligence Committee report is a partisan hatchet job. We could forgive people for being taken in by this, considering the way the Committee's ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, has been spinning it over the past week. But the fact is that the three most damning conclusions are contained not in Chairman Pat Roberts's "Additional Views," but in the main body of the report approved by Mr. Rockefeller and seven other Democrats.

Number one: The winner of last year's Award for Truth Telling from the Nation magazine foundation, didn't tell the truth when he wrote that his wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, "had nothing to do with" his selection for the Niger mission. Mr. Wilson is now pretending there is some kind of important distinction between whether she "recommended" or "proposed" him for the trip.

Mr. Wilson had been denying any involvement at all on Ms. Plame's part, in order to suggest that her identity was disclosed by a still-unknown Administration official out of pure malice. If instead an Administration official cited nepotism truthfully in order to explain the oddity of Mr. Wilson's selection for the Niger mission, then there was no underlying crime. Motive is crucial under the controlling statute.

The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act was written in the wake of the Philip Agee scandal to protect the CIA from deliberate subversion, not to protect the identities of agents and their spouses who choose to enter into a national political debate. In short, the entire leak probe now looks like a familiar Beltway case of criminalizing political differences. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should fold up his tent.

Number two: Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth about how he supposedly came to realize that it was "highly doubtful" there was anything to the story he'd been sent to Niger to investigate. He told everyone that he'd recognized as obvious forgeries the documents purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. But the forged documents to which he referred didn't reach U.S. intelligence until eight months after his trip. Mr. Wilson has said that he "misspoke"--multiple times, apparently--on this issue.

Number three: Joe Wilson was also not telling the truth when he said that his final report to the CIA had "debunked" the Niger story. The Senate Intelligence report--again, the bipartisan portion of it--says Mr. Wilson's debrief was interpreted as providing "some confirmation of foreign government service reporting" that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. That's because Niger's former Prime Minister had told Mr. Wilson he interpreted a 1999 visit from an Iraqi trade delegation as showing an interest in uranium.

This is a remarkable record of falsehood. We'll let our readers judge if they think Mr. Wilson was deliberately wrong, and therefore can be said to have "lied." We certainly know what critics would say if President Bush had been caught saying such things. But in any event, we'd think that the news outlets that broadcast Mr. Wilson's story over the past year would want to retrace their own missteps.

Mr. Wilson made three separate appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press," according to the Weekly Standard. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof first brought the still anonymous Niger envoy to public attention in May 2003, so he too must feel burned by his source. Alone among major sellers of the Wilson story, the Washington Post has done an admirable job so far of correcting the record.

Also remarkable is that the views of former CIA employee Larry Johnson continue to be cited anywhere on this and related issues. Mr. Johnson was certain last October that the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity was a purely "political attack," now disproven. He is also a friend of Ms. Plame and the author of a summer 2001 op-ed titled "The Declining Terrorist Threat." You'd think reporters would at least quote him with a political warning label.
The final canard advanced by Mr. Wilson's defenders is that our own recent editorials and other criticism was somehow "orchestrated." Well, by whom? Certainly not by the same White House that has been all too silent about this entire episode, in large part because it prematurely apologized last year for the "16 words" in a State of the Union address that have now been declared "well-founded" by Lord Butler's inquiry in Britain. If Mr. Bush ends up losing the election over Iraq, it won't be because he oversold the case for war but because he's sometimes appeared to have lost confidence in the cause.

[Monte Smith]

Willy, be fair to the NYT.

I had to chuckle at the discreet placement of the non-retraction myself, but it was not, as you say, "at the back of the paper." It was Page A10. And it was a one day story. You know, to New York liberals, that probably seemed like excessive emphasis. Besides, Joe Wilson's blown credibility is suddenly so December 2003.

[willy]

Gee. I wonder why nobody started this thread earlier...


From the Boston Globe



The `Plame' truth: That Joe Wilson lied
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Sunday, July 18, 2004

It's a good thing former Ambassador Joseph Wilson took advantage of his 15 minutes of fame and already published his book bashing President Bush [related, bio], ironically entitled the ``Politics of Truth.''

It's not the best marketing strategy to have two governments essentially call the author a liar.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report released last week about intelligence missteps leading up to the war in Iraq were crystal clear about Wilson's falsehoods.

Wilson's insistence that his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, had nothing to do with his selection to lead a pre-Iraq war mission to Niger is a flat-out lie. She's the one who suggested Wilson in the first place, according to documents unearthed by the congressional committee.

Aside from revealing Wilson as the partisan phony he is, this new revelation puts in context why someone in the White House might have identified Plame to columnist Robert Novak in the first place. Wilson charged it was an act of political revenge because he was critical of President Bush's use of the pre-war intelligence. In fact, it is relevant to Wilson's credibility to understand why and how he was selected for the mission.

More importantly, both the British and Senate investigations found the raison d'etre for Wilson's presence on the national stage is false, too.

Remember those much-debated 16 lines in last year's State of the Union address? In a New York Times column, Wilson claimed Bush ``twisted intelligence'' by arguing Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger. Wilson's investigation, he insisted, found no basis for it.

cw2We know now that truth is a relative thing to this former ambassador. And it turns out, according to both countries' reports on pre-war intelligence failures, Bush's assertion was absolutely correct.

Wilson's report provided ``some confirmation of foreign government service reporting'' about Iraq's interest in getting uranimum from Niger, according to the Senate. British investigators found Wilson's assertion that the report was based solely on forged documents also untrue. The substantiation for the British intelligence report on Niger came from ``several different sources.''

The political damage to Bush caused by Wilson's lies can't be undone. But at least now he has been undone by them, too.

[bluenoter]

I went to a Wilson book tour event and heard him speak at some length. I believed him. I'm truly not a paranoid, conspiracy-theory-grasping person by nature, but I believe him still. I think that he and his wife are being taken down and destroyed.

He spent at least an hour giving his account of events, so please don't ask me to recreate it. My only point is that I found his account, and him, highly credible.

[Ron Thorne]

Having not been present bn, I can only imagine what you experienced, though I've also found him highly credible.

Gee, I really wonder what freaks out those such as willy and nabob with respect to him?

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by willy

From the Boston Globe

The `Plame' truth: That Joe Wilson lied
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff

I'll tell you what's fishy--that the Boston Globe would print an article by the Boston Herald editorial staff!

[Ron Thorne]

Wilson must have lied! willy from Hell and Monte Smith from On the Beltway said it was so.

In the meantime ...

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

I went to a Wilson book tour event and heard him speak at some length. I believed him. I'm truly not a paranoid, conspiracy-theory-grasping person by nature, but I believe him still. I think that he and his wife are being taken down and destroyed.

He spent at least an hour giving his account of events, so please don't ask me to recreate it. My only point is that I found his account, and him, highly credible.

Don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs; they're being destroyed by Wilson's overpowering ego. His 15 minutes of fame is over; time for him to stick his head back up his ass and go away into, if he's lucky, obscurity.

Willy's from Hell??

[willy]

Not surprisingly BN and Thorne STILL believe Wilson. The Bush haters will believe anything. Even lies. Another reason to avoid the NYT...you start believing the lies after a while



From the Chicago Sun-Times




How a serial liar suckered Dems and the media

July 18, 2004

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST





Well, the week went pretty much as I predicted seven days ago:

BUSH LIED!! Not.

BLAIR LIED!!! Not.

But it turns out JOE WILSON LIED! PEOPLE DIED. Of embarrassment mostly. At least I'm assuming that's why the New York Times, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, PBS drone Bill Moyers and all the other media bigwigs Joseph C. Wilson IV suckered have fallen silent on the subject of the white knight of integrity they've previously given the hold-the-front-page treatment, too.

And what about John F. Kerry? Joe Wilson campaigned with Kerry in at least six states, and claims to have helped with the candidate's speeches. He was said to be a senior foreign policy adviser to the senator. As of Friday, Wilson's Web site, restorehonesty.com, was still wholly paid for by Kerry's presidential campaign.

Heigh-ho. It would be nice to hear his media boosters howling en masse, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" But Joe Wilson's already slipping down the old media memory hole. He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq -- and yes, by the time you read this the Kerry campaign may well have pulled the plug on his Web site, and Salon magazine's luxury cruise will probably have to find another headline speaker, and he won't be doing Tim Russert again any time soon. But what matters to the media and to Senator Kerry is that he helped the cause of (to quote his book title) The Politics Of Truth, and if it takes a serial liar to do that, so be it.

But before he gets lowered in his yellowcake overcoat into the Niger River, let's pause to consider: What do Joe Wilson's lies mean? And what does it say about the Democrats and the media that so many high-ranking figures took him at his word?

First, contrary to what Wilson wrote in the New York Times, Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In support of that proposition are a Senate report in Washington, Lord Butler's report in London, MI6, French intelligence, other European agencies -- and, as we now know, the CIA report, based on Joe Wilson's original briefing to them. Against that proposition is Joe Wilson's revised version of events for the Times.

This isn't difficult. In 1999, a senior Iraqi "trade" delegation went to Niger. Uranium accounts for 75 percent of Niger's exports. The rest is goats, cowpeas and onions. So who sends senior trade missions to Niger? Maybe Saddam dispatched his Baathist big shots all the way to the dusty capital of Niamy because he had a sudden yen for goat and onion stew with a side order of black-eyed peas, and Major Wanke, the then-president, had offered him a great three-for-one deal.

But that's not what Joe Wilson found. Major Wanke's prime minister, among others, told Ambassador Wilson that he believed Iraq wanted yellowcake. And Ambassador Wilson told the CIA. And the CIA's report agreed with the British and the Europeans that "Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa."

In his ludicrously vain memoir The Politics Of Truth, Wilson plays up his knowledge of the country. He makes much of his intimacy with Wanke and gives himself the credit for ridding Niger of the Wanke regime. The question then is why a man who knew so much about what was going on chose deliberately to misrepresent it to all his media/ Democrat buddies, not to mention to the American people. For a book called The Politics Of Truth, it's remarkably short of it. On page 2, Wilson says of his trip to Niger: "I had found nothing to substantiate the rumors." But he had.

That's what lying is, by the way: intentional deceit, not unreliable intelligence. And I'm not usually the sort to bandy the liar-liar-pants-on-fire charge beloved by so many in our politics today, but I'll make an exception in the case of Wilson, who's never been shy about the term. He called Bush a "liar" and he called Cheney a "lying sonofabitch," on stage at a John Kerry rally in Iowa.

Saddam wanted yellowcake for one reason: to strike at his neighbors in the region, and beyond that at Britain, America and his other enemies. In other words, he wanted the uranium in order to kill you.

The obvious explanation for Wilson's deceit about what he found in Africa is that his hatred of Bush outweighed everything else. Or as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon put it, "He is a deeply evil human being willing to lie and obfuscate for temporary political gain about a homicidal dictator's search for weapons-grade uranium."

Technically, it's weaponizable uranium, not "weapons grade." But that's the point. Simon isn't the expert, and, as Ambassador Wilson trumpets loudly and often, he is. This isn't a case of another Michael Moore, court buffoon to the Senate Democrats, or Whoopi Goldberg, has-been potty-mouth to John Kerry. They're in show biz; what do they know?

But Wilson does know; he went there, he talked to officials, and he lied about America's national security in order to be the anti-Bush crowd's Playmate of the Month. Either he's profoundly wicked or he's as deranged as that woman on the Paris Metro last week who falsely claimed to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. The Paris crazy was unmasked within a few days, but the Niger crazy was lionized for a full year.

Some of us are on record as dismissing Wilson in the first bloom of his unmerited celebrity. But John Kerry was taken in -- to the point where he signed him up as an adviser and underwrote his Web site. What does that reveal about Mister Nuance and his superb judgment? He claims to be able to rebuild America's relationships with France, and to have excellent buddy-to-buddy relations with French political leaders. Yet anyone who's spent 10 minutes in Europe this last year knows that virtually every government there believes Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa. Is Kerry so uncurious about America's national security he can't pick up the phone to his Paris pals and get the scoop firsthand? For all his claims to be Monsieur Sophisticate, there's something hicky and parochial in his embrace of an obvious nutcake for passing partisan advantage.

Any Democrats and media types who are in the early stages of yellowcake fever and can still think clearly enough not to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or Houston -- or even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman -- need to consider seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An ambassador, in Sir Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a good man sent abroad to lie for his country. This ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the media helped him do it.

[frankiepop]

this entire issue is a little confusing...i dont
think that this gets the white house off the
hook, since the white house previously retracted
the line from their state of the union address
and apologized for the statement...which is
an admission that they never had the proper
supporting evidence at the time they made the
statement..

what is weird is that if u listen or read to the
bbc or other british news....that even tho the
united states found the evidence in africa to
be lacking validity...the british intelligence
never waivered and now the british intelligence
is shown to be credible....

u have to wonder why the white house didnt even
make a call to britain and even attempt to
rely on british intelligence rather than admitting
they were wrong.....or why they didnt have
blair's guts and stick to their guns rather than
chickening out and backing down from their
position?

[Gary Sisco]

Anyone who seriously believes a god is directing his actions is too stupid or psychotic or both to know if he's lying or not.

[Slurpy]

Originally Posted by willy

There's an election coming up and an agenda to follow. Inconvenient facts must be ignored for the good of the country.

Hey, the FOXNews mission statement!

[lynn]

Originally Posted by willy

The Bush haters will believe anything. Even lies.

The irony of this statement just made my day!

[stonemonkts]

Originally Posted by willy

. Another reason to avoid the NYT...you start believing the lies after a while

I could be the only one here to think this, but here goes anyway. Your persistent condemnation of the NYT paints you as a total jackass, and puts your intelligence level in serious doubt. No offense, but get the fuck off the NYT already, ok?


Oh yeah, and you never answered Tippy's questions on the Cosby thread. I wonder why?

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Originally Posted by willy

The Bush haters will believe anything. Even lies. ...you start believing the lies after a while

Hate to say it...no, not really...but the other side is just the same.

[clinthopson]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Anyone who seriously believes a god is directing his actions is too stupid or psychotic or both to know if he's lying or not.

Well said, Sisco.

I'm very happy that willy has his dream world. Too bad about the thousands of people who have died although Shrub didn't lie.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

I don't feel like reading this whole thread, too much negative energy. But are we talking about Wilson lying about that yellowcake stuff or about his wife's alledged participation in his selection for the CIA mission? So it's been proven that Iraq did try to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger?

[Juju]

I wonder how many other Middle East countries have tried to purchase the same thing?

[lynn]

Seems to me, considering how many countries do have the components, Bush obviously miscalculated the strategic target. In the end, Bush got it wrong.

[willy]

Stonemonkts,

The NYT is a worthless rag that only the Albertson-types believe. It has been discredited to the point of irrelevancy. I will continue to hammer away at "the paper of record" which features "all the lies fit to print".

From reading your posts I can tell you are not as ignorant as you are trying to appear right now. I understand this is an election year, but a little intellectual honesty may suit you better, if only you will come clean and admit the NYT isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

[willy]

The “Confusion” of Joseph Wilson
by Vincent Fiore
21 July 2004


Memo to the masses: When you see the words “misspoken,” “erred,” and “confused,” in relation to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, know this: These words are typical beltway qualifiers that seek to say in essence that “I lied,” without ever having to say the word “lied.”

But as surely as the sun rises and sets upon another Democratic chapter of “The conspiracies of President Bush,” Joe Wilson has broken the hearts of many a Democrat this week in Washington -- not by lying, no, but by getting caught.

It seems like ages ago that columnist Robert Novak first alerted the public to the doings of the innocuous and relatively unknown Wilson. But in a column written on July 14, 2003, Novak wrote of Wilson’s trip to Africa in February of 2002 to see if Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was trying to buy Uranium, or “yellowcake,” from Niger.

Fast forward to January 28, 2003 and the president’s State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

It is here in these now-famous 16 words that Democrats in Congress then and now talk themselves into near apoplexy, saying Bush “misled” the country about pre-war intelligence. But until Wilson went public with a 1400-word op-ed titled “What I Didn’t Find in Iraq” in the New York Times, his findings regarding Iraq trying to purchase uranium went little noticed. It was Wilson’s op-ed that not only ignited Congressional Democrats into a political frenzy, but tipped his hand as an official “Kerry for President” acolyte.

In his New York Times op-ed, Wilson brazenly declared: “Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

But as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s July 9 report of this year shows, it is Wilson who twisted intelligence to actually downplay Iraq’s nuclear threat, thereby meeting his own political agenda of helping Kerry win the election in November.

Consider the Senate committee’s findings:

-- The panel found that Wilson’s report, “rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, actually bolstered the case for most intelligence analysis,” according to the Washington Post.

-- To this day, British intelligence maintains that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa, recently underlined by a report from The Financial Times of London. The British government states, “European intelligence officers have now revealed… human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger.” The New York Times paraphrased the above with a clear-cut story titled: “Intelligence Backs Claim Iraq Tried to Buy Uranium” The essay leaves no doubt as to the claim of Bush in January 2003 that Saddam Hussein was not only was trying to procure uranium, but had been for years.

-- Ambassador Wilson’s wife, CIA employee Valerie Plume, “specifically recommended” Wilson for the trip to Africa. In a memo from Plume dated February 12, 2002 to the deputy chief of the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) from Plume, the Senate report concludes that according to the CIA testimony, Plume “offered up his (Wilson) name.”

-- Wilson misled the Washington Post in June of 2003, when he told the paper that the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." In fact, Wilson had never seen the reports.

When the Senate committee staff asked Wilson how he could have come to that conclusion, Wilson replied he may have “misspoken” to reporters.

-- Contrary to Wilson’s claim’s that the Bush administration understood that it was knowingly passing along questionable information to the American public, the Senate committee found in its investigations that the CIA did not tell the White House it had its own doubts about an Iraq/Niger connection for the procuring of uranium.

Joseph Wilson has had extensive ties to the Democratic Party throughout much of his time in Washington. Wilson is an unabashed supporter and donor to the Kerry/Edwards campaign for the presidency. In 2000, he donated to Vice President Gore’s election, as has his wife, Valerie Plume. In the mid-eighties, Wilson worked for Gore as a congressional staffer. He has donated money to such liberal stalwarts as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy. He has in the recent past spoken to liberal “527” groups like Win Without War, which is a part of MoveOn.org, the premiere liberal hate group that is renowned for its coarse and hate-inspired political sloganeering.

One by one, the president’s accusers, and the conspiracies they inspire, are turning out to be disproved. Former terrorist czar Richard Clarke was shown to be wanting in the credibility department, and now, so is former ambassador Joseph Wilson. It is more than chilling in my mind when I stop to think just what the acquisition of power means to the party out of it. In this case, it is the Democratic Party. It has shown that it and its supporters, like Clarke and Wilson, would willingly throw the country into political Armageddon all in hopes of winning an election.

It is unclear whether good news can travel fast in a media mired in Orwellian reporting. I suspect not, as I’m sure this surprises no one interested in the truth. One would hope that the country learns of the mendacity of Joe Wilson, and his willingness to inject his political viewpoints in a time of war, all in the hopes of seeing a Democrat in the White House.

The prolific architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, said “The truth is more important than the facts.” I would amend his words to say, “The truth is that much more important because of the facts.” In Joseph Wilson, the fact of the matter is that the truth is not important, regardless of the facts.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Captain Hate

Willy's from Hell??

Don't take my word for it, Cap'n. Look below willy's avatar where it says Location:, ok? Ya know, where you typed in Ohio, USA on yours?

Reasonable questions, Darryl.

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by willy

The “Confusion” of Joseph Wilson
by Vincent Fiore
21 July 2004 [actually July 20]

Source: RenewAmerica. From its About Us page: "RenewAmerica, in affiliation with its sister organization the Declaration Alliance, is the political activism arm of Alan Keyes' Declaration Foundation, which Dr. Keyes founded in 1996."

[stonemonkts]

Originally Posted by willy

From reading your posts I can tell you are not as ignorant as you are trying to appear right now.

Gee, that's rather sporting of you. So usually I'm just less ignorant. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Silly

I understand this is an election year, but a little intellectual honesty may suit you better, if only you will come clean and admit the NYT isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

Ok, I admit it! The NYT is a worthless rag.

[Noj]

[stonemonkts]

Noj - That's pretty fucking funny

[Darryl G. Thomas]

So basically this whole thread's about Willy's hardon for the NY Times, the democratic Party, and liberals in general? Not whether Iraq really tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger?

Listen, cats can bitch and moan about the "liberal media" all they want, but the facts on the ground remain the same: Just about every single justification for the Iraq War has (so far -- to be fair I'll throw in that qualifier) been proven false. We've had 900 + American citizens killed, thousands wounded (has Bush, Cheney, Perle, et al, made that short trip up to Walter Reed to visit the Iraqi amputees?), a few thousands Iraqis killed during "liberation", spent billions with the Pentagon coming out yesterday saying "ummmm, we're about 13 billion short...)...

Man, can you imagine if Clinton had screwed up this bad? Those Impeachment Hearings would've fired up again so fast America's head would be spinning.

Thousands have died because of b.s thought up by some think-tank warriors and people are complaining about Wilson's alledged lies? It ain't even an issue. Compare Wilson's body count to the Bush Adminsitration's.

[Juju]

Gee, the republicans, could it be another attempt to drag this man through the dirt again? No, it would be cynical to believe that ...


+++



Published on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
A Right-Wing Smear Is Gathering Steam
Ex-envoy says the GOP has Targeted him and his Wife

by Joseph C. Wilson IV
*
For the last two weeks, I have been subjected — along with my wife, Valerie Plame — to a partisan Republican smear campaign. In right-wing blogs and on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, I've been accused of being a liar and, worse, a traitor.

This is the latest chapter in a saga that began in 2002 when I was asked by the CIA to investigate a report that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase several hundred tons of uranium yellowcake from the West African country of Niger in order to reconstruct Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

I went to Niger, investigated and told the CIA that the report was unfounded. Then, in July 2003, I revealed some details of my investigation in a New York Times Op-Ed article. I did that because President Bush had used the Niger claim to support going to war in Iraq — to support his contention that we could not wait "for the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud" — even though the administration knew that evidence for it was all but nonexistent. Shortly after that article was published, the attacks began: Administration sources leaked to the media that my wife was an undercover CIA operative — an unprecedented betrayal of national security and a possible felony.

In the last two weeks, since the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on intelligence failures, the smear attacks have intensified. Based on distortions in the report, they appear to have three purposes: to sow confusion; to distract attention from the fact that the White House used the Niger claim even after CIA Director George Tenet told Bush that "the reporting was weak"; and to protect whoever it was who told the press about Valerie.

The primary new charge from the Republicans is that I lied when I said Valerie had nothing to do with my being assigned to go to Niger. That's important to the administration because there's a criminal investigation underway, and if she did play a role, divulging her CIA status may be defendable. In fact, though the Senate committee cites a CIA source saying Valerie had a role in the assignment, it ignores what the agency told Newsday reporters as early as July 2003, long before I ever acknowledged Valerie's CIA employment.

"A senior intelligence officer," the reporters wrote, "confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

"But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.' " Last week, a CIA source repeated this to CNN and the Los Angeles Times.

On another front, my enemies claim I based my conclusions about the Niger claim on documents that the Senate report now suggests I couldn't have seen. But the truth is that I made it clear in the New York Times article that I had never seen the written documents concerning the alleged sale between Iraq and Niger. By then, however, as I wrote, news accounts had already "pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged."

Finally, it has been suggested that my work for the CIA, rather than debunking the Niger claim, supported it. Although some analysts continued to believe that the Iraqis were interested in purchasing Niger uranium, that is a far cry from Bush's claim in the State of the Union: "British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." My report said there was no evidence that such a thing occurred in Niger.

The attacks against me should not obscure the facts. The day after my article in the Times appeared in July 2003, the president's spokesman acknowledged that "the 16 words did not merit inclusion in the State of the Union address."

The Senate report makes clear that senior leadership of the CIA tried repeatedly to keep this unsubstantiated claim out of presidential addresses. Three months before the State of the Union, on Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a fax to the White House stating that "the Africa story is overblown." Tenet testified that on that day he told the deputy national security advisor the "president should not be a fact witness on this issue" because "the reporting was weak."

The right-wing campaign against me and Valerie does not alter the reality that someone in the Bush administration exposed her identity and compromised national security. I believe it was a malicious act meant to keep others from crossing a vindictive administration.

Most important, when it comes to the Niger claim — and so many other claims underlying the decision to go to war in Iraq — it is the Bush administration, not Joe Wilson, who spoke the words that have cost us more than 900 lives and billions of dollars and have left our international reputation in tatters.

Joseph C. Wilson IV is the author of "The Politics of Truth" (Carroll & Graff, 2004). He was in the diplomatic service for 23 years

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

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