FRN Columnists" Corner - "The Anti-Bush" By Vincent Fiore

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[Bob J]

FRN Columnists' Corner

"The Anti-Bush "

By Vincent Fiore

On the pages of the New York Times, July 6th, former ambassador Joe Wilson started the latest Bush bash with these self inflated remarks: "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." These "conclusions" that Mr. Wilson reached were seemingly, when looked at nearly 3 months later after that opinion piece written for the Times, conclusions he had made long before his delving into the pages of the NY Times. Joe Wilson was sent to Niger via the CIA in February of 2002 to probe if Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium, or "yellow cake." This most important trip to Niger as a CIA "investigator" amounted to little more than a Sub-Saharan tea party, with little investigatory process.

Wilson's findings were of little value to a Bush Administration building a case against Saddam and his WMD's. But as we see 18 months later, they are of paramount value to a Democrat party desperate for the reacquisition of power. Much has been made of the 16 words used by President Bush in his State of the Union address on January 28th regarding Iraq's attempts at buying uranium to reconstitute their nuclear program, which has everything to do with Wilson's tea tasting tour to Niger. To this day, the source of that now infamous line in the speech, the British government, stands by its intelligence. One can wonder why President Bush did not. But a question rings in my mind: Did Joe Wilson really try to find out anything, aside from denial from his Nigerian host's in relation to trafficking in uranium with Iraq?

It is perfectly acceptable to ask this question. In light of what we now know of the vivaciously prickly Mr. Wilson, it cannot but be asked. A career diplomat for the majority of his 23 years in government, Wilson has no intelligence expertise to speak of. Though loyally serving as the Ambassador to Iraq under President Bush the senior in 1990, Wilson has made no secrete of his intense dislike for the present Bush administration. Making the rounds daily on nearly every anti-Republican network, Wilson has jettisoned any inhibitions he might have experienced in openly proclaiming his distress over the entire administration's movement to war against Iraq.

What started this modern day flaying of the Bush administration was its supposed complicity in the outing of CIA operative/officer/analyst/gal Friday {does anyone know what this woman actually does for the CIA?} Valerie Plame, who is the wife of Joe Wilson, as reported by reporter Robert Novak in a July 14th piece titled "Mission to Niger" {http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml}. Initially ignored by Wilson and Washington for 2 months {but not the Justice Department}, nobody as much as raised an eyebrow over Novak's column. But with Presidential politics in high gear and Wilson an active supporter of Oval office aspirant Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, he has taken a stroll down partisan lane.

Wilson has some history as a liberal partisan. Besides donating to the Kerry campaign, he also donated to Vice President Gore 2000 election, as his wife did as well. He also worked for than Senator Gore in the mid 80's as a Congressional staffer. He has written op-eds for left leaning hysterical rags like The Nation, where he has penned such remarkable prose as "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness" under the leadership of President Bush, and further stated America has "imperial ambitions." He has addressed the radical leftist group Win Without War. He is an adjunct scholar for the Middle East Institute. {http://www.mideasti.org/html/b-wilson021403.htm}. Joe Wilson proclaims "Neo-Conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personnal mission to destroy both." There is no ambiguity in such a statement, and the diplomat takes a back seat to the partisan hack.

Besides taking daily swipes at President Bush through his administration, Wilson exhibits old-fashioned hate for the Presidents point man Karl Rove. Keep in mind that that the originator of this story, Bob Novak, has explicitly said that he did not receive his information from White House sources. Accusing Rove of being the primary leak source and labeling Wilson's wife as "fair game" to Washington reporters, Wilson says "At the end of the day it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." "We"? Only Joe Wilson knows the full import of the "we" in that statement. But we who watch this political drama unfold know the "we" in Joe Wilson's statement has a numerical value of more than two. It is not for him and his wife alone that he does this.

The President for his part has made the appropriate gestures. "There's just too many leaks. And if there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if that person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of." While nobody has directly accused the President himself, it matters not at all. Like all demagoguery cast by Democrats, it is always guilt by association, and the seriousness of the charge. Any proof or lack of is brazenly ignored by democrats and the elite media. For a story that wasn't only two weeks ago, it now generates over 1700 hits on Internet search sites, and is page one for the likes of the Washington Post and NY Times till the next Bush scandal breaks.

The flurry of fictional furry expressed by Democrats is just that: Fiction. Hoping to topple a President by scandal, they air words like "impeachment" and "Watergate" in hopes of an outraged electorate come November in 2004. The truth is the party of Bill and Hillary Clinton could care less about the outing of Valerie Plame, if that ever happened at all, in as much as having the taint of scandal. Better for them that the Bush Administration never finds out who did what to whom, otherwise the scandal goes away. This is just par for coarse in today's eroding Democratic process, where an entire party can ignore fact, call a sitting President things like "gang leader," "fraud" and Howard Dean's disgraceful calumny, "enemy." It has so degraded that even an ex-ambassador turned political shill can openly jest of who would play his wife's part "in the movie."

A suggestion for the title, Mr. Wilson: The Democrats and me; Perfect together.

Vincent Fiore ANWAR004@AOL.COM Vincent Fiore is a small business owner and is an active "Citizen Politician" for the GOP. He currently contributes commentary to several political web sites on a weekly basis.