Posted on 07/15/2004 5:30:16 AM PDT by Pokey78
Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that did not bark, the most remarkable aspect of last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report is what its Democratic members did not say. They did not dissent from the committee's findings that Iraq apparently asked about buying yellowcake uranium from Niger. They neither agreed to a conclusion that former diplomat Joseph Wilson was suggested for a mission to Niger by his CIA employee wife nor defended his statements to the contrary.
Wilson's activities constituted the only aspects of the yearlong investigation for which the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, was unable to win unanimous agreement. According to committee sources, Roberts felt Wilson had been such a ''cause celebre'' for Democrats that they could not face the facts about him.
For a year, Democrats have been belaboring President Bush about 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address in which he reported Saddam Hussein's attempt to buy uranium from Africa, based on British information. Wilson has been lionized in liberal circles for allegedly contradicting this information on a CIA mission and then being punished as a truth-teller. Now, for committee Democrats, it is as though the Niger question and Joe Wilson have vanished from the Earth.
Because a Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating whether any crime was committed when my column first identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, on advice of counsel I have not written on the subject since October. However, I feel compelled to describe how the committee report treats the Niger-Wilson affair because it has received scant coverage except in a few media outlets. The unanimously approved report said, ''interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD (CIA counterproliferation division) employee, suggested his name for the trip.'' That's what I reported, and what Wilson flatly denied and still does.
Plame sent out an internal CIA memo saying ''my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'' A State Department analyst told the committee about an inter-agency meeting in 2002 that was ''apparently convened by [Wilson's] wife, who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.''
The committee found that the CIA report, based on Wilson's mission, differed considerably from the former ambassador's description to the committee of his findings. That report ''did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.'' As far as his statement to the Washington Post about ''forged documents'' involved in the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium, Wilson told the committee he may have ''misspoken.'' In fact, the intelligence community agreed that ''Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa.''
''While there was no dispute with the underlying facts,'' Chairman Roberts wrote separately, ''my Democrat colleagues refused to allow'' two conclusions in the report. The first conclusion merely said that Wilson was sent to Niger at his wife's suggestion. The second conclusion is devastating: ''Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.''
The normally mild Roberts is harsh in his condemnation: ''Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. . . . [N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.'' Roberts called it ''important'' for the committee to declare much of what Wilson said ''had no basis in fact.'' In response, Democrats were silent.
Suckers...
BTW, was Valerie Plame in any kind of position to be recommending her husband for anything? Was Niger/WMD part of her purview? And who sent Wilson over? Who signed off on the trip? Did we ever find that out?
Ping-a-ling.
Ms. Plame was employed in the Counter-Proliferation Division of the CIA. So, yes, she was in a position to recommend her husband and the Niger/Iraq connection was within her division's brief.
Alan Foley was the division's head and he resigned, suddenly, in August, 2003 -- a month-or-so after Novak's original report of Plame's sponsorship of Wilson's mission. We can probably presume that he is the one who signed off on the assignment.
Aw shucks now. They're just being their usual bastard fascist selfs.
Months of damage done, Wilson treated as a hero by Russert and every other show. Unless prominent Republicans loudly tell the American people that Wilson and the media lied about the president, the damage is not undone. In fact, I guarantee Dems will repeat the lies by November. Repubs will feel smug knowing they are right and not stooping to the dem level. As a result I'll have to live with an idiot left wing government.
You mean America's enemies are silent?
Turn the page. They're bloviating about something else, like GWB's mere 15 billion for the AIDS disgrace, or GWB actually supports marriage as being between a man and a woman, or some other such nonsense.
Hey Joe Wilson! As an honorable man, I know you will want to "fall on your sword".
I'll hold it for you.
The committee [unanimous Intelligence Committee] found that the CIA report, based on Wilson's mission, differed considerably from the former ambassador's description to the committee of his findings. That report ''did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.'' As far as his statement to the Washington Post about ''forged documents'' involved in the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium, Wilson told the committee he may have ''misspoken.'' In fact, the intelligence community agreed that ''Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa.''
''While there was no dispute with the underlying facts,'' Chairman Roberts wrote separately, ''my Democrat colleagues refused to allow'' two conclusions in the report. The first conclusion merely said that Wilson was sent to Niger at his wife's suggestion. The second conclusion is devastating: ''Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.''
The normally mild Roberts is harsh in his condemnation: ''Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. . . . [N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.''
Roberts called it ''important'' for the committee to declare much of what Wilson said ''had no basis in fact.'' In response, Democrats were silent.
I think the answer is yes. I read in another thread that Ms. Plame is, can you believe it, a WMD analyst for the CIA.
She recommended that her husband fly to Niger to ask a bunch of his old friends if they recalled committing any felonies with regard to selling uranium to Iraq. Amazingly they did not so that settled things for Mr. Wilson. Is it any wonder that the CIA messed up the WMD story given this kind of help on the job?
The CIA doesn't have a problem with nepotism then?
Does Plame still have her job? If not, is she getting a pension? Personally, I think she and her husband should be brought up on charges.
Do you know if the committee talked to Foley for their report?
And there's still the question of the identity of the Beeb's CIA source for its yellowcake stories...
We might start by asking if anyone resigned recently.
Novak is talking......
Well, you'll live if you're lucky. I guarantee you, once the terrorists have a really good appeaser, someone they know will want to "negotiate" with them, the attacks will resume with a vengeance. The liberals can't get it through their thick heads that the terrorists have nothing but contempt for civilized negotiations--as Bin Laden himself stated in his "declaration of war on the west" years ago.
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