Mark Steyn: How a serial liar suckered Dems and the media

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.

Fortunately for us, Wilson was granted many opportunities to stick his foot into his own mouth. (while thinking that he was sticking it in W’s ass)

There are many interviews that he wishes now he had not done, including this one:

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04023.html

BuzzFlash: People such as yourself who make a career in the State Department are known as people who don’t rock the boat. Let’s talk about what compelled you to write the column in The New York Times that dispelled the Niger uranium accusation that Bush included in his State of the Union Address. You had to know before you submitted that column that there would be consequences both personally and professionally.

Ambassador Wilson: First of all, I had been retired for several years from government. But secondly, with respect to this idea of diplomats not rocking the boat, I think it’s important to understand that the American diplomatic service is full of people who are patriots, and who serve their country with great distinction. These people carry out their government’s foreign policy irrespective of which party happens to be in power at any given time. Now that means that they are generally very bright and very knowledgeable about the practicality of doing international relations and foreign policy, since most of them spend a good part of their career overseas.

I wrote my article only after I had given the government several months, both in terms of talking to people close to the Administration, as well as some people within the Administration, and by talking on background to the press. I urged the government to come clean with this story that was patently not true. I did so because I fully understood that it is a penchant of this Administration, and it is a modus operandi of Karl Rove, to attempt to destroy the messenger who brings bad news.

It was important that the government correct the report that Iraq obtained uranium from Niger. And it was important that if, in fact, the government was going to come after me, which I fully understood they would, that the story was fully understood by the American people before they in fact destroyed the messenger. In urging the government to come clean on this Niger business, I was doing nothing more and nothing less than any American has been taught from social studies in seventh grade -- it is the responsibility of any American citizen in our democracy. We have checks and balances, and we have rights, and we have protections to ensure that we hold our government accountable for its actions. And that’s exactly what I was doing.

Now understanding that they would come after me, I didn’t feel that I had anything personally to worry about. After all, as you correctly pointed out, the former President Bush had called me an American hero and had written me any number of laudatory handwritten letters. What did shock me and I think shocks most Americans was what this Administration decided when they couldn’t discredit me to their satisfaction. Somebody close to the President of the United States decided that in order to defend Bush’s political agenda, that individual or individuals would violate the national security of the country and expose my wife’s name and her profession.

That was absolutely unexpected, that this government would take a national security asset off the table, working in an area that is of primordial importance to the national security of the United States -– the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of rogue states and non-state actors. Yet for some reason, either because they wanted to discourage other people from stepping forward and telling the truth, or out of simple revenge, as was reported in the Washington Post, this government decided that it would go ahead and take that national security asset off the table.

It was truly un-American. It was a betrayal of the country, irrespective of whether they can prosecute this through conviction. It was treasonous and clearly the act and the subsequent pushing of the story, and trying to sort of promote this lie, was un-American in every sense of the word.

BuzzFlash: When the Administration falsely claimed that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium from Niger, I think some people in their minds didn’t fully understand what that meant. It seems to me that most people thought that meant the transfer of a suitcase of highly explosive material or something. And in reality, what we’re talking about was a very large-scale operation.

Ambassador Wilson: Sure. We’re talking about 500 tons that would have had to cross the Sahara Desert, been loaded onto a ship in West Africa, transported to some destination, and then further transported into Baghdad. Five hundred tons is a lot of poundage.

BuzzFlash: And essentially that could not happen without somebody noticing something, right?

Ambassador Wilson: That’s correct. And I lay all that out in the book and why I concluded that it could not have happened.

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