Posted on 07/14/2005 4:11:32 PM PDT by Arkie2
WASHINGTON – Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.
In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked detail."
Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come.
No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.
One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a supersecret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.
The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.
• Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.
LOL!
He might as well have written "OK, so Rove isn't guily, BUT..."
it is part of a larger scandal - one in which the media LIE and SPIN at every turn
He did? and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium
Funny, he told CNN he didn't disprove the claims. He didn't even have a written report.
David Gregory is subbing for Chrissy Matthews on Hardball, virtually crying because his guests won't take his bait accusing Rove of breaking the law. It's really funny!
He's talkin' to his people. He's not out to spread the truth, just disease.
Wow. That's a well-informed "birdie."
I thought things were going to be changed....like actually giving both sides of an issue.
Daniel Snore is one of the biggest and deadliest liberal propagandists in the U.S. of A.........actually, in the entire solar system.
Leni
Quit watching Chrissy a long time ago although I get an occasional update when Rush takes him to the woodshed.
I wonder who their audience is when they use Latin but don't explain what it means.
Read your editorial earlier and it makes sense. Next week should be interesting. The Sunday talk programs will be nothing but Plame and Rove.
Let me remind you Danny, NPR is paid for by taxpayers, not the DNC.
"Ignoring Wilson's report"
Does he mean the one that some thought lent more credence to an Iraq Niger connection?
I am sorry to learn that Daniel Schoor is still alive. Seems like 30 years ago that CBS had to fire him, and he was old then.
I, too, think this is bigger in scope than just Wilson v. Rove.
I wonder if Wilson deliberately lied in his op-ed piece, hoping the Bush Administration would care enough about his lies to use their own facts to contradict him.
Then, working with the Administration's facts, the Wilsons and their shady "friends" could try to determine the identities of foreign, pro-US spies.
I think they'd like to neutralize the influence of any undercover folks who agree with Bush.
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