[Echo Talon]

President Bush unwittingly touched off the controversy during his State of the Union address in January 2003, when, in making the case for war with Iraq, he said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Those 16 words became the target of a New York Times op-ed piece in July of that year, after the United States had invaded Iraq, written by an obscure career foreign service officer named Joseph Wilson who had worked for both Bush's father and President Clinton.

Since when does Joe Wilson speak for the British Government?

[balch3]

Left wing claptrap from the Comical.

[jimboster]

This is a pretty straight forward presenation of the facts.

[palmer]

They pretty much demolish the two main accusations: wilson-rove and wilson-16-words, and print a lot of facts related to those two accusations. I give it one thumb up.

[JoeGar]

This seems like a good summary of the facts.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Just about admits that there is no there there. The chronic just can't admit that the msm is being caught in another manaufactured story.

The evil genius, Karl Rove, strikes again with another ROVIAN plot to get the msm.

[stocksthatgoup]

Once again the old The Democrats are Wrong and So are the Republicans. Who can tell? Who are we to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt? Don't let the facts cloud the isses. -

What crap! Use you mind it is obvious the Dems were trying to trap Rove and now they are throwing further allegations in an attempt to cover their tracks.

[Nick Danger]

even if Rove is not prosecuted under that law, it is not clear whether Fitzgerald is looking at other charges such as perjury or obstruction of justice. Questions remain as to who the other senior administration official was who spoke to Novak or who Miller's sources were.

There is an amazing hidden assumption in all this media coverage which no one seems to question. The assumption is that Fitzgerald is investigating who "outed" Valerie Plame.

What if it's not? What if other classified material was leaked? For example:

• Wilson's trip to Niger was at the behest of the CIA. That was not publicly available information.
• Whatever Wilson told the CIA when he got back, it is unlikely that the CIA expected to see it in the New York Times.
• "The dates were wrong and the signatures were wrong." Wilson said that, about a document proffered up by Italian Intelligence concerning a uranium purchase. But in theory, Wilson had never seen the document. The U.S. did not have it until months after Wilson got back.
  • How did Wilson find out the document even exists? This was a Big Secret being passed around by intelligence agencies.
  • How secret was the fact that we knew it was forged? The French were still trying to peddle it to us and the Brits as genuine. The fact that we knew it was fake was likely a highly classified piece of information.
• In discussing the "leak" of Plame's name, David Corn revealed even more Secret Stuff: that her job was to monitor the proliferation of WMDs. Nobody knew that. How did David Corn find that out? Novak didn't know that. Cooper didn't know that. Rove didn't know that. How did some blogger find out what Valerie Plame's secret job was?

And then there's this:

Wilson later went to work for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

Not exactly. According the puff piece in Vanity Fair, Wilson started working for the Kerry campaign in May 2003. In other words, at the time he wrote his damning op-ed in the New York Times and appeared on Meet the Press, Wilson was a Kerry campaign operative. Do you remember the media telling us that? Did they know? Did Timmy Russert know that he was passing off a Kerry campaign operative as some sort of career civil servant "whistleblower"?

This is more and more starting to sound like Rathergate, with the media conspiring with Democrats to foist fake material (later shown to be all lies) on an unsuspecting public for the purpose of throwing spears at Bush.

[normy]

One of the most clear headed and straight forward articles written that sums up the whole thing.

Its really unfortunate that the MSM has gone so far over the edge they cannot be trusted to report facts. The actual story by Cooper should have been "Wilson report at odds with British intelligence" Wilson should be hammered about the lies and misrepresentations in his so called oral report. The media should be letting all America know that British intelligence backed the White House on the uranium claim and Wilson is a partisan glory hound.

I think a media who can be trusted to get the facts out is very important. Politicians shouldn't have to defend themselves against false accusations by lazy and partisan reporters who "leak" names and can never be held accountable.

A new law should be enacted in which any journalist who reveals the identity of a covert agent will be jailed as the leaker if they do not reveal the source of their leak.

[WillMalven]

I am truly astounded to find an article in the Houston Communist to be so factually accurate. I think I must have shifted to a different reality. Is this a Star Trek movie?

[wildbill]

In a line buried deep in his New York Times article, Wilson conceded, "I did not file a written report" on the African trip. Instead he theorizes that his findings would have bubbled up from oral briefings he gave to intelligence officials"

WE paid for this trip, most probably costing thousands of dollars, where Joe Wilson spent some time by the hotel pool sipping drinks, and we don't even get a written report for our money?

"what did you find out, Joe?"
"Nothing, but it sure is hot over there."
"Have Valerie put you in for a hazardous duty bonus. Thanks for your time."

[Ben Hecks]

I find a number of similarities between the events in Britain that attempted to bring down Tony Blair with the series of events here in the US that are attempting to bring down George W. Bush. In both instances, there have been claims that intelligence reports were inflated to promote the Iraq war. In Britain, it was a government employee named David Kelly that "leaked" information to Andrew Gilligan, a BBC reporter. Gilligan's reporting was later debunked following an investigation; Kelly committed suicide. Fake documents have been released in order to destroy the credibility of authentic documents which has further clouded the issues. Today, we're seeing the MSM desperately trying to keep this story alive to damage President Bush. I'm not convinced that all of this is pure coincidence.

[tobyhill]

The fact that Miller is in jail is because she is protecting Kristof who in turn is protecting Wilson himself. I would bet Wilson told Kristof about his wife and his wife's roll in getting him the job. Now Wilson has claimed that his wife had no roll in getting him the job but now we know different primarily from the State Dept Memo. Now if Miller is sitting in jail protecting Kristoff for Wilson and Plame then she could face obstruction charges if they prove Wilson lied through another angle.

[blake6900]

Look, we all know there is no basis for prosecution of Rove for outing a CIA agent. What I'd like to know for sure is whether or not Fitzgerald can widen the scope of his grand jury's investigation. In the old days of the Independent Counsel the AG and/or the courts had to officially be requested to allow that. I believe a grand jury can go wherever the investigation takes them. If that's true, then it's very noteworthy that Joseph Wilson has never testified before this grand jury nor has his wife. It seems a particularly simple task for Fitzgerald to question her as to when and where she was "covert" since this seems to be a major bone of contention. That tells me that he/she could very well end up being the target of this investigation since it's not unusual to have a target not be questioned before a grand jury that's possibly going to indict him/her. After all, no lawyers are allowed in the room and pleading the Fifth becomes a nuisance, albeit a constitutional one. However Wilson and/or his wife may have already been questioned by federal officials outside the grand jury and those officials may have testified.

As an aside let me say in light of Wilson's rather questionable personal business dealings and qualifications for going to Niger on behalf of the CIA in the first place, along with the fact that he never filed an official report upon his return, there is the distinct possibility that he could be guilty of much more than simply obstructing justice or perjuring himself. Links to individuals involved with the Oil for Food Scandal along with suspect uranium dealings could very well be much bigger fish to fry.

[DouglasKC]

The White House, meanwhile, directed officials to sign waivers releasing journalists from any confidentiality pledge they had made in conversations concerning Plame.

A little known fact. This means that anyone who worked in the White House gave journalists permission to publicly out them as sources on the Plame deal. That means Rove was not a source or they would have outed him at his request.

The only source could be someone who did not work at the White House. It's obviously Wilson who outted his own wife.

[GOPJ]

Is the CIA political to the point where they would work to undermine a President - like work with a Woodward to oust a Nixon or cut the legs from under Bush? Does the CIA have a dog in this fight?

[F-117A]

Wilson campaigning for Kerry in January, 2003

source

[FormerACLUmember]

Announcer: And now, a message from Pathological Liars Anonymous.

Joe Wilson: Hello, my name is Joe Wilson, and I'm a member of Pathological Liars Anonymous. In fact.. I'm the president of the organization! I didn't always lie. No, when I was a kid, I told the truth. But then one day, I got caught stealing money out of my mother's purse. I lied. I told her it was homework -that my teacher told me to do it. And she got fired! Yeah, that's what happened! After that, lying was easy for me.

I lied about my age and joined the army. I was thirteen at the time. Yeah.. I went to Vietnam, and I was injured catching a mortar shell in my teeth. And they made me a three-star general! And then I got a job in journalism, writing for the National Enquire.. er, Geographic! Yeah.. I was making twenty thousand a ye.. month! In fact, I won the Pulitzer Prize that year! Yeah, that's the ticket.

And then my cousin died - Joe Louis - and I took it hard. Maybe too hard - I tried to kill myself. Yeahh.. I did kill myself! Sure! I was medically dead for a week and a half! It was a woman that brought me out of it - Indira Gandhi! Yeah, right.. And she told me about Pathological Liars Anonymous. Oh, you'd be surprised how many famous people belong. In fact.. at one of the meetings I met my wife - Morgan Fairchild! Yes, I'm a change man now, and all because of Pathological Liars Anonymous. Why, I - I even have my picture on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Yeah. Every day! Yeah.. that's the ticket! Yeah, you betcha!