Posted on 10/25/2005 6:27:17 AM PDT by StoneGiant
An Open Letter to the Press: Tell the Truth About Joseph Wilson
10/24 07:50 PM
I sent an e-mail like this to a reporter who is covering the Plame investigation. I'll let you know if I get a response. In the meantime, feel free to send this e-mail to reporters you see peddling Wilson canards:
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Why do you and many other reporters persist in using the following stock description Joseph Wilson:
In his July 6, 2003 op-ed, Mr. Wilson wrote that he had been sent to Niger to check out whether Saddam had actually purchased uranium, and that "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." According the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on pre-war intelligence, Wilson’s trip actually indicated that Baghdad had sought to buy uranium from Niger – he “told his CIA debriefers that during his Niger trip, he spoke to the country's former prime minister, who told him that members of an Iraqi delegation in the late 1990s expressed interest in expanded commercial contacts with Niger. The former prime minister told Wilson that he interpreted the comment to mean that Iraq was interested in buying uranium, although the word 'uranium' was not mentioned in the Iraqis' conversation, he said. The prime minister, fearful of United Nations sanctions that prevented trade with Iraq at the time, dropped the subject, Wilson reported" (Jacoby, Salon, 07/16/04). Wilson himself, in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote, “I never claimed to have ‘debunked’ the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur.”
That description has the added benefit of using fewer words. In addition, it shows that Wilson's claim did not contradict the administration's claim that Saddam had sought to purchase uranium from Niger — a claim that Wilson's report actually bolstered. Can you please clarify why this canard, well-documented by liberal media critic Bob Somerby, has gone uncorrected for so long? |
If we don't do something to stop this error from being repeated over and over in the media, it will simply become fact. If indictments are handed down, public interest in the Plame case will skyrocket. People who have never heard of Joseph Wilson will suddenly start hearing his name. If the press continues to whitewash his credibility issues, people will actually think he was some kind of truth-telling whistleblower, rather than a lying CIA plant.
Little Green Footballs has a handy list of media contacts.
And we didn't win.
Joe Wilson (and now the wife as well) are rapidly becoming the new liberal icons of whistle-blowing virtue (re: "Is Valerie Plame the new Deep Throat?", The American Thinker. And this from a conservative website). The myth has been spun and perpetuated ad nauseum through the liberal press for months now and there is no going back. The impending indictments from Fitzgerald, whether legitimate or not, will seal the deal. Exoneration and vindication for Republicans, after a proper trial, will be immaterial as the fairy tale will have been fixed in the public's mind by that point.
Pardon me if I don't buy in to your negativism. There's always time to blast this stupid liberal ploy.
" Joe Wilson (and now the wife as well) are rapidly becoming the new liberal icons of whistle-blowing virtue"
That's too strong, I think. Does anybody really think that Wilson has been straightforward in spinning the situation or that his motivation has been what's good for the U.S. in speaking tour? From the moment he went public his role has been political.
On the other hand it looks like he was factually correct that we did not evidence of Iraq attempting to buy Uranium from Niger - but even he admits that it might have happened.
The bottom line is we don't have evidence of WMD justification for entering the war and the sooner we de-focus on WMD's or terrorism justifying the war and focus on the humanitarian reasons for the war and reality that we are there and cannot afford to leave prematurely the better off we will be.
"(re: "Is Valerie Plame the new Deep Throat?""
Let's ask former President Clinton.
Sorry, that just came out.
Today’s media assault has all the earmarks of a CIA disinformation operation, just the sort of thing Plame and her colleagues are professionally trained to conduct. While it has layers of deception and coverup, the pattern seems clear enough. Dozens of commentators have now identified the many lies told by Joe Wilson over the past two years, with the quiet backing of Plame and her CIA backers. Notice that the CIA could have exposed Wilson’s fabrications at any time in the last two years. It did not, and by its deliberate silence has allowed those stories to flower into the partisan assault we see today.As Howard Fineman wrote a few weeks ago, the now infamous outing of Valerie Plame isn’t primarily an issue of law. It’s about a lot of other things, like: the ongoing war between the CIA and the vice president’s office. The spookocracy has a very personal itch to want to destroy George W. Bush and Dick Cheney: It is facing a purge to finally get rid of entire layers of incompetents and saboteurs, revealed by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Seriously, as much as we enjoy watching the Old Media sink into oblivion around here, they are still a loud voice in the American wilderness. My fear is that the loud trumpeting of the MSM, should indictments be forthcoming, will garner the interest of those who do not follow politics beyond the evening news. I think just the whiff of scandal will be enough to slowly bolster the Deanster's new talking point that we are suffering through a "climate of corruption" within this administration.
Remember, it's not whether the implications are true, it's the seriouness of the charges that count...
The liberals are still stuck on Watergate and Vietnam. They view all of reality through the prism of the 60's.
Ah, the mistaken assumption that the liberal media has a conscience. They don't.
You're right, I misrepresented the article referenced because the title seemed to bolster my point so well.
Nevertheless, there is no denying that the liberal press is attempting to paint Joe & Val as victims here, poor civil servants whose simple lives were ruined by the evil machinations of the Machiavellian Rove when Big Joe challenged the WMD war argument.
Why do I hate "Open Letters"?
"Let's ask former President Clinton."
Seriously now, are we to believe that Clinton could have determined depth beyond two inches?
Well, something's up. Today, almost 2 1/2 years after he aired that serial liar's story, the Wash Post's Walter Pincus, finally concedes he's a showboat and finally concedes the SSCI found most of his story to be false. (Pincus still lies about the uranium buying story) but it is progress. And I have to wonder why he finally conceded his playmate is not credible.
Actually, Iraqi trade contacts with Niger are public information that even Wilson has acknowledged. As others have noted, Iraq was after chickpeas, goats, or uranium. Take your pick.
Wilson never mentions those trade contacts unless pressed, because they don't fit his overall case, which is that France didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, deal in contraband uranium.
It would be interesting to know where Libya got its yellow-cake for its nuclear program.
Win with Spin
Me:"On the other hand it looks like he was factually correct that we did not evidence of Iraq attempting to buy Uranium from Niger"
marron: "Actually, Iraqi trade contacts with Niger are public information that even Wilson has acknowledged. As others have noted, Iraq was after chickpeas, goats, or uranium. Take your pick.
Wilson never mentions those trade contacts unless pressed, because they don't fit his overall case, which is that France didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, deal in contraband uranium. "
Our two statements are not contradictory. I agree Wilson is playing a slimey political game. But the fact remains that he was factually correct that we did not have evidence of of Iraq attempting to buy Uranium from Niger and thus we would have been smarter to not go after him.
I agree that the media reports sure don't look good for our team.
Maybe Fitzgerald will fool everyone with an indictment for a renegade CIA operation, but I don't think so.
No one that I've read has mentioned Wilson or Plame or other CIA types having to reappear at the grand jury. I guess Fitz could be getting inside info from Goss, but somehow I think the leaks are intentional to prepare the nation for what's taking going to take place in the administration.
He could also come back with no indictments at all....but that doesn't explain the leaks which do appear to be intentional.
bttt
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