Has anyone here ever considered that there's an innocent and logical explanation for how Wilson was chosen?
Let's turn that question around, "Have you ever considered there was not an innocent nor logical explanation for Wilson being chosen?
Of course! Duh! Everyone on this board has explored that possibility. I'm just allowing that it could have been as simple as her telling a superior that he was qualified & available to go. Someone higher up than Valerie Plame okay'd his trip so someone pretty high up also felt him qualified.
I don't know that there's much proof that Plame was against Bush's policies. And I'm suprised at Wilson's partisanship considering Poppy Bush seemed to think pretty highly of him.
I wonder if Wilson became a zealous anti-Bush partisan only after he felt that he'd been unfairly attacked and his wife's career ruined.
And yes - I do wonder why he was allowed to write an op-ed piece in the NY Times and why he wasn't under some sort of confidentiality agreement. I'm even-handed in my position against releasing classified info.
So my question is....why hasn't the Republican-controlled congress investigated that issue?
Political ties
Wilson was a supporter and donor to the Kerry/Edwards campaign for the presidency. In 2000, he donated to Vice President Gore’s campaign. In the mid-eighties, Wilson worked for Gore as a congressional staffer. He has made contributions to the campaigns of Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy. He has in the recent past spoken to activist groups like Win Without War, which is a part of MoveOn.org.
However, he also donated $1,000 to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and $1,500 to Rep. Ed Royce's (R-CA) 2000 reelection campaign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson
In 1991, Wilson's book jacket boasts, President George H.W. Bush praised Wilson as "a true American hero," and he was made an ambassador. But for some reason, he was assigned not to Cairo, Paris, or Moscow, places where you put the best and the brightest, nor was he sent to Bermuda or Luxembourg, places you send people you want to reward. Instead, he was sent to Gabon, a diplomatic backwater of the first rank.
After that, he says in his memoir, "I had risen about as high as I could in the Foreign Service and decided it was time to retire." Well, that's not exactly accurate either. He could have been given a more important posting, such as Kenya or South Africa, or he could have been promoted higher in the senior Foreign Service (he made only the first of four grades). Instead, he was evidently (according to my sources) forced into involuntary retirement at 48. (The minimum age for voluntary retirement in the Foreign Service is 50.) After that, he seems to have made quite a bit of money — doing what for whom is unclear and I wish the Senate committee had attempted to find out.
But based on one op-ed declaring 16 words spoken by the president a lie, he transformed himself into an instant celebrity and, for a while, it seemed, a contender for power within the chien-mange-le-chien world of foreign policy. That dream has now probably evaporated. It is hard to see how a President John Kerry would now want Wilson in his inner circle. But if he desired to return to Gabon or Niger I, for one, would not be among those opposing him.
Our Man in Niger
http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200407121105.asp
That's a very good question, and I'd like to know the answer also.
I do not think Wilson "became a zealous anti-Bush partisan only after he felt that he'd been unfairly attacked and his wife's career ruined." IMO, he was anti-Bush when he wrote the untruthful Op-Ed piece for the NYT. Wilson was not unfairly attacked, and his wife only has herself and Wilson to blame if her career has been ruined. She 'outed' herself to him after only 3 or 4 dates, and his craving publicity is what has hurt them. They didn't have to pose for pictures in Vanity Fair, nor did she have to attend public meetings and have him introduce her as his wife 'whose career had been ruined'. She could have remained private, but I've read it was known in social circles in DC what her position had been prior to 1997 when she returned to the States....thanks to her husband's mouth!