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mp3 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME midi
Posted on 10/30/2005 9:25:14 PM PST by smoothsailing
Joe Wilson in a Bind
By Clinton W. Taylor
Published 10/31/2005 12:07:45 AM
Last week I had the privilege of being lied to personally by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who spoke here at Stanford last Monday.
The fact that Joe Wilson is economical with the truth probably won't surprise many Spectator readers.
Nonetheless I assure you the horse I am beating, although it may be lying in the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, is far from dead.
But this week there's new evidence of his lies to flog him with. When the indictment of Scooter Libby was unsealed on Friday, it finally placed one of Wilson's oft-repeated fabrications beyond the most hopeful partisan's credibility.
First the lie: In the Q&A after his talk last Monday, Wilson answered a question of mine with essentially the same statement about the origin of his mission to Niger that he relates in his L.A. Times op-ed:
Valerie was an innocent in this whole affair. Although there were suggestions that she was behind the decision to send me to Niger, the CIA told Newsday just a week after the Novak article appeared that "she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." The CIA repeated the same statement to every reporter thereafter.
The Newsday article he refers to notes:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."
This has been Wilson's story ever since the issue came up: he maintains his wife had nothing to do the CIA's decision to send him. It's important to his narrative that "outing" his wife was a bolt from the blue designed to intimidate and punish him.
The more plausible explanation is that the information came out because it cast Wilson's mission and his credibility in a new light. Evidence supports this interpretation. While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.
The first contradiction, of course, occurred back in July 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence devoted a few pages of its report on WMD intelligence failures to point out that Valerie Plame came up with the idea of sending her husband to Niger. Both a memorandum Plame wrote and the testimony of a CIA officer show that Wilson's trip was her idea. (The report can be downloaded here, and the relevant sections are on page 39, 40, and 72.)
That should have put an end to Joe Wilson's credibility, but it wasn't good enough for the diehard Wilson fans, like most of the audience at Stanford last week, or the editorial staff of the L.A. Times. But now the indictment of Scooter Libby has proved yet again that Wilson is full of it.
In order to claim that Libby had perjured himself and obstructed justice, the grand jury goes to great lengths to show how and when he had actually learned about the origin of Wilson's trip. To do so, they refer on page 4 of the indictment to a conversation between Libby and a "senior officer of the CIA" on June 11, 2003:
[Libby] was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.
And again on page 12 of the indictment:
[Libby] was informed by a senior CIA officer that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her.
This puts Wilson's fan club in a bind: either Wilson is lying, or the indictment is. Which is it? If it's the latter, then perhaps Scooter Libby didn't know what the indictment said he knew, and the indictment ought to be thrown out or at least amended.
Alas, most of the world sees it's the former. Wilson's lie, of course, wouldn't excuse any crime Libby might have committed, but it ought to be enough to prevent Wilson from ever being taken seriously again.
Clinton W. Taylor (clinton_w_taylor@hotmail.com) is a lawyer and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford.
It's a lengthy article but contains the ammo you need for making cogent arguments, although to be honest,for me, talking to lefties has been a waste of my time.
I've heard this too but I can't imagine the reasoning. Can you post the pages where it appears?
So why is her suggestion such a big deal?
Thank God. And I'm glad you appreciate it. I'm capable of recognizing it too...and of responding in kind. It's a joy to do so.
Scraping away the nonsense and snide remarks - you're right that Saddam's primary interest was in removing the sanctions so that he could reconstitute his WMD programs. That was - correctly - one of the principal justifications for attacking him.
The CIA had reports from the Ambassador to Niger (the woman with the hyphenated name) and General Carlton Fulford, who they sent for the same reason they sent Wilson. They probably had reports from spies and covert contacts as well.
The Senate report is no great shakes for accuracy, consistancy, and clarity.
I heard he had covert dealings in goat droppings.
Bookmark post.
Yes, what's ludicrous about the whole affair is that IF there were any illicit dealings in Niger uranium, what were the chances that Joe Wilson's chats over mint tea would have revealed anything about them??? It was such an obvious bogus journey, at taxpayer expense - should have been deducted from Valerie Plame's CIA paycheck!!! And Joe Wilson has the nerve to pretend HE was doing the nation a great favor taking this junket at our expense any maybe building contacts for his bogus consulting business along the way....
Think about it: IF Niger had been taking any active secret steps toward dealing uranium to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions, would any current or former official just volunteer the info to Joe Wilson???? "Oh, yes, Mr. ex-Ambassador, we know about the UN sanctions but we decided not to pass up the chance for some foreign exchange revenue from Iraq..... please don't tell your CIA or the UN Security Council about this!"
That's what's been bogus about this matter from the start - the whole mission was preposterous and could not disprove anything at all. What's even worse is that, given that Wilson DID obtain an account of an Iraqi trade approach to Niger, which the former minister DID think was aimed at starting illicit trade in uranium, Wilson has been given a free pass from the MSM to totally lie about everything in this case. What a crock!
p.s. one might think it's a contradiction to assert that Wilson's mission could not have yielded any useful results when in fact he did get some info on a possible Iraqi attempt to start an illicit trade for uranium, but what I mean is that the CIA could not possibly DEPEND upon Wilson's trip doing anything to prove the negative.... i.e., if everyone he talked to swore up and down that there were no illicit sales of uranium or even attempts to discuss such sales, that would not give any REASONABLE person the slightest confidence that the trip had debunked anything. This was a totally slipshod and slovenly approach to intelligence gathering!
"The Senate report is no great shakes for accuracy, consistancy, and clarity."
You make them sound like Joe Wilson. How is the Senate version less accurate then, say, yours?
You're splitting hairs.
It is a big deal because Wilson attributed his trip to the Vice President's office, and not his wife.
Oh, it's far more accurate than mine...but still tough to read, incomplete, and sometimes incomprehensible.
Not at all. A position opened up, she suggested her husband - but she was neither responsible for selecting him or opening the position. Those responsible could have selected someone else, or no one at all.
The Senate report is very clear about this. The trip was initiated in response to a query by Cheney's office, not by his wife. He was selected to go on that trip by people other than his wife as well.
Inotherwords incompetent nepotism is not an accurate description of what happened.
LOL, two teeth, crossed eyes....whoops, you forgot the wart!
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