posted by Zacs Mom
Posted on 11/03/2005 3:49:31 PM PST by SquirrelKing
Well, Joseph C Wilson IV's 15 minutes is now in its third year, and judging from the pass given to him by the major newspapers and TV networks there's no end in sight. Why would the media collude in this fraudulent buffoon's self-aggrandization? After all, the first folks he lied to were them. But they seem to have decided their investment in him is now so deep, they're stuck with him. This is what I wrote a year and a half ago, in the fond belief that the chapter-and-verse exposure of his falsehoods would finally drive Wilson from public life. If only.
Well, the week went pretty much as I predicted seven days ago:
BUSH LIED!! Not.
BLAIR LIED!!! Not.
But it turns out JOE WILSON LIED! PEOPLE DIED. Of embarrassment mostly. At least I'm assuming that's why The New York Times, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, PBS drone Bill Moyers and all the other media bigwigs Joseph C. Wilson IV suckered have fallen silent on the subject of the white knight of integrity they've previously given the hold-the-front-page treatment, too.
And what about John F. Kerry? Joe Wilson campaigned with Kerry in at least six states, and claims to have helped with the candidate's speeches. He was said to be a senior foreign policy adviser to the senator. As of Friday, Wilson's Web site, restorehonesty.com, was still wholly paid for by Kerry's presidential campaign.
Heigh-ho. It would be nice to hear his media boosters howling en masse, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" But Joe Wilson's already slipping down the old media memory hole. He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq -- and yes, by the time you read this the Kerry campaign may well have pulled the plug on his Web site, and Salon magazine's luxury cruise will probably have to find another headline speaker, and he won't be doing Tim Russert again any time soon. But what matters to the media and to Senator Kerry is that he helped the cause of (to quote his book title) The Politics Of Truth, and if it takes a serial liar to do that, so be it.
But before he gets lowered in his yellowcake overcoat into the Niger River, let's pause to consider: What do Joe Wilson's lies mean? And what does it say about the Democrats and the media that so many high-ranking figures took him at his word?
First, contrary to what Wilson wrote in The New York Times, Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In support of that proposition are a Senate report in Washington, Lord Butler's report in London, MI6, French intelligence, other European agencies -- and, as we now know, the CIA report, based on Joe Wilson's original briefing to them. Against that proposition is Joe Wilson's revised version of events for the Times.
This isn't difficult. In 1999, a senior Iraqi "trade" delegation went to Niger. Uranium accounts for 75 percent of Niger's exports. The rest is goats, cowpeas and onions. So who sends senior trade missions to Niger? Maybe Saddam dispatched his Baathist big shots all the way to the dusty capital of Niamy because he had a sudden yen for goat and onion stew with a side order of black-eyed peas, and Major Wanke, the then-president, had offered him a great three-for-one deal.
But that's not what Joe Wilson found. Major Wanke's prime minister, among others, told Ambassador Wilson that he believed Iraq wanted yellowcake. And Ambassador Wilson told the CIA. And the CIA's report agreed with the British and the Europeans that "Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa."
In his ludicrously vain memoir The Politics Of Truth, Wilson plays up his knowledge of the country. He makes much of his intimacy with Wanke and gives himself the credit for ridding Niger of the Wanke regime. The question then is why a man who knew so much about what was going on chose deliberately to misrepresent it to all his media/ Democrat buddies, not to mention to the American people. For a book called The Politics Of Truth, it's remarkably short of it. On page 2, Wilson says of his trip to Niger: "I had found nothing to substantiate the rumors." But he had.
That's what lying is, by the way: intentional deceit, not unreliable intelligence. And I'm not usually the sort to bandy the liar-liar-pants-on-fire charge beloved by so many in our politics today, but I'll make an exception in the case of Wilson, who's never been shy about the term. He called Bush a "liar" and he called Cheney a "lying sonofabitch," on stage at a John Kerry rally in Iowa.
Saddam wanted yellowcake for one reason: to strike at his neighbors in the region, and beyond that at Britain, America and his other enemies. In other words, he wanted the uranium in order to kill you.
The obvious explanation for Wilson's deceit about what he found in Africa is that his hatred of Bush outweighed everything else. Or as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L. Simon put it, "He is a deeply evil human being willing to lie and obfuscate for temporary political gain about a homicidal dictator's search for weapons-grade uranium."
Technically, it's weaponizable uranium, not "weapons grade." But that's the point. Simon isn't the expert, and, as Ambassador Wilson trumpets loudly and often, he is. This isn't a case of another Michael Moore, court buffoon to the Senate Democrats, or Whoopi Goldberg, has-been potty-mouth to John Kerry. They're in show biz; what do they know?
But Wilson does know; he went there, he talked to officials, and he lied about America's national security in order to be the anti-Bush crowd's Playmate of the Month. Either he's profoundly wicked or he's as deranged as that woman on the Paris Metro last week who falsely claimed to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. The Paris crazy was unmasked within a few days, but the Niger crazy was lionized for a full year.
Some of us are on record as dismissing Wilson in the first bloom of his unmerited celebrity. But John Kerry was taken in -- to the point where he signed him up as an adviser and underwrote his Web site. What does that reveal about Mister Nuance and his superb judgment? He claims to be able to rebuild America's relationships with France, and to have excellent buddy-to-buddy relations with French political leaders. Yet anyone who's spent 10 minutes in Europe this last year knows that virtually every government there believes Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa. Is Kerry so uncurious about America's national security he can't pick up the phone to his Paris pals and get the scoop firsthand? For all his claims to be Monsieur Sophisticate, there's something hicky and parochial in his embrace of an obvious nutcake for passing partisan advantage.
Any Democrats and media types who are in the early stages of yellowcake fever and can still think clearly enough not to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or Houston -- or even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman -- need to consider seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An ambassador, in Sir Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a good man sent abroad to lie for his country. This ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the media helped him do it.
The Chicago Sun-Times, July 18th 2004
Document copyright Steynonline.com. All rights reserved.
Thing is, and thie shows, when you shine the light on him just a little his claims scurry away like roaches on the basement floor.
Steyn Ping!
The pass by the media is only to be expected. It's the pass by the special prosecutor that is the most disturbing. If he lied about a trip made at the behest of the CIA, then isn't that an issue of nat'l security?
That seems to be the issue on A LOT of people's minds today. They are playing so fast and loose with this trip and the consequences that it is high time it caught up with them. Some libs are even now bringing up the "forgeries" and other examples of bogacity that they touted. All of this was harassment and stunts to damage Bush and affect the election. By dredging it back up now it seems even more ridiculous.
But that doesn't stop them!
That's why I was very disappointed that nothing about Wilson's misbehavior was mentioned or alluded to in Fitzy's press conference. In principle, the Justice Dept. should be able to initiate an investigation of this guy. Instead, the admin. is getting investigated?? This is all upside-down. And indicted??? For what?
Was Libby just being stupid? Shouldn't they have openly called Wilson on his lies?
Steyn is ALWAYS fun
you must be a Foamyan :)
BTRL
Steyn ping.
There is much political gain to be had knowing about the Wilson and Plame affair.. and politically inserting it into any conversation for the next two months, maybe longer..
Then the democrats would rue the day that they brought it up..
When this Plamegate started to heat up recently, I decided I should educate myself and did a Yahoo! search and one of the first pages was Wikipedea. So I checked it out to get an overview, there's a link to the 1982 Outing a Spy Act so I read it. My first conclusion was "there's no way they're going to get a conviction on this". Then I decided to look into whether Plame would be considered "covert" under this act. After a maybe couple hours it became clear that Plame could not be considered covert. A Public Defender could easily prove this in court.
So I had to ask myself "why does every news paper in the country continue to refer to Plame as a covert agent when they could just read the law like I did and figure out she wasn't?"
Well, we know the reason. This is what Orwell warned us about. I'm sure the textbooks of the future will describe Wilson as a heroic whistleblower who exposed the lies of the warmongering neocons.
And of course the GOP leaders are bringing this up on National TV etc etc every chance they get
Yeah right
The one place this might get resolved is if it is done during the Libby trial. The Republicans do not have the guts to ask for an investigation as evidenced today by the January hearing date for the Supreme Court justice. The Dems want months to pound on Bush and that hearing, held now, would be their problem as it would dictate the news. If during the Libby trial Ms Phlame and Mr. Wilson were put under oath, things might look different. I have always suspected SHE had an agenda and sent this (Wilson) there to move her agenda or alternatively get him out of the country so she could mess around.The Libby trial is in my opinion the only place where there is a chance for the Wilsons, the CIA and the media to be exposed. I would contribute to that effort.
bump
Reading this, I see Hillary somewhere...way in the back.
I don't really like "Yellowcake Joe".
I prefer Yellow Joe.
Or, Ol' Yeller.
posted by Zacs Mom
LOL
Feel my Squirrely Wrath!
bttt!
Come on Mark, don't hold back..tell us what you really think of Joe...LOL!
bump
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