Posted on 12/04/2005 11:15:40 AM PST by got_moab?
Notebook. Inside the Iraq War storm: former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame Wilson, at Brown University, Nov. 30, 2005.
Do you muse about how history will read?
During Richard Nixon's Watergate, I used to think: 50 years from now, 100 years from now, people will study this and find it hard to follow. They will wonder: What was that all about? How did a break-in become a national trauma?
Same thing with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
And lately, at least as a symbol of the turmoil over Iraq, I've been thinking about the furor surrounding the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity as a covert CIA operative. It came in apparent retribution for her husband's decision to question President Bush's justification for taking America into battle. The episode has spawned a major criminal investigation and angry debates over the Bush-Cheney administration's honesty, judgment, and vindictiveness and over the role and performance of the press.
And here was Wilson himself, in a packed auditorium in Brown's Salomon Center, where the lobby had signs about activities, on campus and off, of interest to students.
Urged one:
BE ALL YOU CAN BE.
HELP END THE WAR . . .
Another touted an event at the State House to protest not only war but also poverty and racism.
Another boosted the Queer Alliance commemoration of World AIDS Day.
There was a poster for a food drive: "Let the underprivileged residents of Providence know that Brown University is a community that desires real change. . . . Students on meal plan can buy food donations at Campus Market with their flex points."
Another sign asked for winter clothes for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and cartons were filling up.
Wilson's lecture fee was paid by Brown Hillel -- no word from the organization on how much it was, and Wilson, who uses an agent, told me he didn't know. Brown Democrats and the university's Watson Institute for International Studies were also sponsors.
Meet Michaela Labriole of Cranston, a 20-year-old junior who is Brown Democrats president. She is majoring in cognitive neuroscience and wants to be a primatologist (someone who studies monkeys).
She told me that people definitely will be reading about the Wilsons decades from now, that the episode, in the footsteps of the Nixon and Clinton scandals, will reflect "a lack of trust" in Republican Bush's government. "That's what people remember, the fact that they felt betrayed by the person that was leading them."
Dara Wald, 26, works for Hillel as program director. She told me, "I hope that we learned from Watergate, I hope that we learned from the Monica Lewinsky debacle, and I hope that we learn from this. And I hope to be able to teach my children about what it means to be righteous and just, not just as a Jewish woman but as a human being, and possibly to look into the future and at some point be able to stand up for something that I believe in."
Joe Wilson, Wald said, "stood up for something that he believes in."
In a nutshell, Wilson, 56, represents truth, and his main message this night was the importance of telling it as it is, even if you or your spouse have to pay a price, because democracy depends on citizens informing themselves and holding government officials accountable.
Wilson's most celebrated action was writing a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed essay that drew upon a 2002 mission he undertook to West Africa at the request of the American government; he checked out a rumor that Iraq, eying nuclear weapons, had sought to buy uranium ore. Wilson reported back that there was no such deal. Nevertheless, in his Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush, in what came to be a memorable 16-word passage, declared, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Wilson raged against manipulation of intelligence, writing:
"America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its informtion. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor 'revisionist history,' as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons."
Within days, in what Wilson sees as an effort to distract public attention and to intimidate others, his wife's cover was blown.
When I asked him in a snatch of conversation at Brown whether he thinks people years from now will be reading about him and his wife, the leaks, the investigation, and so forth, reminiscent of how they'll be reading about the other scandals, he said, "I have no idea. I think if we get the focus back where it belongs, which is the administration, then perhaps we will be just a footnote in all of this. Because it's never been about us. It's always been about the 16 words and it's always been about the simple case of the administration's having violated national security by leaking the name of a covert officer."
The answer -- kind of a no but kind of a yes -- captured the jumble of faces or qualities Wilson projected during his Brown presentation. He came across as modest but proud, proud of his service to the country -- he was once acting ambassador in Baghdad and later ambassador to Gabon -- and especially proud of his work for President George H. W. Bush, the president's father.
He railed against the current administration's efforts to discredit him, reported that his consulting business has been wrecked, and said that sales from his book, The Politics of Truth, which he repeatedly (often humorously) touted and would go on to autograph in the lobby, had not come close to making up for his lost income. And yet, he said of himself and his wife, "Whatever pain we've gone through, whatever agony" is "really nothing" compared with the suffering of the families of the more than 2,000 Americans killed in the war and that of the 17,000 wounded and their families.
I WAS interested to talk with older members of the Rhode Island community who turned out to hear Wilson.
They included Alan Flink, a lawyer, who decried Mr. Bush's record. Flink, 78, speculated, "Historians are going to deal with this administration very unkindly." He said of the war, "Every aspect of it was wrong-headed and not in the interests of this country or, for that matter, the world."
He went on to fume about Mr. Bush's economic policies favoring the rich, and the botched response to Katrina.
Now Flink's wife, Renee, 76, piped up, "Alan, I think he demeans you and me and the whole country. . . . We're supposed to be a democracy, not a secretive government."
I saw Glenda Goldberg, 69, a retired educator, who told me of a small poster in her home that says of Bush, "Like a rock only dumber."
Still, there's nothing like talking with students. Here's Alexandra Trustman of Brookline, Mass., a 21-year old junior who is Hillel's major-events chairwoman. She majors in modern culture and media. (She's into film.)
She would introduce Wilson, and she already had a good idea of what to expect. She told me, "This kind of event makes people question the truth of our politics, our responsibility as individuals, and how we represent truth and also how we feel about our government and the truth that they present to us."
During his speech, Wilson said he and his wife had stood up for America, a nation that represents the "greatest experiment in self government ever known."
He said, "It will remain so only if we the citizens of this country remain vigilant, holding our country to account for our what government says and does in the name of the American people."
Character assassination, he said, cannot be allowed to drive people from the public square.
It was a good lesson for the students, and a good reminder to everyone else in this country.
-Man that doesn't even pass the straight face test!
"Still, there's nothing like talking with students."
-Uhhhh ok? Yeah I'm really intrigued by a couple twenty somethings who study film and monkeys waxing poetic about Watergate (an event they more than likely know very ittle about) and telling me how important Joe Wilson is.
e-mail at Mr. Bakst at mbakst@projo.com and tell him how lame he is.
this idiot is still yakking?????
He's up there with Screamin Deany....they make such a good pair....
If I remember correctly, the only ones "traumatized" by Watergate were the DemocRATS and their toadies in the MSM. While the politicians in D.C. were working hard to create a scandal, Americans continued to go about their business of making America work.
Wilson is the worst kind of traitor. If anyone "outed" his wife -- whose covert status was, at best, questionable -- he did. He should be fitted for a hangman's noose along with Sheehan, Michael Moore, Streisand and the rest of the Treason Brigade.
Funny article though...
Man: How long can they keep this non-story alive?
Why are we sending kids to college who are too stupid to realise what a piece of crap Joe Wilson is. Trying to educate idiots like this is like trying to teach a monkey to drive an automobile.
Major traitor barf alert needed.
"Man that doesn't even pass the straight face test!"
ROTFLMAO. He will go down in History as a liar and a flake : )
Now Now....easy on the monkey!
Brown is what it is, Wilson probably lines up just to the right of most who are invited to speak on College Hill. Last week Urinal readers were treated to a glowing review of John Conyers speech at Brown, a pathetic rant in which Conyers continued to beg for reparations. The East Side of Providence makes Ithaca look like the Deep South and it's getting worse. As for the kids, you know what they say, "shit in, shit out".
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