Posted on 07/13/2003 9:45:50 AM PDT by kattracks
The man who helped set off a media firestorm over President Bush's State of the Union reference to Iraq seeking uranium in Niger is actually a confirmed Bush-hater who opposed the war in Iraq and complained in March that Bush had led America into a period of "historical madness."
In his New York Times op-ed piece last Sunday, so-called career diplomat Joseph Wilson said he was tapped by the CIA to investigate whether there was any truth to the Niger uranium story. After traveling to the country and interviewing government and industry officials, Wilson said he couldn't find anyone who would confirm that Niger sold uranium to Iraq.
In fact, President Bush never claimed that the transaction had been completed, telling Congress instead, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Still, Wilson's inability to confirm something Bush hadn't claimed prompted him to write:
"I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Writing in the National Review Online, GOP consultant Cliff May reveals that media portrayals of Wilson as a disinterested career diplomat may be quite an exaggeration in and of themselves.
"He's a vehement opponent of the Bush administration," says May, noting that two weeks before the war Wilson was slamming Bush in the notoriously left-wing "Nation" magazine.
Arguing that the White House had "imperial ambitions," Wilson claimed that under Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness"
Adding to Wilson's partisan pedigree, May noted that the supposedly objective analyst "was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq" with a resume that includes a stint as an "adjunct scholar" at the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute.
Sounding like a disciple of Jane Fonda, Wilson complained in other writings that Bush's "new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."
According to Wilson, "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party."
And there's more.
According to May, career diplomat Wilson was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, but also the sanctions and even the no-fly zones established after the first Gulf War.
"In other words," concluded May, "Wilson is no disinterested career diplomat he's a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind. And too many in the media are helping him and allies grind it."
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Zip: I have been screaming about the leftovers (notice that I didn't call them holdovers) in State and Justice Departments since Day One of W's administration. Now I guess I should add CIA to the short list. I honestly do not understand W/Ashcroft refusing to cleanse the leftists out of those Depts.So, let's see if I've got this right. We are 30 months into the Bush 43 administration and we are still blaming things that go wrong on Clinton and his holdovers/leftovers? He has had 2 1/2 years to fire them, so when does this stuff become the president's responsibility? 4 years? 8?
"A little background: Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report."Mr. May never answered, but he was just on Fox & Friends right now, and he addressed both points, either by coincidence or because of the feedback he had gotten over his article "Scandal".1) In this phrase, when you say "Cheney requested it" did you mean that the Vice President had requested the verification, requested the trip, or requested Mr. Wilson to make the trip?
2) We have seen other reports that the Vice President's office made inquiries about the report, but your article is the only one we have seen that says that Mr. Cheney had doubts about the report. From where does this information come (if it is just that you have a source who told you, that is fine, but obviously the more information you could give the better).
He pretty much echoed what I have been saying- there is the potential for a real scandal here due to Wilson being sent. I'll try to paraphrase what he said: 'Think of it this way. How often when a request comes from the highest levels of the government, such as the Vice President's office? When it does, does the CIA choose some of its most experienced officers? No. It instead decides to send a single guy, with no experience, and a record of being very anti-war and very much an adversary of the President. How did this happen, and who made it happen?' This indicates that Cheney did not ask for Wilson, and hints that May thinks it was a bit of a put-up job.
For the second, he stated that the assertion did not have any substantiation for it in the report Cheney had seen; it was just a statement that Iraq had tried. He wanted to know the background.
FWIW
APRIL 2003 early : (EPIC aka "EDUCATION FOR PEACE IN IRAQ CENTER: LAUNCHES PETITION DRIVE TO TRY TO KEEP FUNDING FOR IRAQ HUMANITARIAN AID AND RECONSTRUCTION OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE US MILITARY - AND INTO THE HANDS OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT ) Another group, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) this week launched the latest of numerous online petition drives, calling on their supporters to flood Congress with e-mails calling on legislators keep funding for Iraq humanitarian and reconstruction out of the hands the US military. "The State Department, in partnership with the UN and our allies, is the appropriate authority for US funds related to post-war Iraq," EPIC said in an action email sent to supporters.
Also, see this:
JUNE 14, 2003 : (WASHINGTON, DC : EPIC aka "EDUCATION FOR PEACE IN IRAQ CENTER'S" IRAQ FORUM EVENING KEYNOTE LECTURES INCLUDE "A STATE OF THE MOVEMENT ADDRESS" BY RAY MCGOVERN OF THE GROUP "VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY" & FORMER AMBASSADOR WILSON)
(* My note : Do you think Ray McGovern and his "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" can fake being "administration officials" to help shop Mr. Wilson's tales around the Beltway? Ray works out of Fairfax, VA. )
Sending a partisan political hack with no intelegence or investigative backgroud to find out if intel is correct does not leave the CIA blameless but puts their motives very much under question. Who even though that this was a good idea needs investigation.
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