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:
He was tapped and now he has been nailed. :o) I, too, would like to know who supposedly tapped him to investigate.
Then again, we do have confirmation so why are we questioning? If The New York Times says he was tapped to investigate, it must be true, right? And they are relying on Mr. Wilson's own word, so it must be true, right?
Ari cites the Niger issue, not the British intelligence.
Since they already knew there was no truth in the Niger angle, specifically, there is no reason to relate to Niger.
If he'd said "We mistakingly put blind faith in the British intelligence..." there would have been a way out.
Bush cited "Africa," not Niger.
I fear that Ari buried Bush while he was out of the country.
Is this Bush's Watergate in the making? Tenet pretends to take responsibility, but was that a pretense for giving away the methodology? Did Ari do the rest? He's too fast on his feet to make a statement like this. Knowingly living six months with the "error" only adds fuel to the fire.
__________________________________________________________________________
FLEISCHER: I'm sorry, I see what David is asking. Let me back up on that and explain the President's statement again, or the answer to it.
The President's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake from Niger. The President made a broad statement. So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the President's broader statement, David. So, yes, the President' broader statement was based and predicated on the yellow cake from Niger.
Q: So it was wrong?
FLEISCHER: That's what we've acknowledged with the information on --
Q: The President's statement at the State of the Union was incorrect?
FLEISCHER: Because it was based on the yellow cake from Niger.
LOL! I like that idea!
"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.
"media portrayals . . . may be an exaggeration."
Hold the presses, put this in "breaking news"--we have a real "Man Bites Dog" story here!
</sarcasm>
Why draw your enemy's attention to your own mistep?A great deal changes in six months. The Democrats will follow this line as long as they can about Bush being a liar, and then... Bush will release the WMD evidence. So, the question is, how do the Democrats spin that?
Can anyone do in depth research to determine Mr. Wilson's position in 98 when his hero decided to lob a few hundred million dollars worth of munitions into Iraq. And how about his position when Slick took out the aspirin factory in the Sudan and tried a few IMPOTENT cruise strikes at Bin Laden.
Maybe a little background on his position of intervention in Kosovo might be interesting as well.
Even better, check out his blog. A concise summary of the whole mess as it unraveled! (In reverse chronological order of course, like all blogs.)
According to Tenet it was CIA's counter-proliferation experts
Text of CIA Director Tenet's Statement http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/944614/posts
In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn.
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