The Disinformation Campaign is ON! (Was: Ambassador Says Critical Letter Is Hoax)

Reuters ^ | 7/15/02 | Reuters

[Peach]

Yes - the DNC which made an ad which mis-quotes the president. There is no honesty anymore in the press.

[jriemer]

Didn't we just deal with that last week? Doug Thompson "Bush Admit He Lied" article gave Wilson's article legitimacy and it went literally around the world.

Yup, that's why I pinged William McKinley.

[Cachelot]

Now we have someone writing letters claiming to be government officals....

Yes. You have forged letters, on presumably forged or stolen statonery.

So, this retraction - can we even be sure that really happened? Or is it yet another faceless "official" claiming something and then melting into nothingness?

The State Department should be really be dissolved. It does more harm than any seventeen terrorists given gift cards from "Acme Explosives" any day of the week.

[Dog]

Yep.....now the media has another story to get worked up over.

[PhiKapMom]

Go back to the Hillary DemocRATs and tell them that Freepers are a lot smarter than they think! Dog picked up on you immediately!

Have a nice day back at RATs.com!

[swheats]

Unfortunately, the Washington Times gave them the ammunition. They had better come out with a major statement or something or they're no better than the New York Times in printing unverified information.

[mystery-ak]

So far we have three forgeries that we know of...CHB, Wilson(someone deep in the bowels of the CIA) and now this....

[Dog]

I thint that forged Niger letter was just the start of a major disinformation campaign.

[Dog]

It is all aimed at discrediting the President and his policies.

[concerned about politics]

The Democrats are in vein popping desperation. I see them on TV 24/7. Their propaganda doesn't seem to be working, and they're picking at straws. It's obvious by their words and body language. They're in chaos. They keep adding on to their stories, and now they want to impeach. I'm not kidding. That's how wacked out they are.
People aren't paying attention to them. People know what this is. They know Clinton lied right to their faces, and the Democrats fought in his defense, yet look at them now. People aren't stupid. This will hurt Democrats with swing voters.
I've talked to lots of people - Democrats, non political people, and people in the grocery lines - and no one really cares. I haven't found one person that's bothered by this.
Most are sick of hearing political attacks, especially by obvious hypocrits, and they don't want to hear them anymore.

[mystery-ak]

...with more to come hoping one of them sticks or raises doubts about Bush.

btw...did you see Carl Cameron's report tonight, truly disgusting, showing Levin,Kennedy, Daschle all calling Bush a liar and wanting investigations....this is not going away...they are embolden with Bush's numbers falling.

[cake_crumb]

"We don’t need to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to say this admin is infallible"

"We" aren't tying ourselves into pretzels to say the administration is infallable. The hype about the 16 word sentence is bunk. As for the bad intelligence, the White House was the first to admit a mistake had been made.

This ARTICLE, however, has nothing to do with President Bush, except very peripherally.

It SHOULD be looked into. Welcome to FR. Please avail yourself of formatting in your posts. They would be easier to read.

[cake_crumb]

"The significant problem with the letter is not the issue of the opinions contained in the letter but the forged authoriship. Why stop at letters to the editor?"

Yep. Which is exactly why it needs to be looked into. It goes without saying this is not acceptable politics, and let's face it: the letter is politics.

[mware]

Jim, did you see Bob Novak colume today. Check this out.

WASHINGTON -- The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man."

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

After eight days in the Niger capital of Niamey (where he once served), Wilson made an oral report in Langley that an Iraqi uranium purchase was "highly unlikely," though he also mentioned in passing that a 1988 Iraqi delegation tried to establish commercial contacts.<>THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMM.

[Mo1]

I saw it and it was the first I had heard the news about Wilson's wife

Yep it does make ya go ... "THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMM. "

[cake_crumb]

"Someone just set up the Washington Times. From now on people will have the reaction you just posted .....they won't trust what the Times says. Maybe that is what the writer of this hoax letter wants."

Actually, it's a matter of relativism: NY Times fans defending the paper's latest "interpretation" (read: journy into fantasy fiction) of the president's actual words from conservatives can now conveniently relativize.

They can say "See, everyone is fallable. The NY Times made a mistake. The Washington Times made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes"

Instant, easy defense. Rather than force the news media to higher standards of truth and accuracy, it's far easier to make the public distrust ALL news sources equally. This makes the public more susceptible to rumor.

It won't affect the way I read news, since I normally read at two or three versions of the same story and check all the facts I can.

[concerned about politics]

btw...did you see Carl Cameron's report tonight, truly disgusting, showing Levin,Kennedy, Daschle all calling Bush a liar and wanting investigations....this is not going away...they are embolden with Bush's numbers falling.

They're wasting their time. They defended Clinton, who lied right into the face of the American people. They call Bush a liar, and it's not going anywhere! They supported lieing.
They supported Clinton and his asprin factory bombing. They said nothing then. People aren't as stupid as Democrats think they are.
The poll numbers have nothing to do with Democrats, as much as they'd like to believe. People are getting impatient about military deaths. Bush fixes this, and he's back up on top.
I think Bush knows this, and that's why he's not that concerned.

[mystery-ak]

I hope you're right....I've had a number of calls from friends and relatives(they vote R but are not into politics) they question me on whats going on and when I try to tell them, they think Im making this stuff up.

[concerned about politics]

they think Im making this stuff up.

That's because people are trying to figure out what Bush did wrong. The Democrats are attacking, but it's hard to understand what Bush actually did wrong. People are confused, and can't find anything. What the heck are the Democrats so upset about?
They turn the station.
Unless the Democrats actually find something serious to use against Bush that voters can agree with , they've lost the next election.