Redstate

I have your diary bookmarked for easy reference.

The biggest mistake associated with them was to disclaim them.  They were true, they were accurate, and they should have been defended, as the British have done.

"Never complain, never explain."--Henry Ford II (perhaps quoting someone else.)

I was left wondering why Mr. Bird chirped up so many quotes from an opinion columnist (not a reporter and not Wilson) at the New York Times to support his many and dubious claims. But then I read the whole screed & realized that if he had gone to Wilson's orginal op-ed -- the one that caused the Bush Admin. (er... Cheney, really) such tsuris in the first place -- he wouldn't have had much to write about.  Here's what the source had to say for himself way back then in his op-ed simply and elegantly titled, "What I didn't find in Africa" (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm)

..."regarding Dick Cheney" section of the post, the link to Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed is there.  Also, I made three direct references to his op-ed in the post, so apparently you have a reading comprehension problem.  Kristof may be an opinion columnist, but he also acted as a reporter in his two articles on the "envoy".  So too Judis/Ackerman and Pincus.  Because of this, I reject your calling this a "screed", but if do you have a rational argument to make, please feel free to do so.

in this don't you.  Maybe you're still living in the Clinton {er, Morris really} administration.

The WA Post link had a direct quote from his book, the SIC report referred to his under-oath testimony, Matthew Cooper in TIME directly quoted Wilson, and the Paula Zahn link contained his own public statements, as did Bob Somerby.

    Greasy Joe didn't go to Africa, he went to Niger.  Maybe he doesn't know the difference but that's like saying you went to North America when in fact you sipped green tea in South Dakota.  The original claim concerned Africa and in any case you're not going to find much sitting on your ass in a restaurant.  But then maybe he was told by Secret Agent, Machine Gun Plame ["one of the most beautiful women in Washington] that's how the real spies do it, just before she fell asleep at her desk.  Like the rest of the CIA,[ Central Incompetence Agency].

one's journalistic honor and integrity is indeed a powerful force.  This diary is well-documented and requires no defense, IMHO, to comments from a first-time poster whose credibilty has not yet been established.

Especially since the available evidence substantiates the position taken by the diarist, and supports the fact that "Bush Was Right™."

A refresher course for liberal Joe Wilson defenders

By: Charles Bird

 The sixteen words imbroglio should've run its course long ago,

 not to mention the misleading statements, inaccuracies,

 falsehoods and lies of Joe Wilson.  In another thread several

 defenders of Joe Wilson are apparently unaware that he said

 anything false.  The commenter known as kindness asked this

 question

 "Could you please cite one thing Ambassador Wilson has said that

 has turned out to be false." I produced several links, but the

 seeming standard is that it is just not good enough to produce

 links to support one's conclusion, one must actually spell it

 out, providing a whole battery back-up.  So, acceding to this

 standard on this occasion, here goes:

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 The sixteen words imbroglio should've run its course the very

 next day when the Whitehouse admitted they shouldn't have been

 there. Instead the administration launched a smear campaign,

 including lies about Joe Wilson spreading misleading statements,

 inaccuracies and lies. Inaccuracies were also alleged, but,

 since only God is never inaccurate, that can be argued later.

 At the least, Mr. Bird, you could do a bit more research before

 offering your refresher course. You got almost everything wrong.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 That Wilson was sent to Niger at Cheney's behest.  In Wilson's

 own on-line bio

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 I read the bio, then I emailed the PR firm. In all his public

 statements Wilson has not said Cheney sent him. Wilson not only

 says the CIA sent him, but in one prominent statement,

 dishonestly edited by the RNC and included in their talking

 points, he said specifically he didn't even think Cheney ever

 knew he went. Not until he spoke out, a year later, that is.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Nick Kristof

 I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than

 a year ago the vice president's office asked for an

 investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador

 to Africa was dispatched to Niger.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 That part is essentially accurate.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 More from Kristof:

 ...

 an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice

 President Dick Cheney.

 Either Wilson peddled a falsehood or Kristof is a lousy

 transcriber.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Obviously Kristof is a lousy transcriber, as he admitted last

 year (Nov 2 2005) the phrase, "at the behest of the office of

 Vice President Dick Cheney." was his misstatement, not Wilson's.

 In all my searching I have not found one single Journalist who,

 before the July 6, 2003 op-ed, said Wilson, even under a cover

 name, claimed he was sent by Cheney. The first I found was on

 July 6, 2003, where Dana Bash said it, outside the Whitehouse,

 after being fed the line by the Administration. The earliest

 reference I find on that was Scooter Libby, and I found the

 reference in the indictment. Look it up.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 How Joe Wilson came into his Niger trip.  The July 10, 2004

 Washington Post

 Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the

 decision to send him to Niger.

 "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a

 memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed

 that I make the trip."

 Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying

 Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of

 her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send

 me."

 ...

 On page 39 of the SIC report:

 The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former

 ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the

 Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12,2002, from the former

 ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both

 the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to

 mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly

 shed light on this sort of activity."

 ...

 At the very least, Wilson lied by omission, neglecting to even

 mention that his wife was in the room at the beginning of the

 meeting.  Starting on page 39 of the SIC report

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Notice that the CPD reports officer was not identified, has not

 been identified, and did not testify before the Senate

 Committee. Both Valerie and Joe Wilson know who he is, but he

 cannot speak publically because he is restricted by CIA regs.

 Yet the Senate Committed could have him testify, as Wilson asked

 them to.

 You do not have a memorandum there, you have a fragment of a

 memorandum. Show where you see the words, "I recommend you send

 Joe to Niger." in that memorandum fragment. If it was there it

 would have been in the words they left out. The portion that

 gives his qualifications do *NOT* suggest he go, they could, as

 Wilson claims, constitute nothing more than her reply to a

 question from her boss, who had the idea to send him. His

 qualifications prove nothing, the words, "send Joe", would prove

 everything. Therefore, it is logical if the memo said that, the

 words would have been included.

 He did say his wife introduced him, then left the room. She did

 not participate in the meeting, she was not there for the

 meeting, just the introduction. That from your own source.

 As below. BTW, the INR analyst could not have any actual

 knowledge of who recommended Wilson as he is State Dept, and the

 recommendation came from CIA.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

    (U) On February 19,2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former

 ...

 ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate

 that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former

 ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his

 contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former

 ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended

 the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three

 minutes.

 ...

 That Wilson's report should have laid to rest the yellowcake

 question. From his July 6, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times:

    The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of

 my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring

 to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as

 ...

 Wilson's conclusions were below his pay grade because the

 analysts at CIA came to a different conclusion, as reported in

 the Senate Intelligence Committee's report

    Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger,

    disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments

    of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information

    in the report lent more credibility to the original Central

    Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State

    Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts

    believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was

    unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

  This was in the body of the report, unanimously accepted by both

 Republicans and Democrats on the committee.  Joe Wilson jumped

 to a false conclusion that CIA agreed with him, and he came to

 the false conclusion that the White House got wind of his

 report.  Page 46 of the SIC report:

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Ok, now tell us all just what were the analysts' assessments

 before that report. Then tell us what the original CIA reports

 said. Then explain how that changes the fact that the State of

 the Union speech was almost a year after all that took place,

 and by then the CIA was saying the reports were not reliable.

 Whether or not the CIA or any other analysts agreed with Wilson

 in March of 2002 is irrelevant, as they had most of a year and

 the CIA found the reports specious at best. Nor do you show what

 the actual CIA reports said, or what the analysts thought.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 ...

 That Joe Wilson debunked forged documents.  From Nick Kristof

 in May 2003:

    As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on

    documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should

    never have been taken seriously. I'm told by a person involved in

    the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's

    office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former

    U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002,

    according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to

    the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was

    unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

    The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose

    signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office

    for more than a decade.

 This could not be true because Wilson made his trip in February

 2002 and the forged documents appeared in October 2002 at the

 U.S. embassy in Rome.  Joe Wilson either lied or, if you give

 him the benefit of the doubt, Kristof was a poor transcriber, or

 Joe Wilson has somehow mastered the space-time continuum.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 That's all good, since, if you reread what you wrote, nowhere

 does Kristof cite Wilson as the source. He gives Hersh, someone

 involved in the Niger Caper, and someone present at the

 meetings. In reality, that's the weakest case you could possibly

 make against Wilson. Note that the witness says, according to

 Kristof, that Wilson reported when he returned from his trip,

 not only that the documents were forged, but how the forgery

 could be identified.

  Now, either Wilson saw the documents and really did identify

  the forgery, or Wilson never made that claim. Your accusation

  is so improbable as to be impossible. Any reasonable person can

  think about that for a few minutes and see why. It's not

  impossible he could have said they were forged. It is not

  impossible he could have said the signatures were faked, and

  why. It is wildly improbable that he could have said those

  things - AND GOT THEM RIGHT! Which it is, BTW.

 See, that's the point, as Kristof alluded to in the Nov 2005

 commentary I referenced above, the witness could not have

 honestly reported Wilson said that at the meeting in March 2002.

 However, the witness could have said Wilson went on that trip,

 and that the documents turned out to be forgeries, *IN MAY

 2003*. By then, everyone who was interested knew that.

 So, the witness could have honestly testified about the meeting,

 parenthetically stated that the docs turned out forged, and why,

 and Kristof mistakenly took that the wrong way.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 ...

 Wilson told Kristof, Judis/Ackerman of TNR and Walter Pincus of

 the Washington Post pretty much the same thing, conflating his

 February 2002 trip with forgeries that didn't appear until eight

 months after his travels.  In the SIC report:

 (U) The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he

 was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share

 Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June

 12,2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the

 documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and

 the names were wrong."' Committee staff asked how the former

 ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates

 were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the

 CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in

 the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have

 "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the

 documents were "forged."

 ...

 Wilson later lied on Paula Zahn that he wasn't the source for

 the Kristof, Pincus and Judis/Ackerman articles, and that they

 were all misquotes or misattributions

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Well, if you reread the actual articles, Wilson was right on

 with that one. I have already pointed out that Kristof gave

 others as witness to the events. If you reread the Pincus

 article you might just notice that Pincus does not source one

 single word of that article to Wilson. Not one.

 Pincus gives a number of sources under covernames. There are at

 least 5, as many as 12. It's hard to be sure because several our

 given as plural sources, and the cover names are sometimes

 similar. but 5 is the minimum I counted.

 However you count them, Wilson is called "The envoy", and he is

 one of the subjects of the article not the source for any of it.

 Judis and Ackerman are so far off the deep end on this no

 rational person would take them seriously.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Regarding Dick Cheney.  In his infamous op-ed Wilson wrote

 parenthetically:

 It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press"

 appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once

 again to produce nuclear weapons."

 This was a reference to Cheney's appearance on Meet the Press.

 While Cheney did say those words, Russert gently corrected

 Cheney when it happened and both winked and nodded that that

 was not what Cheney meant. From Spinsanity

 http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20041028.html

 However, Cheney and his aides later said he misspoke, and the

 evidence supports their claim

 ...

 Wilson misleadingly took that quote out of context, falsely

 characterizing the meaning of what the Vice President said.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 That is a blatantly false statement on your part. What Cheney

 said, and what was later described as "misspoke" was that Saddam

 had reconstituted nuclear weapons. I have the video and it does

 look like he misspoke. However, Russert did *NOT* correct Cheney

 when he said it. Russert pointed out the error when Cheney

 appeared on Meet the Press Sept 14, 2003. That was 6 months

 after he first said it, and 2 months after Wilson's op-ed. There

 was no wink, no nod, simply an acknowledgement of a misstatement

 and they went on.

 What Wilson quoted Cheney on was another statement in which

 Cheny said Saddam was "trying once again to produce nuclear

 weapons." That statement was in the same March 16, 2003

 appearance, and there was no correction then or since.

 Wilson did not try to mischacterize the meaning of what Cheney

 said, but it sure looks like you tried to mischaracterize the

 meaning of what Wilson said.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Wilson's strawman usage.  Wilson was disproved a purported sale

 of a single transaction in Niger, but it does not disprove the

 sixteen words for which he concluded were "twisted to exaggerate

 the Iraqi threat". Bush stated that the British had learned that

 Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa.  The British investigated

 WMD claims in the form of the Butler report finding the

 intelligence on the seeking of uranium in Africa "credible" and

 that the sixteen words were "well-founded".  Item 503:

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 The British government may consider those 16 words to be drawn

 from the Gospel, but US intel did not consider them reliable at

 the time, and nothing I have seen says they have changed that

 evaluation. Bush's speech writer included those words because he

 thought he could get away with them, but the British have, not

 shared the evidence to back it up, and US intel say's we should

 not believe it.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 * It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited

 Niger in 1999. * The British Government had intelligence from

 several different sources indicating that this visit was for the

 purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost

 three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was

 credible. *

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Yet all the US has is a report that someone told a top Niger

 official that an Iraqi delegation wanted to discuss commercial

 relations. Which everyone assumes means buying Yellowcake. Ever

 consider what Niger might want to buy, that Iraq wanted to sell?

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

    499. We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence

 assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic

 Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy

 ...

 The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently

 sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. was

 well-founded.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Ari Fleischer told the press, when pushed to the wall on it,

 that it was Niger, not anywhere else in Africa.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 P.S.: Liberals get extra-credit by making their rebuttals

 without impugning Susan Schmidt, Tom Maguire, the Senate

 Intelligence Committee et al.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 I don't recall Maguire's and Schmidt's writings. As regards the

 Senate intel committee, if they considered the Niger portion of

 the report as a minor piece, never intended to be the mire Sen

 Roberts blew it up into, they can be forgiven. However, if they

 considered it to be important, then I gladly impugne them as a

 number of dishonest republicans along with the rest of the

 committee being incompetent fools, republican and democrat.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 ...

 consider the statement to be "well-founded".  I believe that the

 Bush administration believed the preponderance of the

 intelligence, not that Bush lied, nor has it been proven that

 Bush lied.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 I believe the Bush administration cherry picked the intel. Which

 doesn't mean Bush lied. If you actually read what Wilson has

 said, you get the impression that Wilson doesn't believe Bush

 knew the intel he was fed was "sexed up" in the British

 expression. Actually, if you ever read Richard Clarke's "Against

 All Enemies" you will come away with much the same impression.

 Neither has much bad to say about Bush. Feith, Wolfowitz,

 Rumsfeld, and Cheney are the spawn of Satan, Condoleeza Rice is

 an arrogant and inattentive twerp, but Bush was misled, by his

 own people.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 ...