There are still lots of mysteries associated with this so-called issue, including why there's an investigation without a crime in the first place, but the thing that has always stumped me was why the Bush Administration just didn't undermine "Yellow-cake Joe's" authenticity by pointing out that his report said just about the opposite of what he was claiming in his NYT Op-ed, and on CNN. Well, it turns out the Administration couldn't have taken that direct route to clarity by referring to what was in his report, because he didn't write one.
How he got away with conducting a well-endowed national security assignment, without a written "deliverable" requirement is another matter that deserves explanation, because I doubt that I'd be able to pull than one off and I don't know anyone else who could, either. If you're paid for researching a topic, you write a report documenting that research... period. But the implication of the following paragraph from Mark Levin is that the CIA apparently held Wilson to about the same standard they'd have held Agent Cody Banks:
So that resolves the dilemma. The White House had no idea what Wilson had found, because the CIA didn't consider it significant enough to warrant distribution. Basically they handled it with the same degree of importance they'd have reserved for a Boy Scout Merit Badge. But that didn't prevent Wilson (with the complicity of his wife, as Levin points out) from touting what he claimed he'd found (a claim not substantiated by the belated committee report) as the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant.
Calling Wilson a "liar" isn't the half of it. He's a boy pretending to be a man. Which explains why he fits in so well with what these mostly leftist authors from Unite Against Terror have appropriately tagged the "pseudo-Left." (Hat tip: Belmont Club) Turns out the great political divide, at least as related to the "War on Terror," isn't between Right and Left after all. It's between mature and immature.
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It seems that every bit of information that comes out on Wilson pegs him as slimy.
Posted by: Mike at July 19, 2005 03:55 PM (6krEN)
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Joe Wilson is nothing more than a whorish clown. This is just another example of how the fools on the left continue to take advantage of the taxpayer. I wonder how much money this guy made off this trip to Niger.
One wonders why the imbeciles in the national media continue to make fools of themselves. Perhaps Robert Redford's encouragement might have something to do with it. The MSM continue to just outright lie to the American people. How much longer can they get away with it?
Posted by: Knights Templar at July 19, 2005 04:04 PM (DDXXI)
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If you really need a good chuckle regarding this whole affair, you HAVE to read
this from BlameBush.typepad.com. Absolutely hilarious. We all need a little levity at times.
Posted by: Oyster at July 19, 2005 05:15 PM (YudAC)
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Personally I think the more of this crap they try before the election, the worse they will lose. They haven't stopped to think that by 2008, many, if not most, voters will get their news from blogs and e-zines, which are far more diverse and accountable due to peer review. The leftards have lost their media monopoly, yet they lack the capacity to change their tactics to reflect the new reality of the blogosphere, so they keep doing the same thing over and over, and continue to fail, over and over. (Isn't that the definition of stupidity, or is it insanity?) The result will be that people who might have been swayed by their lies before can now easily research scandalous claims and get to the truth, if that's what they're after, and I think most people who are not fanatical party members of the Kool-Aid Brigade are looking for truth.
Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at July 19, 2005 08:23 PM (0yYS2)
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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html --- is a time article from 2003 which quotes administration officials as saying that WilsonÂ’s report strengthened their case for yellow cake and Iraq...now you are saying there was no report...define slimy pleasel.
OBTW FWIW I have 4 years military service in the persian gulf...1986-1988 including Operation Earnest Will, 1990-1991 Operations Desert Shield / Storm and 2003-2004 Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. These people lied and or quibbled about this whole Valerie episode and no longer have the moral standing to be assisting the president in the conduct of business of this country. They need to resign and end this BS. At West Point we would have silenced a guy like Rove until he quit for the kind of BS he is playing. Honor is needed by both parties...
Posted by: John at July 27, 2005 04:59 PM (0KKZf)
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John:
The article you linked was written in October of 2003, which was after the committee report, which made available the details of Wilson's deblief. It's entirely accurate to say that Wilson's verbal debriefing (he didn't file a written report) bolstered the case for Iraq seeking uranium in Niger. But the administration knew nothing of Wilson's verbal "report," until the committee made it available, because it wasn't considered important enough to pass up the chain of command.
Also note that in the article Wilson repeats his lie that his wife had nothing to do with posting him to Niger. He calls it "bullshit." We know, of course, that it wasn't. Simply put, Wilson was lying: i.e. representing something as true that he knew was false, as well as representing something as false that he knew was true.
The remaining issue is whether Rove knowingly "outed" a cladestine agent, and as far as I can tell there is no determination yet that she was clandestine or that Rove knew it, if she was. Hence, if you'd have killed him you'd have been guilty of lynching someone based on zero actual evidence.
Posted by: Demosophist at July 28, 2005 10:40 AM (IbWE6)
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I know much energy is going into the fine points of who said what about Valerie and Wilson, my point being if there were legitimate concerns about how Wilson did his OP-ED then why not make that the issue. Seems like Rove lied about his involvement. It is almost irrelivent what he lied about at that point. The Silence at West Point was not killing someone, it was literally not talking with the person, as if he didn't exist when they had been found for an honor violation but then refused to resign. We in the military try to live by the concept of Duty Honor and Country. The honor code was simple "a Cadet will not lie cheat or steal nor tolerate those that do" Wouldn't it be a nice country if our civilian leadership even attempted to live by an honor code.
Posted by: John at July 28, 2005 09:39 PM (0KKZf)
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I know much energy is going into the fine points of who said what about Valerie and Wilson, my point being if there were legitimate concerns about how Wilson did his OP-ED then why not make that the issue.
That IS the issue, as far as I'm concerned. But there's a sort of harmonic convergence between the Democrat/Left and mainstream media that has apparently decided there's no honey in that rock for them, so they've dredged up this "poor Valerie" approach. Looked at with any degree of objectivity one might easily conclude that Valerie and some of her in-fighting peers in the agency are far more culpable in this than even Wilson himself. And yes, I know how sick that is. But the CIA is one sick agency, as the smallish flap with Larry Johnson's less-than-gifted take on counterterrorism recently illustrates. (Where is he, BTW? Seems to have been given the boot over on the
Counterterrorism Blog. And check out what Whalid Phares has to say about their recruitment practices. Straining out gnats and swallowing camels.)
I'm afraid I don't follow what you're saying about an Honor Code Violation, though I attended a military academy so am aware of what an Honor Code is. Really, I don't know what you're driving at. Goes right over my head, apparently.
Posted by: Demosophist at July 29, 2005 07:51 PM (IbWE6)
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