July 26, 2004

• This seems a fairly slight post - couple of paragraphs in a newspaper column, and a table off some guy's weblog. Some links about how he fell from grace would have been nice. As it is, all we get about it is this: "A Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicts some of Wilson's account and supports Bush's State of the Union claim" Or maybe thats your point...
• he's been in the media, but the stuff i'm finding is too long to post here. here's the top of one: The Weekly Standard July 26, 2004 Monday "A Little Literary Flair" Joe Wilson wasn't a truth-teller. BYLINE: Matthew Continetti, The Weekly Standard ONE DAY LAST OCTOBER, Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife Valerie in tow, traveled to the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C., for lunch. It was a big day for Wilson. He was the guest of honor at a banquet thrown by the Nation Institute, which publishes the Nation, the venerable lefty weekly. Daniel Ellsberg was there. So was New Jersey senator Jon Corzine. Towards the end of lunch, plates of cold salad shunted aside, Wilson was invited onstage. Looking the part of a globetrotting former diplomat in his Zegna suit and trademark Herm
• also he had an 880-word first person column in LAT july 21
• Could it possibly be because the credibility issue: a) Isn't all that interesting b) Does not imply that anyone high-up broke the law c) Is old and busted. Child Abuse at Abu Ghrahib is the new hotness. d) Still doesn't change the fact that the Wilson's were wronged six ways to Sunday.
• dng: Does this count? I'm not claiming that he's not in the media at all, Sidedish, just that there's quite a bit less about him now that he's disgraced. For fairness, here is Wilson's letter to WaPo regarding their coverage of his trip to Niger. Bob Novak, who reported on the Valerie Plame incident, writes that Wilson's claims differed considerably from the CIA Niger report. FWIW: a (mostly reviled by MoFi members) Christopher Hitchens article on this subject.
• shawnj: a)Okay. *laughs* Whatever. b)No, but Wilson made some claims about Bush that have turned out to be quite false. If Bush had done what Wilson seems to have done, he'd be hung up on a yardarm, impeachment be damned. c)Perhaps. Doesn't make it less newsworthy. d)I believe the Daily Howler link debunks the major content of the link.
• Actually, having read all the links off of this page, I present a hearty "What's the big f'in deal?" Let's see if I can get this straight. Wilson's wife may or may not have nominated Wilson for the job. Wilson goes to Niger and reports back. Wilson presents his case, gets lots of press because it is one of the first chinks in the Iraq intelligence armor. Robert Novak and allegdly a White House staffer reveal Wilson's wife, who's work is confidential. Inquiries ensue. Mounting pressure is placed on the White House to come clean and work with investigators. The Senate Intelligence comes out with a report that undermines Wilson's credibility. Wilson backpedals and we're left with no idea if the original claim is really true or false. Sorry, but that's not really all that interesting or newsworthy, especially considering how the other reasons for war have turned out. The fact still remains that someone broke the law by releasing Plame's name, but that's not important to this point. Inevitably, because of the way our attention spans work, these sort of retractions or revelations don't get as much press. Why? Because no one, except for a select few who want to prove their superiority by saying "told you so!" really cares about it mainly due to the fact that it really has no bearing on current events.
• If Bush had done what Wilson seems to have done, he'd be hung up on a yardarm, impeachment be damned. I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If Bush was wrong about something, they would string him up? He must have some pretty nasty rope burns by now.
• Wilson backpedals and we're left with no idea if the original claim is really true or false. I'm confused...which claim? Wilson's claim, or the 16 words claim, or the British intel claim? 1 of the 3 turned out to be false. 2 of them are true. Now, I'm not saying this warrants any illegal outing of Plame's name to Novak. But if what you're saying is true, that it's no "big f'in deal" because no one knows what's true or false, then why was everyone so uptight about who outted Plame? After all, no one really knows who did that either.
• From your highly touted Howler article: "Was Bush
• Actually, having read all the links off of this page, I present a hearty "What's the big f'in deal?" Because this story was one of the biggest motivators for the "BUSH LIED!!!" chorus. If it's big news, it's big news, regardless of whether it turns out to be convenient -- or inconvenient -- for your ideological arguments. If you're a reporter, you report something and you later find out your stories were wrong, your sources were wrong or the story has changed, you have an obligation to set the record straight. Obviously people aren't taking that obligation seriously.
• The CIA has maintained that Plame did not get Wilson the Niger job.

  But are those conclusions really as clear-cut as the bloggers and their mainstream allies make them out to be? While the Senate report says that Plame ``offered up'' her husband's name for the mission, a senior CIA official this week told the Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus: ``Her bosses say she did not initiate the idea of her husband going. . . . They asked her if he'd be willing to go, and she said yes.''

  George Tenet said himself that the Niger report should not have been mentioned in the SOTU.

  On July 7, the White House admitted it had been a mistake to include the 16 words about uranium in Bush's State of the Union speech. Four days later, with the controversy dominating the airwaves and drowning out the messages Bush intended to send during his trip in Africa, CIA Director George J. Tenet took public blame for failing to have the sentence removed.

  Page 123 of the Butler Report.

  We have been told that it was not until early 2003 that the British government became aware that the U.S. (and other states) had received from a journalistic source a number of documents alledged to cover the Iraqi procurement of uranium from Niger. Those documents were passed to the IAEA, which in its update report to the United Nations Security Council in March 2003 determined that the papers were forgeries.

  The British say that the documents were forged but Iraq tried to by uranium from Niger. Yet, they offer no proof. F8x, do you even know what country these documents came from? Seriously. I want you to think about that one. This is a tangled web. As for Plame the indictments are coming down the pike. I do not believe that John Ashcroft would have excused himself from the case if there wasn't someone there. Now the White House is leaking that other people have exposed her identity. This is a defense that if others did it then it's not so bad we did it. Now I really like to know who the source of The Moonie Times article was. Let's put it this way. Did Wilson actually find anything when he went to Niger? The CIA director has gone on record saying that that there's no evidence that Iraq did? SideDishy's comment.

  New York Times op-ed, he mistakenly claimed "was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government," including the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

  Do we have any reason to believe the White House on this one? They did tell us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
• you're right, de C. unfortunately, other news comes along and the media gets distracted. we have very short attention spans. right now we're fixated on the convention in boston. last week it was the 9/11 report. news comes and goes and you're absolutely right, we're not especially good about following up. for instance, i keep meaning to do a folo (old-time journalese for "follow-up story") on the raelians' cloned baby claims. that's a good example of a huge story that the media just plain dropped. reporters slowly figured out it was a hoax, and simply backed away -- without ever finding out the truth.
• Ah, but de Carabas, reporters never fulfill that obligation. Or when they do, it's generally relagated to the back pages and corrections. Rarely does something like the retraction of the Times a few weeks ago make it into the public consciousness.
• de Carabas comment

  If you're a reporter, you report something and you later find out your stories were wrong, your sources were wrong or the story has changed, you have an obligation to set the record straight. Obviously people aren't taking that obligation seriously.

  You mean like the New York Times did.

  As we've noted in several editorials since the fall of Baghdad, we were wrong about the weapons. And we should have been more aggressive in helping our readers understand that there was always a possibility that no large stockpiles existed.

• Going back to the question of coverage, there are the results of a database search, but no consideration of the time period. So, "Before" is all the time from Wilson going public to the committee's report and "After" is since then (two weeks?). If you want to think about why the Wilson story grew legs, consider that his initial claims were quickly followed by reporting on (a) the CIA's reluctance to include the yellowcake claim, (b) Novak's outing of Wilson's wife, (c) the doubts raised by a large number of sources on the attempted yellowcake purchase. If Wilson were now to undertake to wear a hairshirt for the next 12 months, he might get some more press.
• Even only counting the first two weeks after Wilson went public, I'd bet a steak dinner that there were more than 3 mentions. Anyone got Nexis?
• Why "more than 3 mentions"? I count 12 in the "After" column.
• Hi f8x!
• Sorry, I should have said more than 3 mentions by any one news organization.
• Hi kid! Decided to come back on a bang, I did.
• Here what Google News has on Wilson. I would say he's still getting a lot of press. f8xmulder, do you believe that Iraq did aquire uranium from Niger? As a conservative and Bush supporter I would think you would want Wilso to get less press.
• F8x, now I'm not trying to go monkey crazy on you, but it would be nice in a thread that you politely answer questions I asked. I'm curious about the point you're trying to make. Peace out.
• Personally, I never really cared about the details. The fact remains that we were told there were WMD in Iraq and we still haven't found them. All the rest, whether it is people talking about how someone lied or if it is people talking about how the fact was correct, is laregely irrelevent. I never believed the argument was persuasive enough to warrent military action, therefor the truthfulness or lack thereof of the argument doesn't really matter.
• Sullivan: The NYT WMD note is a good example. But even then, it took a hell of a lot of prodding from outside folks (Jack Shafer at Slate, especially) to get the NYT to admit to the errors. (And by the way, that editor's note referred to Judith Miller's breathless reporting on WMD-hunting military specialists in Iraq, not purported yellowcake connections involving Niger, so I don't think your link applies to my comment). SideDish: Can you let us know when you do that Raelian folo? I find those people hilarious, even if they are full of BS.
• Sully, I'm not trying to dodge you. Gimme a chance to put some answers together, yeah? Oh, and for the record, I think that Iraq sought uranium from Niger (which has been proven). I don't believe they ACQUIRED it. Here's the SOTU statement: BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. and here's Rice commenting on how that statement got into the SOTU: RICE: The British intelligence report, as far as we knew, was a report that was underpinned by reporting that was solid. We sent it out to the agency for clearance, said, "Can you stand by this?" They said, apparently, that's inconsistent. I'm understanding now that the sentence is accurate. As George Tenet has said, accuracy is not the standard. Of course, the sentence was accurate. But we were asking about confidence. And George Tenet rightly says that the agency cleared the speech, it should not have been cleared with that sentence in. And I can tell you that had there been a request to take that out in its entirety, it would have been followed immediately. For Wilson's credibility to hold water, that statement must be proven to be a lie, since Wilson himself made that claim. The British government stands by their intel, which the SOTU statement was partially based on. Additionally, Bush would have to be proven to have known the statement was false. Again, it was a statement made in accordance with available data that the British government had that suggested Iraq had indeed attempted to purchase Niger uranium. I beg to differ on your point, Sully, about the Brits not having proof of Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Niger. Blair said sometime last week: "In the 1980s, Iraq purchased somewhere in the region of 200 or more tons of uranium from Niger. The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from so-called 'forged' documents; they came from separate intelligence." So, the British intel was not garnered from the forged documents, so you can knock that Straw Man down. The French have supposedly corroborated this as well. Wilson set up another Straw Man by saying that it was unlikely any uranium transaction had taken place. The problem is, Bush never claimed a uranium transaction had taken place.
• Hi f8x. Nice to see you back :-) I'd agree with SideDish about the "not going back" element of journalism (obviously I'd agree with her, for she is older and wiser in the ways of hacks than I), but I'd say that in fact very little of this now merits reporting (other than the criminal investigation over Plame). If we had a situation where the yellowcake claim was actually being wheeled out again by the administration and trumpeted as a "look, we were right all along!" kinda thing, then that would be news. That we have a situation where we've reached the rebuttal of the rebuttal of the rebuttal of the rebuttal sub-committee's report of recent rebuttal activity which rebutted the rebuttal made by my dentist's wife personal rebutter - a situation where as far as I can make out, the story has had every fact known about it stripped away - well, that just ain't news. Report, record, but don't go big with it because, as shawnj noted, your readers will fall asleep. It's simply not that interesting outside of partisan circles looking for sticks to beat each other with. From the British persepective, as Sully noted, we've been left with the intelligence services saying that while their facts were wrong, they still think their conclusion was right. Which is somewhat odd. On preview: Indeed, f8x, but they won't give any details of what that "seperate intelligence" is. They have admitted that the original facts were wrong. What these other facts are is, er, unclear. It's not exactly what you'd call proof; it's barely even a hint. If you're a reporter, you report something and you later find out your stories were wrong, your sources were wrong or the story has changed, you have an obligation to set the record straight. From my Kidz Bumper Book of Cheap but Pertinent Shots: the same, it would appear, does not apply to governments. *ducks*
• flashboy: yeah, the Brits haven't disclosed what their 'evidence' is...but I find it hard to believe that's a complete fabrication, given that Blair's put his word behind it. To say they have evidence when they don't would be tantamount to political suicide. Blair's not stupid, whatever you think of his politics. The real question is how persuasive the evidence is.
• Sully, I'm not trying to dodge you. Gimme a chance to put some answers together, yeah? Fair enough, F8x. I'm interested in where the forged documents came from. Italy first got them. The original Newsday article is down, Here's a copy of the article.

  Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the 1980s, was trying to lure the U.S. into action against Saddam Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001 that ousting Hussein was a national priority. In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

  Iran has tried to feed the United States bogus intell before. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was in their national security interest and it has been proven that Chalabi was working for them. In seems the media is more concerned with "gotta journalism" than finding out where the documents came from. This is a major story.
• Oh yeah, Wilson also thought WMDs were going to be found in Iraq. I remember seeing a CSPAN video (which I need to find a link to). This was when he made his famous remark about seeing Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House. I never seen anyone "frog-marched" before. So I have no idea what the hell he means by that.
• Hmmm... certainly, Blair is a master of ensuring he never quite puts his head on anything that may potentially become a block. But as you say, the question of how persuasive the evidence is crops up. Blair's quote neatly answers one question without actually giving any firm statement on the solidity of that seperate evidence - and so another block remians headless... Given the unprecedented level of disclosure about intelligence the British government has allowed over Iraq - and the enthusiam with which they've pushed thin, unclear and uncertain material - if it was genuinely solid stuff then I'd be amazed that we haven't heard it. Also, you say Blair said that last week - bear in mind that he's got really, really confident (one is tempted to say "cocky") over the past fortnight. Ever since Butler's Whitehall-speak "cleared" him, and following one or two other (largely unreported) personal boosts, he's stopped looking like the vulnerable, unpopular and self-doubting figure of the past few months. He's back onto messianic Tony-of-steel mode - which is either a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view...
• Where's Joe
• Sully, I agree that it was in Iran's best interest to get rid of Hussein, but I think they'd rather have a mullah in his place, rather than a democratic government (even a "puppet" government). At the moment, the Middle East is now neatly split up into little partitions: Iran is split between Iraq and Afghanistan, with Israel poised across from Syria. The big terror states are effectively separated from each other, which should reduce their abilities to cooperate...
• Sully, I agree that it was in Iran's best interest to get rid of Hussein, but I think they'd rather have a mullah in his place, rather than a democratic government (even a "puppet" government). Who says they won't have a mullah in place five years from now. The problem Bush and Kerry both have is neither one seems to have a clue on how to bring democracy to Iraq. I'm curious as to how much assistance Iran is giving the insurgents. The problem is we don't know because our intell in the area has been bad. Hence the torture started to get people to talk and we still found out nothing. My guess is there are several different factions with different agendas.
• Can we not call them "insurgents"? And yeah, I definitely think Iran's doing some financing over there.
• Let's call them "insurgents." What I hate is the word terrorist being overused in an Orwellian manner that it becomes meaningless. Osama bin Laden is a terrorist. Saddam Hussein was a third world despot. And yeah, I definitely think Iran's doing some financing over there. I think so also, but the fact is we don't know that. If that is the case then why isn't Donald Rumsfeld doing a better job to secure the border. F8x, I fail to see why you're angry with Joesph Wilson for saying that documents were forged when the British said the same thing and the CIA has stated repeatly that his wife did not get him the job. The reason the leak on Valerie Plame is a big deal because Bush Sr. passed the Intelligence Identity Protection Act.

  The first President Bush believed that Richard Welch, a CIA officer in Greece, was killed because Agee blew his cover. So as CIA director, and from 1981 as vice president, Bush campaigned to make naming names illegal. That law

• The Bush Cartel is the Most Dishonorable, Despicable, Gutter-Crawling Administration in History. Sandy Berger Was Smeared, Just Like Valerie Plame, Just for Purposes of Political Timing. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Et Al, Belong in Jail, Not the White House. via BuzzFlash