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Wow. So Saddam Hussien DID try to obtain YellowCake Uranium from Niger!!!! This PROVES Iraq had WMD!!!! Quick!!! Spread the word that Bush was justified invading Iraq!!! Bush told the truth in his State of the Union Speech about the YellowCake!!!

Iraq tried to obtain Uranium!!! Joe Wilson lied!!! Pass the word!!!

Aldous,

Don’t you EVER have any useful input?

Anybody have anything intelligent to post about this? The other crap is getting old (see first post)

It’s not odd to see a Republican justifying a breach of national security for the sake of politics nowadays. It’s just sad.

Who is the one with the political axe to grind?

The only people to claim that Plame recommended her husband for the job were Bob Novak, and then Senators Orrin Hatch and Pat Roberts who added comments to the Senate report that were not even agreed upon by other members, although their comments made it in because they were downplayed against “major points that they could agree upon.” Of course after these three, the rest of the media took it to be fact, presumably because they are lazy.

Now, all three of the aforementioned characters could just as easily be seen as having a political axe to grind given their respective histories. Just looking at their partisan affiliation gives as much a case as you make by looking at Wilson’s affiliation; maybe moreso considering Wilson’s background.

He had been a foreign service offer and diplomat since 1976. He served as ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe under President George H. W. Bush, and helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He was hailed as “truly inspiring” and “courageous” by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than a hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein’s threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners. He also supported GW Bush in 2000, he only turned to support Kerry after the White House decided to make a mockery of his contributions.

I’ll agree w/ the right that this was his first quasi-official intelligence gig, and he made some common sense assumptions rather than following up all the loose ends; but ultimately he was right about his assumptions. There was other evidence that was in line with his own. Bush ignored these and went with other intelligence, and has been proven wrong.

End of story.

I think that when all the facts come out, the “big Fish” (Rove) that the left thought they were reeling in, will turn out to be the “hook” snaged in their own backside.

Just my opinion.

Jen and Kevin:

The fact that you don’t see the relevance of my Post is proof of how myopic Conservatives are. You bash Joe Wilson’s reliability without commenting on whether his output was true or not?

This is just sad. Your inability and/or refusal to see the bigger picture is tragic. Did you watch Bush give his State of the Union Speech? If the Niger Claim was known to be false then Bush lied literally to our faces.

If leaking Plame’s identity is no big deal, then why did Bush promise to fire anyone who was involved? Do you think he’ll keep his word with Rove, or is this another empty promise?

As for Joe Wilson, even if he was a liar (and I don’t think he is), I don’t see any legal or moral principle that says its OK to out his wife as a covert agent. That’s just petty vindictiveness.

I still thing the ‘outing’ of Valerie was more accidental than anything - but, Aldous is on target. If Wilson lied about everything as explicitly stated by Eric then the documents about Saddams’ attempted purchases were not forged as everyone has concluded. That would absolutely be a much larger story than Valerie.

Aldous,
Blah blah blah, yada yada yada. That’s all we hear from you. By the way, I’m not a conservative but it was typical for you to assume.

The reason Plame’s identity was interesting is because her office contracted her husband to do the job he did. It is not a petty point, but rather goes to the credibility of Wilson and his suitability for the job.

This was really not a security problem back when it first came out or now. If you work in Washington, you know a lot of people who work in Langley. Some people are actually under cover, others not.

This whole thing is about as close to a bill of attainder as you can get. The liberal media and the Dems are trying to catch Karl Rove. Trouble is he may not be the actual leaker. Given the evident nature of Plame’s “cover”, a lot of people could have know about her and/or figured it out.

We are not talking Boris and Natasha here, but rather two career bureaucrats living and working in the Washington area, with active social and political lives very much in public. Don’t take more from this lesson than it has to teach.

I don’t read “Vanity Fair” Mag., Did their big spread come out before or after Plamegate hit the news?

Looks to me like an awful lot of reports have been generated after the fact to create a defensible position for the Whitehouse, possibly including the generation of documents and evidence to provide cover, certainly plausible in light of all those documents being classified.

This is a JFK assasination type event, where the crimes were committed and the coverups are buried behind closed doors and in classified documents such that the truth will never be known.

Bush made a decision to invade and WMD was a very large part of that rationale, and WMD weren’t there to justify the Bush’s words to the American people. That is the big picture, and all of these twisted, distorted, and woven details of lies, half-truths, and distortions are mere distraction from the big picture which is as obvious as the Washington Monument in D.C.

Valerie Plame is not and was not an undercover operative in the CIA.
Joe Wilson outed his wife with the claim she was a covert operative in the CIA.
Thank you Eric for your support. I’ve been telling friends that Plame was outed by her own husband and outed is a loose phrase used here. What is additional sad is that some Democrats are calling for the firing of Rove on grounds of nothing. But, one has to recognize the KK bros from MA and the Hairy Reed from NV sources and expect that from them. The spelling of the Sen from NV is intenional.

Valerie Plame is not and was not an undercover operative in the CIA.

Correct. She was under “non-official cover”. However this is still considered a criminal offense to reveal the identinty - hence the grand jury investigation and Bush’s earlier remark to fire administration members involved.

Your argument that her husband leaked her might work in a right wing loopy logic sort of way, but holds no water in a court of law.

Pete
Mr. Wilson revealed his wife as an employee of the CIA in an op-ed in the NYT July, 2003.
end of story.

I agree with David Remer on the part that we may never know the whole truth, But before we convict anybody shouldn’t we let it go through the whole investigation to see if any laws were broken? I wouldn’t want somebody to call for my conviction without getting due process.

Funny, I just re-read the whole article and saw no mention. Could you quote the line where he outs his wife for me please.

I do recall Slimeball Novak outing her though in a subsequent article that was mostly mudslinging and backing a lying administration that he had many friends in. hmmm….

The logic used to say Wilson is responsible for the outing of his wife is basically the same used to say that girls who go out dressing flashy/sexy and get raped are at fault themselves for the crime rather than the rapist..

Pete, Bush said that he’d fire anyone who was involved in an attempt to out a protected CIA operative. We’re miles from knowing that Plame was a protected operative, much less that anyone deliberatlely set out to “out her.” Just because there’s an investigation underway doesn’t mean there’ been a crime. And even if there HAS been a crime, we don’t know who is guilty. I suggest that you and I need to wait for the results of the investigation before claiming to know things we don’t. That’s why we have a legal system after all.

Eric & Tom, I just read that NYT op-ed and didn’t see any mention of his wife. Also, he was sipping sweet mint tea, not mint juleps.

BTW, I’m curious how smearing Wilson has anything to do with Rove revealing the identity of a CIA operative.

American Pundit, could it be because Wilson is the one saying that Rove revealed the indentity of a CIA operative? In a he-said she-said situation, the best we can do is evaluate the veracity of the accuser, who has far shown himself to be a nearly pathological liar.

Eventually the prosecuter will weigh in and all of the accusations and counter-accusations flying around based on skimpy partial facts will become moot.

sanger wrote:

We’re miles from knowing that Plame was a protected operative, ..

Well this is not official evidence by any means, but it should at least bring us a few kilometers closer to knowing:

From Larry Johnson, former CIA Analyst (link):

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover—in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport—i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.

The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O’Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.

Beagle,
Here is the link to the Vanity Fair article on Joseph Wilson & Valerie Plame, 1/17/04. It’s surprisingly interesting reading, especially in light of all that’s happened. For example:

“In 1997, Plame moved back to the Washington area, partly because (as was recently reported in The New York Times) the C.I.A. suspected that her name may have been on a list given to the Russians by the double agent Aldrich Ames in 1994.”

Wilson is a serial pathological liar? Because ERIC said so?

Let’s fact check:

1) Joe Wilson did not out his wife in the NYT piece.
2) Joe Wilson’s NYT article seemed pretty staid to me. He didn’t get intensely partisan until AFTER he was attacked, and his wife was outed. (just read Eric’s link to Wilson’s article. Not very extreme is it?)
3) Reading the link provided by Eric to the Senate committe report bolsters the claim that Cheney should have known that the yellowcake info was iffy.
4) Wilson never said Cheney or Tenet recommended him. He said Cheney asked questions about yellowcake to the CIA. (read Eric’s link) The CIA decided to send someone to look into the matter. Since his wife was on their staff, they had her contact him for the issue. (Also, he was amazingly well qualified for the job. I’m sorry, can anyone show why Wilson’s credentials and contacts wouldn’t qualify him for the job?)
5) Wilson SAID that the yellowcake deal was highly unlikely as the deal asked for more yellowcake than Nigeria even produced, AND that the French controlled the yellowcake distribution, AND that Niger would have never signed such a deal.
6) The only point which may be accurate: He may have lied to reporters when he said the he told the CIA the documents were forged. He said that he thought he told them the documents were forged, but maybe he had remembered incorrectly.
7) No one said Rove should be fired for attacking Wilson, they said Rove should be fired for outing a covert agent.
8) Plame was working on covert operations and for a covert front company. Eric saying that she wasn’t a covert agent is interesting, but untrue. Unless, of course, the CIA is lying about her being a covert agent.
9) WAPO article is false, because Wilson said he had reported to the CIA about the yellowcake issue, and he assumed they passed his info on, and if they didn’t then he wondered why (See Eric’s own link)
10) Eric’s questions are then all based on the strawhorses he just put up.
11) Why is this reporter calling Wilson a “partisan critic”? the only thing I’ve seen him attack is Bush’s foreign policy, and that’s because he directly disagrees with that policy. You don’t have to be a partisan when you disagree with someone. Sometimes you can have a real disagreement that’s based on the merit of the arguments.
12) As Pete said, the basis for Wilson “lying” about Valerie recommending him for the job are Novak, Hatch, and Roberts. CIA “officials” have said that they chose Wilson. Now, some other CIA “official” has said that Valerie chose Wilson. Who is telling the truth?
13) Again, Wilson published that he told the CIA that there was nothing to the yellowcake report. He said he couldn’t believe the President would be giving an address on going to war that used bad data. As far as a “political ax to grind”, give me ONE EXAMPLE of Wilson engaging in partisan politics prior to July 2003. ONE EXAMPLE.

To sum up:
Eric has lied, has used uncorroborated sources, parroted false and unsubstantied Republican talking points, and has only made one vague example of Wilson overstating his case.

Sorry guys. There was no yellowcake sale. The French controlled the yellowcake mining operation in Niger. The CIA had internal documents that said that the data was bad (if you simply read Eric’s own Senate report links). Maybe Cheney was never told that the data was bad, but at the end of the day: Wilson - correct, Cheney - incorrect. Wilson - no history of partisan politics before July 2003, Rove & Novak - a long indiscriminate history of mud-slinging and partisan hackery.

Ah, but WILSON is the bad evil guy. Once again, Eric, you’ve raised the bar.

Julia,
Eric’s article starts out with inaccuracies in each of the first two sentences.

“Who outed Valerie Plame? It’s no secret; it’s Joe Wilson!”

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, a Republican of impeccable credentials, has spent considerable time & effort on this case. It would certainly not take that much time to conclude Joe Wilson outed his wife.

Eric writes: “Joe Wilson outed his wife after sipping mint juleps beside a hotel pool (which he never left, by his own admission) in Niger.”

Here is the actual linked text:

“I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country’s uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.”

Eric implies that Wilson sat by the pool getting wasted on mint juleps, doing nothing. Were I on vacation in Niamey I probably would sit by a pool & down mint juleps. Wilson, however, drank mint tea and did his job.

Defending Rove by attacking Wilson is poor political strategy.

As many have noted, there are a lot of blank spaces, and information which will never be released to the public. The results, however, should be known soon, since Fitzgerald is apparently near the end. The RNC talking points & articles like this one run the risk of becoming extremely embarrassing.

tom, tom? Yoohoo! Anyone home? Still waiting for that line. Can anyone hear in this right wing echo chamber?

I’m just so confused as to why liberals want to jump the gun here. Is there really no other way to promote your agenda(if you even have one) than to tear down this administration. Wait for the evidence and then make your argument. Is that really so hard? Cooper called Rove, not the other way around. It was to talk about welfare reform. This is not watergate. Not even close. 53 are now dead in London and thousands more in other parts of the world do to an evil that needs to be destroyed. I’m sorry your not winning elections, but please don’t be this desperate when people’s lives are on the line. So you hate this president, ok. Get over it! This evil wants to destroy cons and libs alike. What will it take for you all to see that?

Tony,

Here is another quote from the Vanity Fair article linked previously (click on the word ‘Here’).

“When tv commentator Chris Matthews asked Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie if he thought such a leak made by government officials was “worse than Watergate,” Gillespie replied, “Yeah, I suppose in terms of the real-world implications of it.”

But hey, that’s just an RNC chairman talking. What does he know?

Let’s stick to the topic, shall we?
With the Valerie Plame leak, someone- “senior administration officials”- crossed the line. It goes beyond partisan politics, because there are some things you just don’t do, and this is one of them.

How can we fight terrorism if the administration condones revealing the identities of its intelligence people?

Tony,

Liberals jumping the gun? Who wrote this article? Yes, it was Eric. And he is printing out and out lies. I just heard his exact argument repeated by a Republican guy on NPR. WILSON DID NOT SAY CHENEY SENT HIM. Wilson said Cheney contacted the CIA for information, and the CIA sent him. The Senate Report that Eric has linked to here VERIFIES this statement. The article Eric linked to here VERIFIES that’s what Wilson said in the first place.

As for Rove, I personally don’t think he knew that Valerie Plame was a covert operative. I think he outed her as working at the CIA. I think he had no business knowing that. I also think he was gearing up to paint her as a partisan hack with an agenda. I think his plans fell apart b/c he was sloppy in his attack (as he has been in the past). He was sloppy because he didn’t actually learn enough about Valerie before he attacked her, and therefore outed her. That sloppiness is coming back to haunt him. And frankly, I’m surprised this sort of thing didn’t happen sooner (Actually, it did, when he was sloppy back in ‘92) However, I will fully admit that’s all my own suppisition, and is based purely on the last 12 examples of him smearing individuals in the name of politics.

For me, it’s not an issue of agenda promotion. As a complete side issue, I don’t think Novak and Rove are good people. I think they’re bullies. I personally would never work with a bully. i don’t like O’Reilly and I don’t like Michael Moore.

The real question is (to use your words Tony):
Can Novak and Rove (and Eric) only promote their agenda (if they even have one) by attacking and smearing those who stand against them? Maybe they could wait and make sure they aren’t outing a cover operative before they reveal her CIA connections, and therefore damage active intelligence work against WMD proliferation? Is that really so hard? I’m sorry Republicans are having a hard time in the P.R. war, but they shouldn’t be this desperate when people’s lives are on the line. So they hate Wilson for revealing to the public that the CIA stated that the yellowcake deal was extremely suspect. Get over it! The terrorists are a real threat, and we’re obligated to figure out why our intelligence is getting so botched. Who fabricated evidence that there was a yellowcake sale to Iraq? Who tried to sucker us into war with false evidence? What will it take for us to improve our intelligence gathering so that we can effectively fight the actual individuals who are plotting against us?

Jack-
It does not go to credibility when he has already done a similar job for the CIA before, and when he has connections there from the past. It does not go to the credibility of the information, because that can be verified by independent means, which consistently have fallen in Wilson’s favor.

The Right has rained on Wilson’s parade for the inconsistency about how much of the document he actually saw. The trouble with his inconsistency is that it seems to be more of a conflation of the IAEA’s findings on the document, than a wholesale fiction.

As for all the stuff you’re pushing on leak, I think your case is weak for this being merely a partisan issue. I think the case is also weak that Plame’s career was not a secret. But you’re going to swallow these talking points and I don’t know why. It will go down as the great shame of the GOP in this time that they spent their time defending Rove and his co-conspirators.

Sanger-
Is that your best defense? We don’t know anything, anything could be true, etc., etc. It seems more like Wishful thinking that Rove isn’t involved rather than good evidence. As for Wilson being a near Pathological Liar, he seems awful accurate for a liar.

Tony-
We are tired of seeing this country get screwed for the job security of a bunch of partisan hacks. As for Watergate, Watergate isn’t half as bad as this. Watergate didn’t involve the compromise of national security.

The trouble with this particular scandal here is that Plame’s group, which was compromised with her, was some of our eyes and ears in the world on WMDs. The effects of this compromise may very well end up be that very mushroom cloud over one of our cities that Bush so heartily invoked to get us in this war.

Why can’t you guys pull your heads out of the ideological sand, and see this for what it is?

Aldous,

Let’s be clear, Wilson’s conclusions were wrong.

Woody,

As I understand the facts of this whole ‘affair’ no one attempted to out Valerie Plame in order to damage her and put her in danger. There was no danger. She was not an undercover operative, she had not been stationed overseas, in fact, one of her bosses said in a time magazine article that her ‘cover’ began to be blown when she married Joe Wilson, a high profile personality.

The only ‘outing’ done has been of the fraudulent scheme she and her husband perpetrated. Wilson got himself sent with the express purpose of becoming an adversary of the Bush Administration.

Tom G,

If Wilson lied about everything as explicitly stated by Eric then the documents about Saddams’ attempted purchases were not forged as everyone has concluded. That would absolutely be a much larger story than Valerie.

Actually, those particular documents were in fact forgeries. The lies of Joe Wilson are of a different nature. Joe Wilson never ‘investigated’ anything. He never saw those documents, yet claimed that he had.

He claimed that Dick Cheney sent him to Niger. A lie. Valerie Plame is the one who sent Wilson to Niger. He claimed his wife didn’t suggest him for the trip. A lie. They have a written memo of her suggesting him for the trip. He claimed Iraq never tried to buy yellowcake from Niger. A lie. As the above quote states, in WIlson’s own ORAL (not written) report to the CIA after returning from Niger, he was in fact told by a former Nigerian Prime Minister that in his estimation Iraqi agents did in fact approach him to buy nuclear materials. In addition: “According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.”

AmericanPundit, phx8,

Interesting. The article has been edited. It originally said mint juleps. Honest. I actually bought the article from the NY Times way back for $2.95. Let me dig it up.

—-

Lastly, as we learned in the Vanity Faire article, here’s a woman who reveals that she is an undercover agent on the third or fourth date.

On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a “heavy make-out” session when she said she had something to tell him. She was very conflicted and very nervous, thinking of everything that had gone into getting her to that point, such as money and training.

She was, she explained, undercover in the C.I.A. “It did nothing to dampen my ardor,” he says. “My only question was: Is your name really Valerie?”

Julia,

Joe Wilson lied. That is a fact.

Why was Wilson sent to Niger? Why not someone who is actually in the CIA and an expert in investigating intelligence? Why send an ill-equipped amateur?

For that matter, why not send Michael Moore. The result would have been the same.

Valerie Plame is central to Wilson’s entire crusade against Bush.

The leak is bad, and President Bush said whoever leaked this would be fired. The problem is there is no proof it was Rove, and in fact it’s looking more and more likely that it wasn’t. Yes, your jumping the gun because your convicting someone without even a shread of evidence for guilt. All I’m saying is wait.

@eric,
First of all, even if I agreed with your presumptions (which I don’t), this would still not detract from the fact that everything Wilson and Plame have done are within the bounds of the law. Whoever leaked Plame’s CIA status did so against the law, and it appears that some may also be guilty of lying about leaking/not leaking to the public and/or in a court of law.

As to the veracity of your claims; refuting them is getting tedious, but one more time for good measure:

Valerie Plame is the one who sent Wilson to Niger.

First of all, this is not even possible given her level of seniority. As that memo stated, she mention him as a possibility to her superiors, but they ultimately made the decision, undoubtedly via his resume and history in the field and probably against other qualified candidates. Secondly, the only people to suggest that Plame was the deciding factor in his appointment are Novak, Hatch, Roberts, etc.. people with bigger political agendas than Plame and Wilson combined.

Why was Wilson sent to Niger? Why not someone who is actually in the CIA and an expert in investigating intelligence? Why send an ill-equipped amateur?

There were intellince officers on the case as well. But that was not his role. He was there to meet with the government officials who would need to be involved in Uranium transactions. In other words, a diplomatic mission w/ foreign officials (what he had been doing for the goverment for many years). He completed the mission and reported his findings.

In all the follow up investigations, nobody has found his report to be lies as you claim. In his time under the press spotlight and senate hearings, he misstated some of the minor points of his assignment, mistake on his part but to presume they are calculated lies is getting into tin foil area; whenever called out on it he has clarified to the best of his ability. And in the end, his report turned out to be correct in its deductions. Any “lies” involved would appear to be inadvertant in the broader scheme of things, and to bring them up is a distraction to the current matters at hand.

Joe Wilson never ‘investigated’ anything. He never saw those documents, yet claimed that he had.

In response, I direct you to the original NYT article you included in your post, but maybe did not read, because I think this is the document to which you are referring:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.

You are probably assuming he lied beacuse of his famous admittance to misstatement and confusion of his recollections in the sentae hearings. But this was in reference to dates/details of the forged document which the senate had copies of in front of them and Wilson did not. The forged document itself was handled by the IAEA, whose forensic analysis led to the conclusion that it was a forgery in March 2003. Wilson used this to bolster his previous argument, but to my knowldege he never claimed to have anything much to do with intelligence directly concerning the document itself..

Tony,

Of course you’re right. When you said “tear down this administration”, I think you actually meant was “Don’t attack Rove before you know all the facts”. As we see from this morning, that was good advice. (And it looks like my personal opinions on what happened is true).

I interpreted your comment as “Don’t get outraged over the outing of Valerie Plame, and the fact that the yellowcake documents were forgeries before you know all the facts”. I think the facts are pretty clear on those two points. And I am outraged that she was outed, and that the documents were forged. But that wasn’t your point, so, I apologize.

Eric,

You’re claims are debunked, as pete, Stephen D, and I have shown, by your own sources. Maybe you should read the articles that Wilson wrote, and review Wilson’s actual testimony before parroting Novak, Hatch, and Roberts.

You say, Wilson is a partisan hack who arranged to send himself to Niger in order to attack Bush?

What partisan hackery had he evidenced before July of 2003? Give me one example. ONE. Why Wilson over Michael Moore? Did Michael Moore protect 100 people’s lives at the Iraq embassy and have a showdown with Saddam Hussein himself? Does Michael Moore personally know the names of the people who would be likely to purchase uranium for Iraq?

Wilson had close personal contacts, and a good repoire with the individuals that needed to be questioned. The ambassador to Niger, Owen-Kirkpatrick provided some information, and Wilson, with his Iraq and Niger background, provided a good way to flesh out the data.

Seriously, he was a great choice. How many people do you think Niger uranium officials have a personal relationship with? Do they hang out at hollywood parties with Michael Moore? Do they hang out with George Tenet? George Bush?

(Hint: no, no, no)

You don’t send an expert CIA analyst to a Niger uranium official to question them. You don’t want it to look like your digging. Wilson had talked to these guys before about diplomatic issues, and he provided a convenient way to casually snoop around and get a better idea of what was happening.

And finally, according to the Senate Report, and the CIA, Wilson never said Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium. Niger does not even produce that much uranium in a year, and regardless, the French control Niger uranium shipments. The Senate report says that Wilson told the CIA that Iraq approached Niger to “expand commercial trade”, and that Niger expressed to Iraq that it was not interested in doing so.

That’s it. That’s what happened.

Stop publishing outright lies. It’s irritating.

Wilson defends himself against Eric’s exact talking points:

http://www.yuricareport.com/Impeachment/WilsonDefendsHimselfInLtrToSenate.html

Eric, you do know what as an ambassador, Wilson had clearance to know such things, don’t you? This isn’t about her absolute secrecy. This about secrecy away from those who could (and would) tell the enemy.

You guys are just playing word games, it seems to me, trying to use ambiguities and false claims about unclear facts to lure people into believing the prepared talking points. That, or you simply repeat them without research into their truth.

Do your own research. Your party isn’t getting the facts right.

You gotta love these guys who are trying their best to portray Wison as a partisan hack, yet he was first appointed as ambassador to Iraq by the first President Bush.

“He was hailed as “truly inspiring” and “courageous” by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than a hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein’s threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson)

If Bush’s words aren’t enough for ya, how about Novak’s? Here’s what he said about Wilson in the original column that started all of this:

“That’s where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein’s wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed “the stuff of heroism.” President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.”
(http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml)

Damning stuff, eh? Sure sounds like a left-wing nut hell bent on getting sent to Africa in an elaborate plan to make the President look foolish.

Let’s be honest here. This isn’t about the GOP getting their facts straight. This is plain and simple the most coordinated and desperate spin I’ve seen in 30 years.

Smart Republicans don’t believe this stuff. In order to swallow it you’d have to be dim enough to claim that “Joe Wilson outed his wife after sipping mint juleps beside a hotel pool (which he never left, by his own admission) in Niger” while submitting a link which says nothing about mint juleps (as if a bartender in Niger would know how to make a mint julep), and clearly states that he left the hotel numerous times, unless of course the embassy happens to be stationed at the goddamn hotel pool.

Pathetic.

In the spirit of fairness, I fact-checked one peice of data I was shaky on,and found I exagerrated. Niger produces 3000 tons of uranium a year, which is shipped to France, Spain, and Japan. I said Niger did not even make the amount Iraq was asking for. In fact, Iraq would have to divert 1/6th of Niger’s exports if the deal was true. That’s still extremely unlikely.

Another statistic: The U.S. provides a little more than 3% of the entire Niger national budget. Which is not small change. 45% of Niger’s total income comes from foreign aid.

Though other posters in this thread have done a good job of showing how false these regurgitated talking-points are, the question remains…what in the hell does Wilson have to do with a leak that came directly from Rove’s lips?

Even if Plame does not qualify as a ‘covert agent’ for the purposes of the statute in question (hard to believe, judging by the extensive investigation that it has spawned), Rove violated the terms of his security clearance by giving the information to Cooper AND by even verifying the fact for Novak! Considering we now know that a memo had circulated at the White House talking of Wilson and his wife and labeled as “secret,” it’s a little difficult to believe that Rove was ignorant of fact.

Plus I wonder if anyone who believes that this whole thing wasn’t planned knows anything about Rove’s history…