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| 11/23 |
| 2004/7/20-21 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:32392 Activity:very high |
7/20 Wilson finally shows on the News Hour: Senator Kit Bond
directly calls him a liar.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175208/posts
\_ Bond calls him a liar. Wilson refutes with reports. Bond resorts
to semantics and long-windedness to try to out-time Wilson.
Wilson continues to refute with documents and facts. Bond demands
that Wilson make an apology to the Pres. Wilson again refers to
documents and facts. Bell rings. Winner, Wilson, with dignity.
\_ Except he is wrong and a liar:
A scam and a sham
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040701-085559-3349r.htm
But you are right... maybe Wilson knows more than the Senate
and MI6.
\_ "[A]n inquiring Iraqi official had visited Niger in 1999"
and had a meeting where the subject of Uranium was never
discussed. How do you go from a trade meeting that never
talked about uranium to the assertion that the Iraqis were
trying to buy it from Niger? Hey, check this out: several
Japanese diplomats met with North Korean diplomats recently.
The North Koreans then allowed abducted Japanese to return
to Japan. How did that happen? According to your logic,
it must have been because Japan agreed to give nuke-tek to
North Korea.
\_ Wilson is assuredly more trustworthy than a bunch of
career politicians. As for MI6, didn't these guys invent
the term "disinformation?"
\_ http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4885826.html
The funniest thing is that Wilson was right all along and Bush
was wrong. Why are you guys trying to drag this out? Iraq never
bought uranium from Niger.
\_ LOL talk about tautological. You cite the liar in order
to defend his earlier statements??? Are you on crack?
From his letter even... 'I never claimed to have
"debunked" the allegation that Iraq was
seeking uranium from Africa.'
\_ Tautological is saying he's a liar because he's been called
a liar. |
| 11/23 |
|
| www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175208/posts Pikamax Wilson finally shows on the News Hour: Senator Kit Bond directly calls him a liar, suggests Wilson should apologize to President Bush and Vice President Cheney And it was worth the wait. He did everything he could to avoid answering any of the direct charges and allegations, equivocating, changing the subject, and throwing up as many straw man distractions as his time allowed. The audio of the often outrageous, often hilarious and wholly pathetic performance may be found here. Wilson was interviewed by Margaret Warner, who at one point was almost trying to help him out by throwing him a 'possible wording' but Wilson even discarded that and flailed away in the face of direct exposure from Senator Kit Bond. Senator Bond read almost directly from the Senate Intelligence report, and cited the Butler Inquiry conclusions. He summarized by stating that Wilson was a liar, and owed the President and Vice President an apology. When confronted on the subject of his wife being the one to recommend him for the trip, he went off on a tangent mentioning what unnamed CIA sources had mentioned to reporters a few days later - skipping, and not re-hashing his earlier vigorous assertions. Wilson's overall demeanor was that of a man that is still hawking the same old goods that he realizes everyone knows is a sham. His only rise from this was a feeble attempt at self-puffery when talking about his own bona fides after Margaret Warner asked him if his wife's glowing recommendation couldn't have been interpreted as a recommendation to send him on the trip. This immediately followed the biggest howler of the segment - when Wilson claimed "I haven't seen that" in reference to his wife's now famous e-mail. Went so far as to discredit his own early reporting about Iraq overtures to meet with Niger officials about expanded trade dealings when confronted with the conclusion that Wilson's reporting had increased, rather than decreased some analysts belief that Iraq was seeking Uranium from Africa. While Bond pointed out that Niger exports uranium, goats and peas, Wilson now asserts that even though the Niger official that told him of the contacts had assumed they would be to talk about Uranium, that he 'couldn't see' how that conclusion could be drawn. Joe Wilson seems to be realizing that his 15 minutes are ticking down to the last few seconds. Joe, we hardly knew ya, but we're now sure you're full of crap. View Replies To: Pikamax Joe Wilson first went to Niger in 1999 at the suggestion of his wife, looking into the uranium question. I wonder if the Clinton administration was briefed on that trip and if it was in the intelligence notes Berger took. View Replies To: Pikamax Went so far as to discredit his own early reporting about Iraq overtures to meet with Niger officials about expanded trade dealings when confronted with the conclusion that Wilson's reporting had increased, rather than decreased some analysts belief that Iraq was seeking Uranium from Africa. View Replies To: cyncooper Wilson tried to pull the same equivocating crap last night on the John Batchelor show on WABC radio, with quite a bit of help and leading questions from his admitted pal, John Loftus -- but it didn't placate nor fool anyone. View Replies Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. |
| www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040701-085559-3349r.htm The debate pendulum in Washington at times swings by the winds of politics, not, as it should, by evidence. Consider the quandary over President Bush's assertion in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched uranium, "yellow cake," illicitly from Niger. Yellow cake is required in a nuclear development program. When it was discovered last summer that some of the documents the administration had used as evidence were forgeries, the pendulum quickly swung to the opposite extreme. Never mind that British intelligence insisted, and still does, that Iraq was doing precisely what Mr Bush had said it was. As far as Washington was concerned, the case was closed: Iraq never tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger. A 2002 British dossier on Iraq's weapons programs asserted the same thing, while providing evidence that an inquiring Iraqi official had visited Niger in 1999. In a follow-up story, the Financial Times reports, "three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq." The other countries were North Korea, Iran, Libya and China. The newspaper reports the forged documents erroneously used by the Bush administration might in fact have been a "scam" to cover the real evidence that negotiations had taken place. Not long after the administration backed down from the State of the Union claim, Democrats were in full cry for an investigation, all but convinced that the administration had deliberately lied about uranium sales to Iraq. Ted Kennedy took a lead role in the condemnation, saying, "It's bad enough that such a glaring blunder became part of the president's case for war. It's far worse if the case for war was made by deliberate deception." John Kerry chimed in: "The Bush administration doesn't get honesty points for belatedly admitting what has been apparent to the world for some time -- that emphatic statements made on Iraq were inaccurate." Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe huffed, too: "This may be the first time in recent memory that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union Address." Critics of the Bush administration have been so eager to discredit every argument used to justify war in Iraq that when evidence does come along proving the administration's case, it has to be ignored. It's not clear how such kindergarten logic enhances national security. Mr Kerry was right about one thing: Mr Bush didn't win any points for being forthright about his mistake. We would add as well that he won't win any points for being right all along. |
| www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4885826.html contact info Last update: July 20, 2004 at 8:33 PM Wilson's response to charges he was wrong July 21, 2004 WILSON0721 Editor's note: Following are excerpts from a letter Ambassador Joseph Wilson sent to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Wilson went to Niger at the behest of the CIA prior to the war in Iraq to determine the accuracy of intelligence that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium ore from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program. I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Sens. Hatch's additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments. First conclusion: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee." 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." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides . In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium-related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July 2003. They reported on July 22 that: "A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Second conclusion: "Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the intelligence community would have or should have handled the information he provided." This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I "may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct." At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. On March 7, 2003, the director general of the IAEA reported to the UN Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were "not authentic." His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries, "We fell for it." From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the president's State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the US government had known them for over a year. The text of the "additional comments" also asserts that "during Mr Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than 30 television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa." My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself "a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs." After it became public that there were then-Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's report and the report from a four-star Marine Corps general, Carleton Fulford, in the files of the US government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have "debunked" the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur. I did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney's original question that led to my trip. The day after my article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the president told the Washington Post that "the 16 words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union." I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the 16 words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the president may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the president has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him. It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the intelligence community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the president did not become a "fact witness" on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address, as the White House now acknowledges. It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. |