A Right-Wing Smear Is Gathering Steam (Amb Wison notes GOP Lies/Smear)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson21jul21.story

A Right-Wing Smear Is Gathering Steam
Ex-envoy says the GOP has targeted him and his wife.
By Joseph C. Wilson IV

July 21, 2004

For the last two weeks, I have been subjected — along with my wife, Valerie Plame — to a partisan Republican smear campaign. In right-wing blogs and on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, I've been accused of being a liar and, worse, a traitor.

This is the latest chapter in a saga that began in 2002 when I was asked by the CIA to investigate a report that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase several hundred tons of uranium yellowcake from the West African country of Niger in order to reconstruct Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

I went to Niger, investigated and told the CIA that the report was unfounded. Then, in July 2003, I revealed some details of my investigation in a New York Times Op-Ed article. I did that because President Bush had used the Niger claim to support going to war in Iraq — to support his contention that we could not wait "for the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud" — even though the administration knew that evidence for it was all but nonexistent. Shortly after that article was published, the attacks began: Administration sources leaked to the media that my wife was an undercover CIA operative — an unprecedented betrayal of national security and a possible felony.

In the last two weeks, since the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on intelligence failures, the smear attacks have intensified. Based on distortions in the report, they appear to have three purposes: to sow confusion; to distract attention from the fact that the White House used the Niger claim even after CIA Director George Tenet told Bush that "the reporting was weak"; and to protect whoever it was who told the press about Valerie.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson21jul21.story

[NewJeffCT]

1. good rebuttal

At least he knows how to defend himself... hopefully, he can appear on another round of talk shows and shoot down all the Wingers.

[chelsea0011]

2. This whole campaign is to call him a "liar" with no proof to back it up

The two claims seem to be 1. his wife got him the job and 2.the Brits stand by their report of yellow cake.

But he has never denied that his wife worked for the CIA and the CIA acknowledges they know Wilson and his wife and the CIA itself says he didn't get the job because his wife requested it.

And as to the second claim. The report simply says they stand by the report without making a judgment to the claims. Wilson's own investigation simply questions the claim and can find no proof it is not a forgery and thus claims he can make no determination that it is authentic and he must conclude it is probably false. So the Brits stand by the report and Wilson doesn't. What is the big deal here. The Brits have to stand by the report. It is this basis that the clueless Bushbrain used to justify a war. You think the Brits will allow the report to be a fraud? Not likely.

So that's it. The lies aren't but the Republicans will keep calling him a liar and not attempt to talk about the lies themselves. Call someone a liar enough and the public will believe. Tell the public Saddam is ready to nuke us enough and the public will believe.

[NewJeffCT]

3. even if Wilson did lie

It does not justify the treasonous act of outing a CIA covert operative.

[The Zanti Regent]

4. But the Nazis say that the ends justify the means!

The Nazi Party will do anything to stay in power.

[struggle4progress]

5. See John Marshall in The Hill (July 22, 2004)

Not much on the Niger-uranium claims has changed
http://www.thehill.com/marshall/072204.aspx