Posted on 07/14/2004 9:47:52 PM PDT by quidnunc
So now the British government has published its own inquiry into the intelligence behind the invasion of Iraq, with equally devastating implications for the credibility of the Bush-Blair "lied" crowd. Like last week's 511-page document from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the exhaustive British study found some flawed intelligence but no evidence of "deliberate distortion." Inquiry leader Lord Butler told reporters that Prime Minister Tony Blair had "acted in good faith."
What's more, Lord Butler was not ready to dismiss Saddam Hussein as a threat merely because no large "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction have been found. The report concludes that Saddam probably intended to pursue his banned programs, including the nuclear one, if and when U.N. sanctions were lifted; that research, development and procurement continued so WMD capabilities could be sustained; and that he was pursuing the development of WMD delivery systems missiles of longer range than the U.N. permitted.
But the part that may prove most salient in the U.S. is that, like the Senate Intelligence findings, the Butler report vindicates President Bush on the allegedly misleading "16 words" regarding uranium from Africa: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Funny thing is that I saw him hit the media circuit(Letterman, etc) the minute these other intelligence were coming out with their damning reports,,, since then the lying SOB is no where to be found.
Err ... Never mind.
Ping.
We really need to make certain that at least Fox news, especially Hannity & Colmes, and yeah, maybe O'Reilly, give this lots of coverage. This report, as well as the one by Roberts needs to be widely publicized and given as much air time as Wilson's initial lies received. On the thread with Robert's report, I also suggested Joe Scarboro of MSNBC.
I repeat....... Joe Wilson is a fraud
If Wilson is an example of our pin striped, tassle loafer wearing, Foggy Bottom Foreign Service "diplomats".......it isn't any wonder that the nations of the world regard us as emasuclated pansies - that can be taken for all we're worth with no consequences......
The failure of these ladyboys --- almost always ends in the deployment of our REAL MEN to clean up the mess.............the U.S. Military...
NO ONE laughs at them, anymore!
Semper Fi
I haven't seen him in a few months, but I suspect that if you can find other gadfly-turned-no-shows like Michael Moore, Janeane Garafolo, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Babs Streisand, The Dixie Chix, or Whoopi Goldberg you just might find Joe Wilson.
Maybe headed to divorce court?
They were talking about it on FOX today and a demmie analyst looked really stupid when asked. She still called Bush/Cheney a liar and when the anchor explained to her that they specifically DID NOT lie, she kinda just shook her head. The Anchor seemed like he ended it early because it was going nowhere. I think it was shepard smith.
Hussein buys yellow cake. The United States removes two ton of assorted radioactive garbage including yellowcake, x-ray film,radoactive dyes, etc. In another thread, the mine is closed but ten thousand Congolese dig around on it every day. Joe Wilson is a liar because his wife got him the job. Plame protects hubby, saying the CIA wanted him to go because he knew the country. Joe Wilson claims that White House outed Plame. Others claim no laws were broken, that Plame was not undercover. Garbage in, garbage out. How long can this continue while the government runs on autopilot toward the election?
Columns - July 15, 2004
Robert D. Novak:
Silence from Democrats on Wilsons mission is deafening
By ROBERT D. NOVAK
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=40764
^
Saddam was fully pursuing the nuke plans over in Libya. Iraq was supplying the materials and scientists, and Libya was building the underground bunker to house the facility. It was 3-4 months to completion (which the UK found out). With that facility able to produce the material, and Iraq able to supply the missiles, the middle east could hold the rest of the world hostage. Scary people.
I believe this was one of the main reasons Bush went ahead with taking out Iraq.
"I misspoke," but I was never
chastised by John F. Kerry.
The editorial concludes:
But very little of what Mr. Wilson has said has turned out to be true. For starters, his wife did recommend him for that trip. The Senate report quotes from a February 12, 2002, memo from Ms. Plame: "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] 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."
...
Mr. Wilson also seems to have dissembled about how he concluded that there was nothing to the Iraq-Niger uranium story, serving for example as the anonymous source for a June 12, 2003, Washington Post story saying "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" There were some forged documents related to an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Trouble was, such documents had not even come to the intelligence community (never mind to Mr. Wilson's attention) by the time of his trip, and obviously hadn't been the basis of the report he'd been sent to investigate. He told the Senate he may have "mispoken" -- at some length we guess -- on this issue.
The Senate Intelligence Committee found, finally, that far from debunking the Iraq-Niger story, Mr. Wilson's debrief was interpreted as providing "some confirmation of foreign government service reporting" that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. Why? Because he'd reported that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki had told him of a 1999 visit by the Iraqis to discuss "commercial relations," which the leader of the one-industry country logically interpreted as interest in uranium.
Remember that Messrs. Bush and Blair only said that Iraq had "sought" or was "trying to buy" uranium, not that it had succeeded. It now appears that both leaders have been far more scrupulous in discussing this and related issues than much of the media in either of their countries, which would embarrass the journalistic profession, if that were possible.
All of this matters because Mr. Wilson's disinformation became the vanguard of a year-long assault on Mr. Bush's credibility. The political goal was to portray the President as a "liar," regardless of the facts. Now that we know those facts, Americans can decide who the real liars are.
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