Posted on 07/15/2004 12:33:00 PM PDT by ConservativeMajority
From Thursday's White House press briefing:
JEFF GANNON, TALON NEWS: Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were "well-founded." Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, let me point out that I think those reports speak for themselves on that issue. And I think if you have questions about that, you can direct that to Mr. Wilson.
JEFF GANNON, TALON NEWS: Well, we spent so many weeks here dissecting the 16 words that are now absolutely true. Don't you think --
HELEN THOMAS: How do you know that?
JEFF GANNON, TALON NEWS: Excuse me, Helen. Don't you think that America deserves the opportunity to have this information brought forward, as well?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I noticed the media reports on this very issue over the weekend.
JEFF GANNON, TALON NEWS: There were very few of them.
MR. McCLELLAN: And I certainly recognize that it was getting a lot of attention previously. But I think the reports speak for themselves on it.
Ya'll be sure to foward Novaks latest to the old Bat just in case she hasn't seen it yet.
Wilson contradictions leave Democrat senators speechless
July 15, 2004
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that did not bark, the most remarkable aspect of last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report is what its Democratic members did not say. They did not dissent from the committee's findings that Iraq apparently asked about buying yellowcake uranium from Niger. They neither agreed to a conclusion that former diplomat Joseph Wilson was suggested for a mission to Niger by his CIA employee wife nor defended his statements to the contrary.
Wilson's activities constituted the only aspects of the yearlong investigation for which the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, was unable to win unanimous agreement. According to committee sources, Roberts felt Wilson had been such a ''cause celebre'' for Democrats that they could not face the facts about him.
For a year, Democrats have been belaboring President Bush about 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address in which he reported Saddam Hussein's attempt to buy uranium from Africa, based on British information. Wilson has been lionized in liberal circles for allegedly contradicting this information on a CIA mission and then being punished as a truth-teller. Now, for committee Democrats, it is as though the Niger question and Joe Wilson have vanished from the Earth.
Because a Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating whether any crime was committed when my column first identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee, on advice of counsel I have not written on the subject since October. However, I feel compelled to describe how the committee report treats the Niger-Wilson affair because it has received scant coverage except in a few media outlets. The unanimously approved report said, ''interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD (CIA counterproliferation division) employee, suggested his name for the trip.'' That's what I reported, and what Wilson flatly denied and still does.
Plame sent out an internal CIA memo saying ''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.'' A State Department analyst told the committee about an inter-agency meeting in 2002 that was ''apparently convened by [Wilson's] wife, who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.''
The committee found that the CIA report, based on Wilson's mission, differed considerably from the former ambassador's description to the committee of his findings. That report ''did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.'' As far as his statement to the Washington Post about ''forged documents'' involved in the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium, Wilson told the committee he may have ''misspoken.'' In fact, the intelligence community agreed that ''Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa.''
''While there was no dispute with the underlying facts,'' Chairman Roberts wrote separately, ''my Democrat colleagues refused to allow'' two conclusions in the report. The first conclusion merely said that Wilson was sent to Niger at his wife's suggestion. The second conclusion is devastating: ''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.''
The normally mild Roberts is harsh in his condemnation: ''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. . . . [N]ot only did he NOT 'debunk' the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true.'' Roberts called it ''important'' for the committee to declare much of what Wilson said ''had no basis in fact.'' In response, Democrats were silent.
You'd be dead in minutes from the infection. She has a mouth like a Komodo Dragon.
Cool.
Though if it was me, I'd probably have said "Pipe down, you old whore -- I was talking to Mr. McClellan."
Helen Thomas must think it's her press conference.
Bwahahahaha! Pay attention, Helen.
Helen Thomas sounds like Aunt Bethany in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation:
http://www.moviewavs.com/cgi-bin/moviewavs.cgi?National_Lampoons_Christmas_Vacation=breakwind.wav
White House reaction ping
2) You were far more polite to Helen than she deserved.
Wait a Sec. Was she wondering how Mr. Gannon knew Herr Wilson was lying and publically outed, really? She really didn't seem to know?
Even for Helen, this is astounding to me. No sarcasm at all, but how could she NOT know this?
Danny Devito's penguin, hands down.
1. comic relief
1. a reminder of halloween
3.what a person in end stages of mental illness looks like
4. the media's punishment of the president for winning the election
5. makes kids turn off the TV and read a good book......
c'mon freepers help me out here.......
If this were 1944, so many of these people would be jailed for TREASON, giving aid and comfort to the enemy war effort, and engaging in acts to obstruct and defend our national security.
Like the jurists who think they're legislators, Helen is a reporter who thinks she's a newsmaker.
I believe you're right.
There are none so blind...
She probably has a basement dungeon under the stairs at Chappaqua (sp?) as well.
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