| They Never Should've Caved On Africa Line |
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July 14, 2003 |
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Listen to Rush...
(...ask why George Tenet is falling on his sword over 100% true uranium info)
(...ask why the White House is helping the Democrats perpetuate the Niger scandal)
President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address included the following line: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Name for me what part of that sentence is wrong or "a lie." None of it. Clifford May's National Review piece is a must-read on this topic. The British government has other intelligence - separate from those Niger documents which the French apparently forged to hurt our effort to liberate Iraq - to prove Saddam tried to purchase so-called yellowcake uranium ore from Africa. |
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 Note the president said "Africa," not "Niger." Now all these liberals are acting as if that one line convinced them to support the war. Of course, they never supported it anyway! Furthermore, Bill Clinton and John F. Kerry and all the rest of these Democrats talked about Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions as a matter of course for years. So what if this one piece of data, put out there as a red herring by the French and never cited by the president, turned out to be false? This is why CIA Director George Tenet's apology and all these other administration officials rushing to say they're sorry about this makes no sense.
There's not only no reason for Tenet to fall on his sword, there's no reason for a sword! This has become an incredible false story, egged on by stories like the one from CBSNews.com headlined "Bush Knew Iraq Info was False." There's nothing in the actual story that says that or backs it up, yet that's the headline! CBS: "CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council Staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa." Well, he didn't make that "flat" statement; he attributed it to the UK. Note that the British aren't backing down on the claim Bush cited, so why is the administration? I don't get it. |
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It's More BIG Theory, New Tone BS |
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You see what the White House has gotten for their unnecessary apologies? Now Democrats demand that Bush fire Tenet - consequences to a shakeup at the CIA be damned! Of course, it won't matter if Bush does fire him. Tenet's needless hara-kiri has put blood in the water and gotten the Democrats into a feeding frenzy. Stop the bleeding here, Mr. President. It's over nothing! Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice and Tenet should stop bowing at the feet of the left, which seeks nothing but to discredit you in the war with Iraq anyway. (See: Bush Gives Dems Fuel to Run Him Over).
This administrations "new tone" profoundly misunderstands the left. You don't apologize for something you didn't do wrong. The Bush people are obsessed with smashing Bush's credibility and that of the military. Democrats don't care what damage they do to this country - they'll take care of that when they get back in power. To them, nothing could possibly be as bad as Bush continuing in power.
It's unconscionable to me that these Democrats would discredit our intelligence capability, and that the White House would help them do so! It's going to get to the point - if it's not there already - where the CIA gives the president some intelligence, and nobody's going to believe it because the Democrats have gone along with this kook theory that he's distorting it for his own aims. Don't chalk this up to criticism of Bush from old El Rushbo. This is a warning. |
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Read the Article... |
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Headline: Spy Games
Subheadline: Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?
Date: September 29, 2003
Source: National Review
By: Cliffoprd D. May
It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"
I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.
That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.
What did appear relevant could easily be found in what the CIA would call "open sources." For example, Mr. Wilson had long been a bitter critic of the current administration, writing in such left-wing publications as The Nation that under President Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness" and had "imperial ambitions."
What's more, he was affiliated with the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute and he had recently been the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."
Equally, important and also overlooked: Mr. Wilson had no apparent background or skill as an investigator. As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger. Based on those conversations, he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."
That's hardly the same as disproving what British intelligence believed — and continues to believe: that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to purchase uranium from somewhere in Africa. (Whether Saddam succeeded or not isn't the point; were Saddam attempting to make such purchases it would suggest that his nuclear-weapons-development program was active and ongoing.)
For some reason, this background and these questions have been consistently omitted in the Establishment media's reporting on Mr. Wilson and his charges.
There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?
Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.
It has to be seen as puzzling that the agency would deal with an inquiry from the White House on a sensitive national-security matter by sending a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat with no investigative experience. Or didn't the CIA bother to look into Mr. Wilson's background?
If that's what passes for tradecraft in Langley, we're in more trouble than any of us have realized.
(Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.)
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