I’m probably a couple of days behind on this one, but the editorial in the latest issue of The New Republic, headlined “Revisiting Wilson,” raises an important point that’s worth emphasizing.
When the Bush gang and their cohorts go after Joseph Wilson, they tend to underscore two points — that Wilson had claimed that Dick Cheney had requested Wilson’s trip to Niger and that Wilson’s conclusions about Bush’s uranium claims were wrong.
The first point has been debunked, repeatedly. The second point, which RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, among others, has been emphasizing, was highlighted by the TNR editorial.
After the war began, and no weapons of mass destruction turned up, Wilson started telling people that the Niger story had been bogus–first through leaks to reporters, then in a New York Times op-ed he wrote under his own name. As both the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek have reported, that’s when administration officials looked into Wilson’s background, discovered he was married to Plame, and publicized her CIA role. This, in turn, prompted Fitzgerald’s investigation.
As that investigation has spilled onto the front pages in the last few weeks, supporters of the administration have picked up where they left off two years ago, saying that Wilson was unqualified for the Niger investigation and declaring that his credibility is in tatters. It’s true that Wilson has made himself an easy target for such accusations by posing with his wife for Vanity Fair magazine and taking a very public role advising the Kerry campaign last fall. But the most serious charge that Wilson’s critics level against him is the allegation that he was wrong in his assessment of Iraq’s dealing with Niger. Supporters of Rove have revived this accusation in an effort to claim that, when Rove spoke to reporters about Plame, he wasn’t trying to disparage Wilson so much as warn them off a “bad story.” But what, exactly, was “bad” about Wilson’s story?
Both the national security adviser and the CIA director at the time (Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet, respectively) issued public apologies for the Niger claim, admitting it was unsubstantiated. And the most authoritative report on the matter comes from the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which spent a year combing the Iraqi countryside for alleged weapons of mass destruction. Its conclusion: “ISG has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 or renewed indigenous production of such material.”
How can the administration and its allies be so cavalier about the truth?
I ask myself the same question every day.
Some weeks back, I concluded that it’s not worth responding to the attacks on Wilson because that’s the debate the right wants us to have — away from Rove and Libby.
But the point raised by the TNR editorial is significant because it emphasizes the bigger picture. We all know this, but it bears repeating every day — Wilson was getting in the White House’s way by exposing their bogus claims as lies, so they had to go after him. And they’re still claiming that Wilson was wrong about Iraq, despite reality — as documented by the administration-created Iraq Survey Group.
As Digby recently noted:
It’s two years later, we have a definitive report from the ISG, and people are still saying that Wilson was a flake, he was sent by his wife, he was trying to set up the Republicans, whatever. In a normal world, that fact that Wilson’s conclusions (along with others) were correct would have some salience in this argument — particularly since the Republicans are basing theirs on the mistaken premise that Wilson’s credibility is in question when quite clearly, he was right.
But this isn’t normal; it’s Bush’s America.
The right doesn’t have anything to stand on when debating the White House’s tactics, so they turn to Wilson. But they don’t have anything to stand on here either, and they have no where left to turn. It seems only a matter of time before they start claiming that Saddam really did have WMD and anyone who says differently is wrong.
I can appreciate that Bush defenders are having trouble coming up with a compelling defense for the White House in the Plame scandal. I sometimes wonder what I’d come up with if I were in their shoes. I don’t see much room for spinning this one. From the sound of it, neither do they.