More on Joe Wilson

Susan Schmidt has unkind words about Joe Wilson in yesterday's Washington Post. She confirms what I've been thinking right along - the man's a liar.

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Joe Wilson for those who may not recall, is the gentleman who has been calling George Bush a liar for saying British intelligence learned that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Africa. He is also the gentleman who accused Karl Rove of criminally revealing that his wife Valerie is a covert CIA agent. Tom Maguire has been all over this story, and you can start here and here to read up on it. But first let me excerpt Mr. Maguire's hypotheses regarding Joe Wilson's veracity on the point of his wife's recommendation.

So, his wife called the meeting, and introduced him, but, according to what the Ambassador told Dr. Marshall, he didn't know anyone in the room. Calling Mr. Wilson a liar seems too obvious, so we have other ideas:

(a) His wife was in her covert deep-cover disguise, and he didn't recognize her;

(b) She introduced him and left by way of a secret passageway through the bookcase before he entered the room - actually having him in the room for the intro would have been awkward for everyone.

(c) Wilson told larger truths about the evildoers in BushCo, so his minor, uhh, misrecollections are irrelevant.

Back to the Post. Of the purpose of Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger and its outcome Ms. Schmidt had this to say.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

[...]

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

For more see this post at Pejmanesque. And in an interesting side note, David Thomson makes this observation in a comment to Dan Drezner.

Am I being overly cynical to point out that Susan Schmidt’s piece was published “Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09?” Why not on the front page---and why on Saturday---a day when few people read the newspaper?

Makes you wonder if maybe there's some kind of bias. Probably just my imagination. But anyway, back to the issue at hand. This would appear to drive another nail into any notions of the administration lying about weapons of mass destruction. But we still have the question of who outed Valerie Plame. Or perhaps the question should be phrased, "Who cares who outed Valerie Plame?" In a comment I left laying around the blogosphere somewhere I said I thought Valerie was the evil genius behind the outing of Valerie. I retract the genius part.

Update: Instapundit links to more commentary on Ambassador Joe.