WAPO adds correction to article.

_____Correction_____
In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.

Mike, how about this for starters:

pg 445

In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he “knew” that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved “a little literary flair.” The former Ambassador, either by design or though ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading.

Emphasis mine.

You’re hilarious, woof… You dismiss the Washington Post as too politically motivated to tell the truth, and to back up your claim you cite KOS?

Just tell me when the left gets upset about Sandy “Docs in His Socks” Berger stealing classified documents in an effort to help shore up Clinton’s legacy. Until then I don’t want to hear them piss and moan when they’re so very obviously partisan political hacks.

Watching the Presidents Press Secretary dodge the the feces he previously threw at the Press Corps,
while imprisoned in a cage of his own making, is comedic.

I am curious, if Karl”EVIL MASTERMIND”Rove is the leak, why has Ms Miller not walked. Or at the least screamed”He’s the one!”. It appears there is much more to this little tableau than has been slapped on the table. And I LOVE how all these supporters of the CIA have spontaneously appeared, strangly enough they are the exact same groups of people who have struggled to destroy the CIA since it’s very creation. Curiouser and curiouser!

I liked when Scotty was asked if he had gotten his own lawyer.

These are the guys who are sweating along with Turd Blossom:

The prosecutor then demanded sworn testimony from a number of senior aides. According to the New York Times, the FBI interviewed Karl Rove and top vice presidential adviser Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and a grand jury heard testimony from press secretary Scott McClellan, Cheney aide Mary Matalin and others. Fitzgerald even conducted interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney…

You have wild cards in Judi Miller, who would no doubt rather be in the Hamptons this summer, and the Special Prosecutors access to obstruction of justice , perjury charges and the Patriot Act.

For people who haven’t seen it yet, there is also a factcheck.org research paper, entitled Bush’s “16 Words” on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn’t Lying.

As this research paper makes clear, the jury is still out as to whether Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. It is not a foregone conclusion that the “Iraq/Niger story is crap”. WOOF is simply wrong on this one.

Here are some juicy tidbits from the factcheck.org story:

A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”

A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.

Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.

Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA’s conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

It strikes me that anybody who has looked in depth at the facts who is nonpartisan has come to similar conclusions.

I’m just glad that I don’t have to base my world view on people like Joseph Wilson or Richard Clark. For me, they typify the worst that the liberal intelligenciia has to offer.

(via this previous comment)

MikeAdamson:

Thanks Carrick although I note that your quotation is taken from a section entitled “Additional Views” which represents just 3 members of the Committee.

Absolutely correct. However, it is hard to see how one could, in a non-partisan manner, read the statement of facts (the non-bold part in the quoted material) and not arrive at the conclusions (bold-faced text). Do you dispute their conclusions?

By the way, this is why I like to find other “readers of facts” like the WaPo (middle left) and WSJ (middle right), or non-partisan sources like factcheck.org. I refer to this as “calibrating” my own view point…

MikeAdamson:

I just got around to reading Wilson’s Times article. I’ve seen this article described as a “pack of lies” but I have to confess that I didn’t see anything troubling from a veracity standpoint. Could someone help me out?

I think the editorial isn’t that far from the truth. It is carefully crafted in diplomatic “double speak” after all. It is the book ironically tiled “The Politics of Truth” and his chat room appearance that supposedly went over the top. I’d start with the factcheck.org article if you want to find what people are really objecting to. I’d start with the assumption that if moderates are objecting, there is probably some fire mixed in there with the smoke…

You might note that also WIlson never addressing the question in his editorial of whether Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from the Niger. He basically debunked the notion that Iraq actually ever acquired uranium, a point which was never in contention. In logical discourse, this is called a “straw man”, and is generally considered a dishonest form of discourse (aka “diplomat speak”).

I just got around to reading Wilson’s Times article. I’ve seen this article described as a “pack of lies” but I have to confess that I didn’t see anything troubling from a veracity standpoint. Could someone help me out?

Rob…I’m not sure why but I’ve downloaded the Committee’s report…I really do have a life…honest. I’ve been scanning around and haven’t been able to find anything that relates to the final paragraph you quote from the Post.

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.

I’ll poke around some more if I find I still care in the morning but I’m wondering how accurate the Post’s account is.

2H9: I gotta hand it to you. You definitely have a way with words!

WOOF: A one sided report.

To the everlasting shame and disgrace of the Conservative Party, in that they could not set aside partisan politics long enough to endorse the obvious truth. You have a problem with the conclusions? Show me facts, not petty political bickering laid out as if it were a factual basis for a disagreement. The blunt truth (quietly endorsed even by Joseph Wilson) is that the evidence supports the fact that Iraq (and Iran) attempted unsuccessfully to acquire uranium from the Niger.

WOOF: You C, can accept this stuff as honest mistakes, not me.

Funny you would use the word “honest” in the midst of a dishonest argument. You want to lay the rest of the world intelligence failures on GWB, go the f**k ahead but don’t expect any respect for your petty political acrobatics. I work around people in the military, and they were all sold on the WMD reports (ok, I wasn’t sold on the WMD and they pitied my ignorance). GW Bush had nothing the f**k to do with it… most of the real intel errors were rooted in assessments made in the ’90s, and a few of the mistakes were made under GHWB.

What I am really tired of is petty bullshit from hacks on the left who can’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to go beyond spoon-level arguments about “how it will play with the stupid and ignorant public.” You guys on the left way underestimate the public and you way overestimate yourselves and just how slick you really are with your stacking of angels on the heads of pins style of arguments. Maybe this is why you haven’t won a plurality in a presidential election since 1976, and may even account for why your power is dissipated more in each successive election?

Cherry picking was what the Bush Administration did. They needed a reason for war. They went with the Niger story and parsed it by saying it was “British” intelligence,( though it was in American hands from the get go) and backed away from it when it was shown to be farcical.

Where are the “other intelligence agencies” findings? Nothing but hole cloth to support invasion.

woof, no amount of evidence will ever be enough for your kind. You are blinded by hatred. Hatred for GW Bush. Hatred for America. Hatred for yourself. Sad,pathetic loser. YOUR United Nations continues to say that WMDs were in Iraq, they continue to say they are now missing. So what do you say to them, when THEY put the lie to your shit. Go and read the words from YOUR United Nations, it is all publicly available. Want copies of the Duelfer report, got the original on disc. Get a clue or slit your wrists, people are tired of your whiny crap.

uh….. riiiight

What WAS comedic was watching the media ask the SAME QUESTION 50 different times, knowing that Scott is under orders not to talk about the subject. They do it intentionally so they can claim Scott was “dodging” them all… what a hoot

Mike, regarding Wilson and his trip to Niger.