<font color=blue>Joe Wilson's already slipping down the old media memory
hole. He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted
the liberation of Iraq<font color=black>
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How a serial liar suckered Dems and the media
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July 18, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Well, the week went pretty much as I predicted seven days ago:
BUSH LIED!! Not.
BLAIR LIED!!! Not.
But it turns out JOE WILSON LIED! PEOPLE DIED. Of
embarrassment mostly. At least I'm assuming that's why the
New York Times, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, PBS drone Bill
Moyers and all the other media bigwigs Joseph C. Wilson IV
suckered have fallen silent on the subject of the white
knight of integrity they've previously given the hold-the-
front-page treatment, too.
And what about John F. Kerry? Joe Wilson campaigned with
Kerry in at least six states, and claims to have helped
with the candidate's speeches. He was said to be a senior
foreign policy adviser to the senator. As of Friday,
Wilson's Web site, restorehonesty.com, was still wholly
paid for by Kerry's presidential campaign.
Heigh-ho. It would be nice to hear his media boosters howling en masse, <font color=blue>"Say it ain't so, Joe!"<font color=black> But Joe Wilson's already slipping down the old media memory hole. He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq -- and yes, by the time you read this the Kerry campaign may well have pulled the plug on his Web site, and Salon magazine's luxury cruise will probably have to find another headline speaker, and he won't be doing Tim Russert again any time soon.
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But what matters to the media and to Senator Kerry is that
he helped the cause of (to quote his book title) The
Politics Of Truth, and if it takes a serial liar to do
that, so be it.
But before he gets lowered in his yellowcake overcoat into
the Niger River, let's pause to consider: What do Joe
Wilson's lies mean? And what does it say about the
Democrats and the media that so many high-ranking figures
took him at his word?
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First, contrary to what Wilson wrote in the New York Times, Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In support of that proposition are a Senate report in Washington, Lord Butler's report in London, MI6, French intelligence, other European agencies -- and, as we now know, the CIA report, based on Joe Wilson's original briefing to them. Against that proposition is Joe Wilson's revised version of events for the Times.
This isn't difficult. In 1999, a senior Iraqi <font color=blue>"trade"<font color=black> delegation went to Niger. Uranium accounts for 75 percent of Niger's exports. The rest is goats, cowpeas and onions. So who sends senior trade missions to Niger? Maybe Saddam dispatched his Baathist big shots all the way to the dusty capital of Niamy because he had a sudden yen for goat and onion stew with a side order of black-eyed peas, and Major Wanke, the then-president, had offered him a great three-for-one deal.
But that's not what Joe Wilson found. Major Wanke's prime minister, among others, told Ambassador Wilson that he believed Iraq wanted yellowcake. And Ambassador Wilson told the CIA. And the CIA's report agreed with the British and the Europeans that <font color=blue>"Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa."<font color=black>
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In his ludicrously vain memoir The Politics Of Truth,
Wilson plays up his knowledge of the country. He makes
much of his intimacy with Wanke and gives himself the
credit for ridding Niger of the Wanke regime. The question
then is why a man who knew so much about what was going on
chose deliberately to misrepresent it to all his media/
Democrat buddies, not to mention to the American people.
For a book called The Politics Of Truth, it's remarkably
short of it. On page 2, Wilson says of his trip to
Niger: <font color=blue>"I had found nothing to substantiate the rumors."<font color=black>
But he had.
That's what lying is, by the way: intentional deceit, not
unreliable intelligence. And I'm not usually the sort to
bandy the liar-liar-pants-on-fire charge beloved by so
many in our politics today, but I'll make an exception in
the case of Wilson, who's never been shy about the term.
He called Bush a <font color=blue>"liar"<font color=black> and he called Cheney a <font color=blue>"lying
sonofabitch,"<font color=black> on stage at a John Kerry rally in Iowa.
Saddam wanted yellowcake for one reason: to strike at his
neighbors in the region, and beyond that at Britain,
America and his other enemies. In other words, he wanted
the uranium in order to kill you.
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The obvious explanation for Wilson's deceit about what he
found in Africa is that his hatred of Bush outweighed
everything else. Or as the novelist and Internet maestro
Roger L. Simon put it, <font color=blue>"He is a deeply evil human being
willing to lie and obfuscate for temporary political gain
about a homicidal dictator's search for weapons-grade
uranium."<font color=black>
Technically, it's weaponizable uranium, not <font color=blue>"weapons grade."<font color=black> But that's the point. Simon isn't the expert, and, as Ambassador Wilson trumpets loudly and often, he is. This isn't a case of another Michael Moore, court buffoon to the Senate Democrats, or Whoopi Goldberg, has-been potty-mouth to John Kerry. They're in show biz; what do they know?
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But Wilson does know; he went there, he talked to
officials, and he lied about America's national security
in order to be the anti-Bush crowd's Playmate of the
Month. Either he's profoundly wicked or he's as deranged
as that woman on the Paris Metro last week who falsely
claimed to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack.
The Paris crazy was unmasked within a few days, but the
Niger crazy was lionized for a full year.
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Some of us are on record as dismissing Wilson in the first
bloom of his unmerited celebrity. But John Kerry was taken
in -- to the point where he signed him up as an adviser
and underwrote his Web site. What does that reveal about
Mister Nuance and his superb judgment? He claims to be
able to rebuild America's relationships with France, and
to have excellent buddy-to-buddy relations with French
political leaders. Yet anyone who's spent 10 minutes in
Europe this last year knows that virtually every
government there believes Iraq was trying to get uranium
from Africa. Is Kerry so uncurious about America's
national security he can't pick up the phone to his Paris
pals and get the scoop firsthand? For all his claims to be
Monsieur Sophisticate, there's something hicky and
parochial in his embrace of an obvious nutcake for passing
partisan advantage.
Any Democrats and media types who are in the early stages
of yellowcake fever and can still think clearly enough not
to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or Houston -- or
even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman -- need to consider
seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An
ambassador, in Sir Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a
good man sent abroad to lie for his country. This
ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the
media helped him do it. |
