“I will tell my completely TRUE STORY but only for ten thousand dollars a crack”

Further considerations in the matter of Joseph Wilson.

Let’s see... Joe Wilson, who is busy promoting himself as a courageous whistleblower who revealed the naughty conspiracy of BusHitler to use a pack of lies to trick Americans into making war on Iraq, will tell you all about his insights, theories, and proofs.

But only if you book him through the for-profit TALENT agency that now has an exclusive contract with him. If you want to have the former ambassador and heroic destroyer of illusions share his wisdom with your civic group or garden club, just call Greater Talent Network, Inc. to negotiate a fee. Please have your checkbook or major credit card handy.

It is just one more pebble in the avalanche of evidence that the mainstream ALLEGED news media have abdicated reporting actual news, and instead committed themselves to advocating the party line of the insane LEFT, that this singularly important motive of Mr W gets no attention or comment. Anyone opposing Wilson’s version of things is characterized as “liar, thug, disinformation operative, tool of the administration” or such. No one on the left is the slightest bit interested in considering that there might be anything phony about Wilson’s claims, because they coincide with what they want to believe anyway.

Mind you, I have no objection to ANYONE taking full advantage of whatever celebrity comes their way, so long as that celebrity has been earned by legitimate means.

But Jos. Wilson has manufactured his celebrity by staging an utterly bogus situation, evidently with planning and assistance from CIA insiders whose aim is to embarrass and undermine the President with a pack of unsubstantiated allegations, meanwhile hiding behind the cloak of secrecy that the LEFT otherwise has made heroic efforts to shred. (Screech all you want to about Scooter Libby. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has specifically refused to indict him or anyone else for revealing that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. This simply shows there never was a crime at issue in all the posturing and posing by people claiming the revelation was punishment for Wilson’s NYT Op-Ed piece.) Here is the chain of logic that leads with glacial inevitability to that conclusion:

(1) Wilson was never at any time qualified to assess the credibility of the British intelligence reports concerning Iraqi attempts to obtain Uranium Oxide in Niger. He is an ambassador, not an intelligence operative, not an intelligence analyst, not an investigative agent; not a forensic accountant; not a detective. An ambassadorship is typically a reward given to someone who provided financial or other material support to a winning presidential candidate, so it has NEVER been proof of ANY particular skill at diplomacy or statecraft. A wise president will look for people with some discretion and intelligence, but the ambassador is supposed to be the conduit of the administration’s views and messages. Not some second-rate James Bond.

(2) If the CIA had a legitimate concern about those intelligence reports, they should have sent someone with the sort of credentials and experience listed in item 1, AND the person sent should have filed a formal written report with an assessment for the eyes of the CIA and the government (Wilson has stated he only gave a verbal summary on his return) NOT an Opinion-Editorial letter in the New York Times.

(3) The issue of Saddam’s continuing attempts to pursue a nuclear weapons program has been supported by numerous statements from former technicians and scientists from the Ba’athist regime, by evidence found by U.N. inspectors during the decade before the invasion, and by discoveries of enriched Uranium in Iraq since the invasion. Unbroken seals on 500 tons of Iraqi yellowcake did NOT prove that Saddam had given up. As long as those seals remain unbroken, his uncritical supporters on the left could claim he wasn’t doing anything with the yellowcake he already had. Meanwhile, he has been attempting to surreptitiously acquire MORE yellowcake, and evidently been able to do so AND enrich it while the inspections were going forward, because of all the interference he imposed on the inspectors. Just this last month almost two TONS of enriched uranium have been discovered in Iraq. It is, after all, a big place with lots of room to hide things.

(4) It just doesn’t make sense for a professional intelligence agency concerned about secrecy and competence, to send a rank amateur sleuth like Joe Wilson to check the authenticity of such an important report, much less allow Wilson to publicly proclaim his opinions and the circumstances of the trip by which he arrived at those opinions. It is such a grotesque departure from any professional standard of the intelligence gathering and assessment functions of the CIA, it strongly suggests that certain discontented CIA career-bureaucrats have intentionally been forcing a confrontation with Bush, for purposes that have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with their job security.

(5) Finally, whether or not this single report of a single attempt to acquire yellowcake turns out to be true, the indisputable fact remains that Saddam had already successfully acquired Uranium by surreptitious means despite the years of sanctions by the massed nations opposed to his desires. It is simply absurd to make this single puny item the lynchpin of any justification for or against an invasion, because there were THOUSANDS of other outrages, provocations, threats, attacks, and confirmed reports of his violations of sanctions and various international laws. During his presidency, William Jefferson Clinton sent United States military forces to attack or threaten Iraq on at least TEN separate occasions, without requesting the authorization of Congress, or the United Nations. In effect, we have been at war with Iraq since 1991, and Saddam NEVER stopped violating the terms of the armistice to which he had agreed in order to stop hostilities at that time.

Please, if you detest what i’m saying, take just a minute to think about the logic of the situation. Just a few minutes of casual “googling” will bring up tens of thousands of references to speeches made during CLINTON’s presidency by members of his administration and many other Democratic Party Leaders proclaiming their firm belief that Saddam was pursuing these weapons programs despite the determined efforts of the United Nations, despite the inspections, and despite repeated military attacks against Iraq by U.S. military forces on Clinton’s orders. They certainly were not under the evil sway of George W. or Karl Rove or Dick Cheney then. No, they were looking at evidence gathered by U.S., French, German, Russian, Italian, British, and other United Nations intelligence organizations documenting Saddam’s activities.

Here’s a link to a CNN report of an address explaining his decision to send American armed forces to attack targets in Iraq in 1998. He stated:

First, we must be prepared to use force again if Saddam takes threatening actions, such as trying to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction or their delivery systems, threatening his neighbors, challenging allied aircraft over Iraq or moving against his own Kurdish citizens.
…
If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people.

And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

Senator John Kerry, in 1998 long before George W. Bush was a factor in presidential politics, issued a statement calling for the use of United States ground troops to assault Iraq.

At the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, speaking in September of 2002, Massachussetts Senator Ted Kennedy said: “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”

California Democratic Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi, in 1998 issued a statement justifying a United States military attack on Iraq, including this:

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the develompment of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. [...] I believe in negotiated solutions to international conflict. This is, unfortunately, not going to be the case in this situation where Saddam Hussein has been a repeat offender, ignoring the international community’s requirement that he come clean with his weapons program.”

Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, speaking in 1999 included the following statement in a November address:

”If you remember in 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded another country, he plagued it, he set fire to it, and he decided that he could control the region. Before that, he had gassed his own people.

Saddam Hussein had been acquiring weapons of mass destruction. We carried out, with the help of an alliance, a war in which we put Saddam Hussein back into his box. The United Nations voted on a set of resolutions which demanded Saddam Hussein live up to his obligations and get rid of weapons of mass destruction.

The United Nations Security Council imposed a set of sanctions on Saddam Hussein until he did that. It also established an organization that is set up to monitor whether Hussein had gotten rid of his weapons of mass destruction.

There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies.”

On October 10, 2002, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a floor speech addressing S.J. Res. 45, A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, in which she said:

“Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people. Unfortunately, during the 1980's, while he engaged in such horrific activity, he enjoyed the support of the American government, because he had oil and was seen as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, losing the support of the United States. The first President Bush assembled a global coalition, including many Arab states, and threw Saddam out after forty-three days of bombing and a hundred hours of ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition then withdrew, leaving the Kurds and the Shiites, who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging, to Saddam's revenge.

As a condition for ending the conflict, the United Nations imposed a number of requirements on Iraq, among them disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, stocks used to make such weapons, and laboratories necessary to do the work. Saddam Hussein agreed, and an inspection system was set up to ensure compliance. And though he repeatedly lied, delayed, and obstructed the inspections work, the inspectors found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities.

In 1998, Saddam Hussein pressured the United Nations to lift the sanctions by threatening to stop all cooperation with the inspectors. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the UN, unwisely in my view, agreed to put limits on inspections of designated "sovereign sites" including the so-called presidential palaces, which in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left. As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets.

In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.”

Please, people, for the love of GOD, the lies have to stop. You cannot claim that Bush misrepresented the threat of Saddam Hussein without also implicating EVERY SINGLE LEADER OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES DURING ALL THE YEARS OF THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY.

We are all in this together, folks. The Islamic fanatics don’t care whether you voted for John Kerry, or give donations to stop drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness, or whether you support or oppose the Invasion of Iraq. They will saw your head off while singing praises to Allah the Merciful, just as Muslim zealots murdered three Christian teenaged schoolgirls in Indonesia last week, or 59 Hindu celebrants in New Delhi, or 59 Jordanian Muslims in Amman this week. Hating George Bush does not magically make the REAL demons disappear.