Well, it's a start
Thanks to Jack Schaffer, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof's was finally forced to issue a correction, of sorts, to his infamous May 6, 2003 column which laid out the whole Joe Wilson/Niger/uranium narrative as we know it today.
As others and myself have tirelessly pointed out, the narrative as presented by Kristof is fraught with error. Now Kristof himself has had to (grudgingly) admit as much... if you know where and how to find his correction. The whole process resembled oral surgery, and Kristof and/or the Times seems to be going out of their way to avoid having anyone actually, you know, see the correction, half-assed and grudging as it is. Fortunately, Mickey Kaus and Tom Maguire are on the case.
Progress. Baby steps.
Comments
Bull. Kristof was right:
From his correction:
"...The better objection is that the references to the documents themselves make it sound as if the envoy may have had the documents in possession, while in fact he didn’t.
The U.S. didn’t obtain the documents themselves until the fall of that year.
But we did then have the information in them, including the full text and the names of the ministers who signed the contracts.
And Wilson was briefed on the details of the contracts in his meeting with C.I.A. and State Department experts on Feb. 19, 2003.
As the Senate Intelligence Committee report says: "The INR analyst's meeting notes and electronic mail (e-mail) from other participants indicate that INR explained its skepticism that the alleged uranium contract could possibly be carried out....The INR analyst's notes also indicate that specific details of the classified report on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal were discussed at the meeting, as well as whether analysts believed it was plausible that Niger would be capable of delivering such a large quantity of uranium to Iraq."
So could Wilson have debunked documents that he hadn't seen? Well, yes.
If he knew details of the contract and reported back that it was implausible, sure.
Did he? By the spring of 2003, the problems in the signatures of the documents had been pointed out, but I don't see much evidence that they had been noted in 2002 by Wilson or anybody else.
Rather, the debunking of the contract was based mostly on the implausibility of obtaining uranium in Niger because of the way the industry was structured..."
What part of this do you guys not understand? Or are you dead-enders going to keep hanging on to the "Wilson lied" matra forever?
Posted by: Anonymous | November 5, 2005 02:40 PM