Cynical Nation

I'm trying to figure out what the holes in his story are. He was sent to Niger to investigate, returned with conclusions different than the Administration's line, wrote about it and...what?

Seems anti-Wilsonians are more irked at his alleged behavior AFTER the leak about his wife.

But looking at the actual mission that led to all this, what am the deal?

> I'm trying to figure out what the holes in his story are.

Not very hard, it would seem.

OK.

...but Valerie Plame's still pretty hot for a chick her age.

No doubt.

What will be more interesting is seeing Cheney take the stand :)

Joe Wilson is a good guy. And Valerie Plame is cool. Dick Cheney and Libby are not cool at all.

When a meglomanic such as Wilson opts to avoid a high-profile appearance, one's antennae immediately leap to attention.

My gut is that he is afraid of having to testify under oath and admit how much of his bloviating was based on lies and half-truths. He was undressed by the 9/11 committee regarding just such untruths.

"My gut is that he is afraid of having to testify under oath and admit how much of his bloviating was based on lies and half-truths. He was undressed by the 9/11 committee regarding just such untruths.

Hey Mal,
In what planet do you live? Did you join JMK in Pluto? If someone is afraid that "untruths" they said may come out, these are Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest. Not Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson is an honest man who put his career and the career of his wife at rik so the truth can come out.

Joe Wilson said this, under Oath, to the Senate Intelligence Committee, "I never claimed to have debunked the claim that Iraq was seeking to buy Uranium from Niger."

That is what he said under Oath.

Joe Wilson may well be a "cool guy" Blue, though he initially supported the war in Iraq and steadfastly asserted that there were WMDs (chemical & biologicalweapons) in Iraq.

Ironically enough, Bob Novak was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning and was one of the very few who, from the start, claimed, even when UN weapons inspectors said otherwise, that there were no WMDs in Iraq.

The idiotic claim that Joe Wilson somehow, somewhere "debunked the British claim that Iraq was looking into buying Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger," is completely unsubstantiated.

His sworn testimony to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee was under oath, trumping anything he may have said on some Sunday morning news magazine show, or wrote for the NY Times.

In fact, if it wouldn't be the first time that the NY Times asked for and paid for information they knew was false (think Walter Duranty).

Joe Wilson is an honest man who put his career and the career of his wife at rik so the truth can come out.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

CRB wrote:
"hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha"

Read again...I said Joe Wilson, not George Bush :)

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Once again BW, you don't know anything about what you're talking about!

Joe Wilson is on the record for testifyint under Oath to the Senate that he never debunked the Brittish assertion that Saddam's Iraq was seeking to purchase yellow Cake Uranium from Niger.

Since that testimony he's acknowledged in a number of media interviews that, "Niger only has two chief exports, Uranium and goats, and it's highly doubtful that Saddam's emmisaries were there to buy any goats."

I'll acknowledge, for full disclosure that I never read Wilson's NY Times Op-Ed piece, but that piece wasn't written under Oath, while his Senate testimony was delivered under Oath.

So if Wilson, in that Op-Ed, did indeed claim or even imply that Brittain's assertion about Saddam's Iraq was seeking to purchase yellow Cake Uranium from Niger was invalid, then his sworn testimony before the Senate makes him a liar in that instance...hardly an "honest man."

But what can you expect from a guy who extolls pure democracy one minute (an absolutely inane stance), and supporting a Party that tramples one of the best examples of the democratic process here in the USA, the next.

This past election, the people of Michigan voted overwhelmingly to end race/gender preferences by a whopping 58/42 margin. That law is slated to take effect this weekend, but the Democratic Governess there (Jenny Granholm), along with the Michigan AG (Mike Cox), along with groups like "By Any Means Necessary" have forged an extension that allows Michigan's three Universities to continue using preferences through their "current admissions cycle."

Come on!

Apparently many Democrats don't even support the democratic process here at home!

As long as we're on the subject of our esteemed Guv. Granholm. Have any other Michiganders notice how many stealth tax increases we have had since November? (hunting licenses and beer for two) To revive a joke from the Carter years, When the last person leaves this state, please turn out the lights.

Michigan's unemployment numbers have been creeping upward too.

You'd think that with the existing incontrovertibale proof that Supply Side economics works (tax cuts down to around the 20% mark actuall increase revenues) and Keynesianism doesn't, that there'd be few, if ANY Keynesians around any more.

But politicians aren't economists and most of them want to believe that government spending is "good for the economy."

The biggest and perhaps dumbest lie is that "more social spending ultimately helps everyone."

And to think that State was doing great under Engler (a Republican fiscal Conservative) not that long ago.

Don't know the precise details here, JMK. What was the timing on the Time's piece and the sworn testimony? In other words, could Wilson have testified to one position and then learned differently, so he wrote what he had learned to be the truth in the Times? So often we find ourselves arguing that so and so lied when he said "this" because he said "that" earlier, but both statements may have been the truth as far as so and so knew at the time.

One of the things I like about this web log is that even the people with whom I strongly disagree are thoughtful and fair enough to admit that circumstances may affect what is perceived as the truth and that not everybody in these morality plays that we argue over is wholly evil or wholly good and, around here at least, shades of grey are permissible.

“This past election, the people of Michigan voted overwhelmingly to end race/gender preferences by a whopping 58/42 margin. That law is slated to take effect this weekend, but the Democratic Governess there (Jenny Granholm), along with the Michigan AG (Mike Cox), along with groups like "By Any Means Necessary" have forged an extension that allows Michigan's three Universities to continue using preferences through their "current admissions cycle."
Come on!
Apparently many Democrats don't even support the democratic process here at home!” – JMK

And I suppose there’s never been a case where a republican has tried to delay the date when a law and/or policy change went into effect…right. And I also suppose that even if there were cases, those same republicans weren’t guilty of trying to thwart the democratic process – that’s just ironically enough a “democratic” trait right?
You’re intelligent enough to know that we don’t live in a direct democracy, we live in a representative democracy. The will of the people is seldom directly applied to any issue, even ballot initiatives are framed by the authors.
If we did live in a direct democracy and margins really were important then the president would actually have to obey the majority of the American people in their desire to send the troops home. Of course he is instead calling for more troops and a larger military overall.
We don’t really live in a democracy, instead we have windows of democracy called elections. During these windows the powers that be use every asset at their disposal to influence the results. The result is that an uninformed populace makes decisions at election time based upon what’s fresh in their heads. And if they reach a different conclusion even a week later once the facts are clear it doesn’t matter.

"Don't know the precise details here, JMK. What was the timing on the Time's piece and the sworn testimony? In other words, could Wilson have testified to one position and then learned differently, so he wrote what he had learned to be the truth in the Times? So often we find ourselves arguing that so and so lied when he said "this" because he said "that" earlier, but both statements may have been the truth as far as so and so knew at the time." (DBK)
"So if Wilson, in that Op-Ed, did indeed claim or even imply..."

And I'd even accept your point, "could Wilson have testified to one position and then learned differently, so he wrote what he had learned to be the truth in the Times," with one caveat - I believe he testified to the Senate AFTER writing that NY Times Op-Ed piece and given the fact that Brittain, to this day, insists that they, the Czechoslovakians and others were right, perhaps Joe Wilson changed his mind AFTER initially writing what he "thought" to be the truth, when he wrote it.

The irony of the Plame case was that Bob Novak (who "outed" her) was steadfastly against the invasion of Iraq from the start (Wilson, apparently wasn't.

I like Novak's writings and always liked Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul (two others among many Conservatives & Libertarians who opposed American military action in the Mideast), but I belive them to be agregiously wrong on that issue.

What I've always reviled is the inane view, held by an extremist fringe (Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kucinich, etc) that America is "the world's biggest terrorist," and that the current administration is "akin to the Third Reich."

I've always said and still believe those views are not mere "hate speech," they're certainly seditious and very close (I'd go for it court) to treasonous.

I've said many times GZ, that a pure democracy is the worst possible type of government that could exist. They are inherantly unstable and canabalistic, as group after group forges alliances to deprive others of various rights.

BUT, the Ballot Initiative is one of the few examples within the American system where the will of the people can be taken into account.

And it's a sound system, as it exists, as it takes a huge effort to take things to such Referendums - thousands of signatures and high legal costs, etc. Moreover, all the laws that spring from these Referendum decisions are subject to judicial review. I'm sure that Arizona's new laws eliminating bail for illegal aliens charged with felonies, and from receiving punitive damages on Civil suits will be challenged, though it would be a travesty if ANY court would overturn such sound measures, in my view and hopefully, if such a thing did occur, it would only further motivate the anti-immigration forces and swell their ranks and their influence.

Do the people make mistakes?

Yes, occasionally they do.

Currently Ballot Initiatives that raised the Minimum Wage passed by, again, better than two to one.

I believe that to be an error for a host of reasons, mainly that it's unsound economic policy.

Of course, since such Referendums are statewide measures, they can only change the laws of individual states and not federal laws or foreign policy.

You assert, "And I suppose there’s never been a case where a republican has tried to delay the date when a law and/or policy change went into effect," I honestly can't think of a single example of a Republican led move to delay or obstruct a law passed by via a Ballot Initiative/Referendum.

Of course, the Republicans (at least Conservative Republicans) have used this tool much more effectively than have Liberal Democrats, but there's a good reason for that.

The American people are overwhelmingly Conservative, and measures from property tax reductions in California to anti-illegal immigration and anti-Eminent Domain Referendums are very popular with voters.

Initiatives that would seek to institute race/gender preferences, raise taxes, welcome all immigrants and loosen our immigration standards are generally not as popular, so Liberals have usually had to backdoor "the people," and try to get Liberal/activist judges to pass measures that could never get passed via direct Referendum, or the people's legislatures.

Perhaps some of the newly minted "New (Conservative) Democrats" will be able to use the Ballot Initiaitive to more success, but I doubt (and hope & pray) that we never see the day when a non-traditionalist initiative would pass a popular Referendum by a majority of the people.

That very well could signal the end of America as we now know it.

Cynical,

I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas and Hanukkah!

Merry Christmas! :o)