And he sipped tea poolside, never really investigated a thing, and upon returning to the US, delivered a verbal briefing after the trip.
To whom? Well, the same people who sent him to Niger, naturally. Who are…?
We don’t know. But we should. Because Wilson’s mission appears to have been a sham from the start.
Meanwhile William Safire has more on Wilson’s imploding credibility:
Two exhaustive government reports came out last week showing that it is the president’s lionized accuser, and not Mr. Bush, who has been having trouble with the truth.
Contrary to his indignant claim that “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter” of selecting him for the African trip, the Senate published testimony that his C.I.A. wife had “offered up his name” and printed her memo to her boss that “my husband has good relations” with Niger officials and “lots of French contacts.” Further destroying his credibility, Wilson now insists this strong pitch did not constitute a recommendation.
Wilson is scheduled to be on PBS’s Newshour tonight. I hope they ask him some tough questions on these, and other, problems with his public statements.
Michael Barone has more on the collapse of the “Bush Lied” argument:
So much for the wild charges that Bush manipulated intelligence and lied about weapons of mass destruction. He simply said what was believed by every informed person — including leading members of the Clinton administration before 2001 and Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards in their speeches in October 2002 supporting military action in Iraq.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report also refuted completely the charges by former diplomat Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration ignored his conclusion, based on several days in Niger, that Iraq had not sought to buy uranium in that country. Democrats and many in the press claimed that Wilson refuted the 16-word sentence Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, noting that British intelligence reported that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.
But British intelligence stands by that finding, and the committee noted that Wilson confirmed that Iraq had approached Niger, whose main exports are uranium and goats, and intelligence analysts concluded that his report added nothing else to their previous knowledge. And the report flatly denied Wilson’s statements that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, had nothing to do with his mission to Niger — it quotes Plame’s memo taking credit for the appointment.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: More questions here.