The standard Leftist meme is that "Bush lied" regarding Iraqi efforts to get uranium from Niger. The only problem is that every examination of the evidence shows that the liar was Joe Wilson, whose word is taken as Gospel-truth by the Left.

In a surprising editorial, The Washington Post deviated from the conventional anti-Bush media position on two counts. It said President Bush was right to declassify parts of a National Intelligence Estimate to make clear why he thought Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. And the editorial said ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson was wrong to think he had debunked Bush on the nuclear charge because Wilson's statements after visiting Niger actually "supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."

In the orthodox narrative line, Wilson is the truth-teller and the Bush the liar. But Wilson was not speaking truthfully when he said his wife, Victoria Plame, had nothing to do with the CIA sending him to Niger. And it obviously wasn't true, as Wilson claimed, that he had found nothing to support Bush's charge about Niger when he (Wilson) had been told that the Iraqis were poking around in that uranium-rich nation.

Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee, Wilson said that the former prime minister of Niger told him he had been asked to meet with Iraqis to talk about "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries. Everybody knew what that meant; Niger has nothing much to trade other than uranium.

Yeah, that's right -- Niger doesn't have much else to export, and Wilson confirmed that Iraq was seeking to do business with Niger. What else would Iraq have been after -- goats, camels, and slaves?

More to the point, every subsequent investigation into the Niger story shows that there was plenty of other evidence to back the contention thqat Iraq was seeking uranium.

The forged documents claiming an Iraq-Niger connection were so crude that they could never have fooled the CIA or British intelligence for very long. Who would do this, and do it so badly? Nobody knows. But if the forgeries were meant to distract from other evidence that Bush was right, then they certainly worked. Look around in American journalism, and you will find great certitude that the forgeries destroyed Bush's claim.

That certitude can only be founded on the belief that Tony Blair, the U.S. Senate intelligence committee and the special investigative team of Parliament were all liars when they said there was substantial non-forged evidence backing Bush's claim. The investigative team was headed by the highly regarded Lord Butler, who served as a Cabinet minister under five prime ministers. It concluded that Bush's 16 words about Iraq's uranium shopping were "well-founded."

Actually, there is one other way to discount the Butler report: Either muffle or don't mention it in your news columns. The New York Times opted for muffling. A database search finds no mention of "well-founded" in the Times reporting, and only one barely scrutable paragraph about uranium in the Butler report, way down in the 11th paragraph of a story buried well inside the paper.

In other words, the reason that the "Bush lied" meme survives is because most of the press simply refuses to give substantive discussion to the evidence of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium. Instead, Joe Wilson and his wife are painted as martyrs, and his claims are validated based upon that status -- despite the fact that every investigation of his claims have led to the opposite conclusion.

Posted by: Greg at 10:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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