You must read former New York Times foreign correspondent Clifford D. May’s piece in National Review Online. The media, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others are salivating over the manufactured story about the supposed leaking of former ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife’s name by the White House. Yet Wilson is not objective. He’s an anti-Bush member of the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute, which wanted to end the no-fly zones allowing Saddam to slaughter the Kurds and Shiites – and it was known his wife worked for the CIA!
Wilson had no credentials as an investigator. May: ‘As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than ‘eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people.” So when the New York Times gave Wilson a job investigating whether Saddam tried to buy uranium in Africa, the question of him getting that job based on his wife’s connections became newsworthy. To illustrate Wilson’s lack of knowledge, May points out that Wilson today claims he opposed the end of Saddam’s regime because he didn’t think he had WMD. Yet prior to the liberation he darkly warned ABC that he feared Saddam could ‘use a biological weapon in a battle.’
Wilson wrote the Times op-ed saying that the claim, which Bush never made, that Saddam bought yellowcake from Niger was ‘highly unlikely.’ That isn’t the same as saying it never happened or that Saddam didn’t try, which was the charge. If a maniac like him took a shot at getting uranium, it’s a major red flag. There was no reason to apologize for the 16 words in which President Bush said UK intelligence (which the Brits stand by to this day) showed that Saddam had ‘tried to buy uranium from Africa.’ Appeasing the left by apologizing has helped turn this molehill into a mountain with Democrats calling for an independent council.
Whatever the left says about Bob Novak, they never question his journalistic integrity so they’re all over this. Note two things: Novak put this information in print way back on July 14th, and he opposed the liberation of Iraq. Despite the previously manufactured charge that this White House is ‘secretive,’ nothing in this administration’s performance indicates it hides anything. (That Cheney task force/GAO lawsuit? It violated separation of powers and never had a chance.) In short, the Democrats know they can’t beat Bush on issues at the ballot box, so they’re going to try to manufacture a scandal among his aides. The key difference to Clinton – as EIB Legal Advisor F. Lee Levin points out in his own NRO column – is that nobody is alleging any wrongdoing on the part of President Bush in this matter. With Clinton, all the wrongdoing pointed straight to the top.
