[posted by Justin Levine]

Mahablog obviously doesn’t like the news. I can’t comment on the analysis of any other site, but it should be obvious that Mahablog is deliberately misconstruing the point of the post (and the debate). The debate isn’t about if Saddam was on the verge of obtaining nukes or not. Rather, it is about the fact that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are liars – something that most of the press refuses to acknowledge. Notably, Mahablog doesn’t mention the Joe Wilson controversy at all.

Of course people know that yellowcake does not equal enriched uranium. If that were the case, then everyone would be worrying about the great nuclear weapons power named Niger. But of course you don’t hear that, so I really don’t know what Mahablog’s point is here. The crux of the argument was that Saddam was trying to compile the materials for an inert weapons program that he could one day reconstitute after got the sanctions lifted (with the help of bribes from the U.N. ‘oil-for-food’ scandal).

I presume that Mahablog doesn’t deny that Israel previously bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq which would indicate that Saddam had a desire for such weapons. In light of that fact and Saddam’s hostile history, the existence of stored yellowcake there becomes a bit more significant than it being stored in Niger, even though we all know it doesn’t magically take on weapons’ grade properties once it crosses the border into Iraq. But rather than think through the implications of the fact that Iraq previously had a nuclear weapons reactor in the past, Mahablog is simply content to state, “The critical point is that Saddam Hussein couldn’t do anything with this uranium because he lacked the equipment and technology to enrich it.”

Once again, for the bazillionth time, the argument was never that nuclear Iraq was imminent. It was that it was eventually inevitable unless Saddam was removed from power. Perhaps it wouldn’t come to be until years into the future, but it would eventually come. People could have tried to make the argument that it was not inevitable that Saddam would acquire WMD (and perhaps some did), but the most vocal decided to lie instead and suggest that Bush’s real argument was that Saddam’s acquisition of nukes was ‘imminent’.

Mahablog is right about one thing – the existence of yellowcake in Iraq is not really new news for those who have read up on the issue. But because many in the media refuse to acknowledge Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame for absolute frauds that they are, this old news manages to take on continued significance.

But here is the real test of Mahablog’s argument: If Mahablog has a legitimate point, then why did Joe Wilson go to such great lengths to try and cast doubt on the very existence of the yellowcake Niger story? Why didn’t he just say, “It is possible that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. But even though I can neither confirm nor deny this accusation, it is ultimately irrelevant since yellowcake is harmless and is not proof of anything significant regarding an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.”?

That is not the argument that Joe Wilson the liar made. There is a reason for this – reason’s that people like Mahablog would rather not address. So I’ll be happy to stay on his ‘Idiot’s Hall of Fame’, let people read both posts, and decide for themselves.

— Justin Levine

[posted by Justin Levine]

[Note from Patterico: I haven’t followed this controversy other than to scan the recent news story about yellowcake being moved out of Iraq, which struck me as a nonstory because I thought we already knew about that, and it predated the Gulf war. Beyond that, I don’t have any opinion. But I would appreciate it if the left-wing morons who keep saying this post was written by “Patterico” take note: there are several hints that this post was written by Justin Levine — who is not me. Like, under the title, where it says “Justin Levine.” Or at the beginning of the post, where it says “Posted by Justin Levine.” Since that’s not enough for you chuckleheads, I am adding a signature line at the end: “– Justin Levine” This might get through to maybe half of you. Whatever.]

Nothing to see here. After all, we wouldn’t want to interfere with the speaking tours and book sales from Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson now, would we?

Yes, yes, I know. The diehards who want to defend Plame and Wilson will still say that there is nothing to suggest that this particular yellowcake came from Niger, and it doesn’t prove that that Saddam Hussein specifically tried to buy his yellowcake from that country as opposed to obtaining it elsewhere. But once they make that argument, they are resting on pure legalisms rather than addressing the underlying subtance of the debate over Saddam’s nuclear weapons program.

In case you need reminding that Joe Wilson was already proven to be a liar over his allegations over this matter, I would direct you here, here, and here for starters. You can also consult one of the original source documents here [PDF file – at pgs. 4 through 12, and 37 through 39 in the PDF file’s pagination].

But naturally none of this will matter to the Wilsonoid true believers. The Kool-Aid has already been ingested long ago.

[Update: Still need even more resources proving that Wilson and Plame are lying sacks? Check it out here.]

— Justin Levine

(Accepted Wisdom™ is a semi-regular feature of this site, highlighting contradictory viewpoints held by the elite.)

It is Accepted Wisdom™ that:

U.S. intelligence told Bush that Saddam tried to buy yellowcake in Niger. Bush claiming to believe that, and repeating it to the American people, was a lie.

And at the same time:

U.S. intelligence told Obama that Russia would not invade Ukraine. You can’t blame Obama for believing U.S. intelligence.

Thanks to a tipster.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]

Ugh, what to do, what to do?  On one hand, I hate to give publicity to bald faced propaganda like the new Plame-Wilson movie Fair Game.  On the other hand, this paragraph from John Nolte’s Review of the movie makes it clear that this film is risible in its falsehoods:

Liman introduces Plame as a Jack Ryanette, a CIA field agent undercover in the big bad Middle East muscling bad guys, recruiting spies, and at the center of much of the activity involving the pre-Iraq War intelligence gathering  with respect to Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs.

This makes it all the more dramatic when she is outted:

According to the film, what follows is that the White house — specifically Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby (who has the only memorable scene in the film) and Karl Rove — set out to destroy Wilson’s credibility by leaking to columnist Robert Novak that his CIA Operative wife got him the Niger gig, which effectively blows Plame’s cover to everyone from her closest friends to the many field operatives she handles throughout the world. The human toll is both on her marriage and in putting those she’s worked with in Iraq in mortal danger.

Only there are two problems.  First the actual leaker was Richard Armitage, and to my knowledge no one has ever even accused Armitage of doing this for some sort of revenge.  But on top of that, their depiction of her being a sort of a female James Bond is false:

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley[.]

This was significant, because it raised doubts about whether the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was even violated in the first place.  As James Taranto pointed out (and it was later verified by USA Today) the statute required that the outted agent had to have been assigned to serve overseas in the last five years—and Wilson’s book failed to even allege that:

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Posted by WLS:

Frankly, I didn’t even know it was scheduled for release until I saw the tease for the 60 Minutes interview. 

But, the attention it has gotten this week has been …. well, I’m still waiting.

They got Katie Couric on Sunday, and I saw she was on Hardball last night — wow, that was hard to predict. 

I’m reluctant to give her any un-warranted exposure, but my beef with msnbc Hardball last night — I didn’t watch it, I just read the transcript today — is Christy’s continuing trouble with the English alphabet.  He’s continuing to get his “s” and “b” mixed up.  I know they don’t look alike or sound alike, but he seems to substitute one for the other continually.   Here’ s the problem — one on which he has been corrected on time and again without any apparent impact.

In the State of the Union Speech in Jan. 2003, the President said:

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently Sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

 Now, Christy goes on a blistering examination of Plame which includes the following questions:

“MATTHEWS:  There were two points made in the build-up to war about the nuclear weapons, the aluminum tubes and the trip to Niger, buying the yellowcake from Niger, the uranium material.  Did you know at the time that the president was making the claims about that in his State of the Union that those claims weren‘t true?

“MATTHEWS:  You heard from the vice president‘s office that the vice president wanted to know if there was, in fact, a deal by Saddam Hussein to buy uranium yellowcake from the government of Niger….  You know that that was checked out by your [husband].  Ultimately, he went to Niger, and he reported back there was no evidence of that deal, right? 

MATTHEWS:  And then you heard the vice president and the president attest that we faced a threat from nuclear weaponry in the hands of Saddam Hussein, based upon this African deal.  What did you think then?

MATTHEWS:  When your husband filed the story with “The New York Times” attesting the fact that he‘d gone on that trip to Niger and he‘d come back with nothing, that there wasn‘t evidence of a deal, he must have known, didn‘t he, he was going to light a match that would lead all the way to you, the fuse was just lit, they were coming to you?  Did you think that he wasn‘t going to—that match wasn‘t going to be lit?

I think Christy needs “Hooked On Phonics” as a Christmas gift this year, so he can practice distinguishing between “Sought” and “Bought”. 

Jonah Goldberg is pretty funny sometimes, and today is no exception. Even though I have no reason to question Libby’s conviction, I can tell that lyin’ Joe Wilson’s lies dwarf Libby’s — they just weren’t told under oath. Goldberg puts this well in a piece called The Joe and Valerie show:

SURE, SURE, “Scooter” Libby might go to jail. His career is in tatters, his life a shambles. Even Denis Collins, the omnipresent juror-journalist, says he and his peers feel sympathy for Libby, the “fall guy” in this whole spectacle. But really, who is the real victim?

Joe and Valerie, of course.

Why is that? Goldberg tells us:

“The golden couple targeted by White House machine,” as described by one British paper this week, have had to put up with so much. There’s no need to dwell on the early hardships faced by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV: that arduous junket to Niger helped along by his wife, Valerie Plame; the endless cups of sweet mint tea he had to drink; the awkwardness that his findings, as privately briefed to the CIA, supported President Bush’s famous “16 words” although he said the exact opposite on the New York Times Op-Ed page and in 12 trillion television studios.

Indeed, though (if you will permit me a brief digression) you will never learn that fact by reading the news section of the L.A. Times, the very paper where Goldberg’s op-ed appears. Readers who get all their news from that paper must be furrowing their brows, wondering what the hell Goldberg is talking about. After all, in a recent analysis, the folks at the L.A. Times tell us:

The statement drew the attention of Wilson, who had been sent by the CIA to Africa in February 2002 to assess the claim about Iraq; he had found it baseless.

and today:

The year before, at the CIA’s request [who in the CIA would that be? — Ed.], Wilson, a retired ambassador who had served in several African nations during a lengthy Foreign Service career, had looked into allegations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, and found them groundless.

Sure, he had brought back evidence that it was true — but never mind that!

OK, my digression is over. Let’s get back to Goldberg’s piece:

A man of less mettle might grow frustrated with the effrontery of the Washington Post’s editorial page calling him a liar, a blowhard and the real destroyer of his wife’s career. Simply because it’s true hardly justifies stepping on his story line. Don’t they know he’s the author of a book, “The Politics of Truth,” and a winner of awards for his self-proclaimed courage for “speaking truth to power”? Why should a bipartisan Senate intelligence report cataloging his dishonesty and distortions stand against a man with such important hair?

The Great Dissenter’s burden doesn’t end there. Joe wanted to appear on equal footing, as befits his stature, with Katie Couric on the “Today” show. Instead he was stuck in D.C., and his “one chance to sit face to face with America’s sweetheart” was dashed. And it must have been those cheap partisans who forced the ambassador to sell himself to the John Kerry campaign, to call for the frog-marching of Karl Rove, to call Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol a “drunk.” Joe’s a statesman, darn it!

It goes on like that. Read it all.

This post sets forth the exchange of e-mails between me and the L.A. Times “Readers’ Representative” regarding the paper’s misstatement of Bush’s famous “sixteen words” from his 2003 State of the Union speech.

The background is here. In short, the paper recently claimed:

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger . . .

When it is indisputable, as a factual matter, that he did not say that.

Here is the exchange of e-mails. Enjoy.

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Tim Rutten:

Wilson had been sent by the CIA to the African country of Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellow cake uranium mined there as part of his alleged nuclear weapon program. Wilson reported that nothing of the sort had occurred and went public with that fact when Bush and other members of the administration falsely alleged otherwise in making the case for war against Iraq.

Really?

That’s not what the Senate Intelligence Committee Report says:

[Wilson’s] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.”

In other words, contrary to Rutten’s claim, Wilson’s report contained evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger. As Captain Ed notes, Niger’s four exports are uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, and onions. The former Nigerien Prime Minister didn’t think Saddam’s delegation was after livestock, cowpeas, or onions.

So yes, Rutten has this absolutely wrong. But it’s not the first time.

The L.A. Times runs a story about the Scooter Libby indictment titled Libby Allegedly Told a Whopper. It contains this curious sentence:

On July 6, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that cast doubt on President Bush’s statement that Iraq may have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger.

(My emphasis.)

I am unaware of any such statement by President Bush. Perhaps you readers can enlighten me? I know the article is not referring to the phrase commonly known as the “sixteen words,” from Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

See? That can’t be it. Saying Hussein “sought” uranium is not the same as saying he purchased it, or even that he “may have purchased” it. This fact has even been noted by factcheck.org, an outfit that The Times has seen fit to cite on occasion — when it suits the editors’ purposes. (Also, there are other African countries besides Niger that sell uranium — such as the Congo, for example.)

So, The Times cannot have been referring to the 2003 State of the Union.

Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?

I have a quibble with one aspect of Stephen Spruiell’s argument, discussed in my last post. It’s rather arcane, so I’ll tuck it in the extended entry.

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