QandO

July 19, 2004

Bush Lied?
Posted by Dale Franks

Michael Barone writes that the Bush Lied crowd has lost all credibility.

The last few weeks haven't been very good for the "Bush Lied" crowd.

For instance, Joe Wilson's credibility has been demolished. Joe Wilson, who finally appeared on CNN this weekend--meaning that we can call off the search parties-- finally admitted that his wife was a "conduit" to him for the CIA to ask that he check things out in Africa. A month ago, he was saying she had nothing at all to do with it. Now, she's a "conduit".

But that's not what the Congressional report on our intelligence failures say. The report flatly contradicts Wilson's story on nearly every point. Even worse, the report of Lord Butler indicates that the president's "16 Words" about Iraq attempting to obtain yellowcake uranium from Africa were true, as well.

Bush may have been wrong, his intellignece may have been faulty, but as far as we can tell, he was telling us the truth as he perceived it at the time.

Not that it will stop the "Bush Lied" crowd. They are interested in the truth only insofar as it promotes their purpose: the removal of George W. Bush from the presidency. They're perfectly happy to promote a lie with equal zeal if it can be done effectively.

So, the "Bush Lied" meme will not die. These folks will keep pushing it with intensity, knowing it to be untrue.

UPDATE (JON): I was about to start a new entry for this, but I note that Dale has already done the set-up for me. Providing a perfect case-in-point to Dale's assertion that the "Bush lied" proponents are going to keep pushing their theories, Josh Marshall, in response to the WaPo ombudsmand claim that it was "a bipartisan report", writes...

But on the Wilson-Niger matter it's not unfair to identify this as a Republican document since the Democrats did not agree with the majority's conclusions on this matter. Indeed, as the Republicans themselves (specifically Sens. Roberts, Bond and Hatch) complained in their 'additional views' (p. 442) section, "Despite our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report ... there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador's wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger."

Except, not so much.

It's always worth noting what Marshall leaves out. Scan just a bit down the report, and you'll read....

The details of the Committee's findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions on which the Committee's Democrats could not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.
[...]
Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the intelligence community would have or should have handled the information he provided. [emphasis added]

Marshall leaves this out, which is unfortunate. And, it might be argued, somewhat fraudulent.

It has, however, become standard operating procedure for Marshall, as the Belgravia Dispatch has been documenting thoroughly.

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