Hate to disappoint you Rhino, but Wilson lied....the Yellow Cake story was true...
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=108914&highlight=yellow+cake
Having the Left's Yellow Cake and Eating it, Too
Wilson Lied; Moonbats Cried: Iraq DID try to buy Niger's Uranium
Am I alone in my enjoyment of the utter and total discrediting of lying liberal weasel Joseph Wilson? I hope not. Wilson's stones are caught irretrievably in the waffle iron of history, and the withered, patchouli-poisoned jellies of countless liberals who saw him as Joey the Bush Slayer are right there beside them.
We all recall the story. President Bush, Nervous Nelly that he is, was somewhat concerned that the nice folks in Iraq might do something naughty, like detonating a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. He thought that was a big deal for some reason. There were rumors that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Niger. Wilson, a former ambassador, went to Niger to investigate and run up an expense tab, and when he came back, he supposedly told our intelligence people the uranium rumor was false.
Wilson also claimed he got the job on his own merits, with no pimping efforts on the part of his wife.
And we all recall his wife, Valerie Plame. The super-secret CIA spy who dates men a couple of times and then, perhaps on the pivotal night when she first puts her hand down the fronts of their pants, blurts out that she's a secret agent. That's pretty much how Wilson found out, by his own account. Obviously, he and the wife are highly savvy when it comes to handling classified information. The rule goes like this: never give sensitive intel to anyone until his tongue has been in your mouth.
Bob Novak printed Plame's name and said she was a CIA spy, supposedly after learning the information from a Bush administration official. Moonbat journalists put down their hash pipes and ran for their laptops, thinking this was the weapon that would finally get President Gore the payback he was looking for. Gore would be rescued from his teaching post at West Tennessee Barber College, and he would return, like Napoleon from Elba, to take his rightful throne and force us all to drive stupid little cars with electric motors.
Karl Rove was going to be "frog-marched" out of the White House in handcuffs, whatever "frog-marched" means. I think it means prancing frantically in the opposite direction from armed Germans, while soiling yourself and cursing in French.
And now we have learned--SURPRISE--the Iraqis probably DID try to score uranium in Niger. I'm sure Dan Rather will tell us they were going to use it to make jewelry. Or as a seasoning in traditional Iraqi dishes. To feed the children. The poor hungry children, whom George Bush drops bombs on to make more money for Halliburton. Or something like that.
Here's another funny thing: it looks like Wilson didn't do much of an investigation.
I want my props for calling that one. Look at something I wrote in September of last year:
The person who started the uranium flap was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired diplomat. He was sent to Africa in 2002 to look into the matter, and he returned and reported orally that it was highly unlikely that the attempted purchase had taken place. Then later that year, Wilson wrote an editorial essentially accusing the administration of lying because it put the uranium claim in the speech. Wilson himself pointed out that Bush's team had relied on a British intelligence white paper instead of his oral assertions, and Wilson admitted that he had never written a report.
Wilson's presumption appears to be that the government had some sort of obligation to trust him more than the British. He also appears to presume that if government officials are informed of a fact, the information should instantaneously permeate the mind of every official in the government. That's not how life works; mistakes are made, papers are lost, phone messages are missed, and people who have a lot of information to deal with aren't always sure which information should get priority.
If I had to guess, I'd say his pride was stung because he went on this big, James Bond-type mission, and Bush had the audacity to not notice. Well, that kind of thing happens. Personally, I would trust British intelligence much more than the oral report of a high-profile ambassador who went to another country, loudly proclaimed himself to be a U.S. agent, and then gathered such facts as the locals felt it was in their interest to give him. Which is what Wilson says he did. But that's just me.
Can I have a quick high-five on that? And is anyone surprised? Hello, Valerie Plame was a spy, conceivably trained in espionage. Wilson was a diplomat, trained in using sign language to tell foreign bartenders how to make a decent Martini. Put a Zegna suit on a car salesman--presto--you got a diplomat.
And it also turned out Wilson lied about how he got the important job of cadging free drinks in Niger while asking clever, productive questions like, "So, are you guys helping Saddam make a giant atom bomb or what?" It turns out Valerie Plame got him the job. That's not a rumor; that's fact. We have the memo in which she hawked Wilson to the folks at the CIA.
What's even funnier is that the report the CIA produced after Wilson's "mission" does not debunk the uranium rumor. According to Bob Novak, the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Wilson's "report" tended to bolster the rumor.
So, just to recap:
1. Iraq probably WAS trying to buy uranium from Niger, to make a big-ass bomb which it would surely have used as responsibly as it has used every other weapon it has been able to get its hands on.
2. Joey Wilson got his oxymoronic high profile spy mission after his wife recommended him, and he lied about it later.
3. Joey Wilson lied when he claimed he had "debunked" the uranium story; in fact, he strengthened it.
4. George Bush was telling the truth in his State of the Union address, when he mentioned the uranium thing as one of many reasons why we needed to go over to Iraq and put a boot heel in Saddam's mouth.
5. The total Bush Scandal Count has just dropped from 0.5 to "none." Oh, well. They still have the plastic turkey. Which wasn't plastic.
How did Wilson's lies survive so long without challenge from the press? Imagine what would have happened if he had lied FOR Bush and been caught. CBS News would have made his photo part of their logo. Fifth-rate liberal "artists" would be painting pictures of him eating babies.
Liberals still won't get it. They'll say our failure to find a few truckloads of prepared weapons in a country the size of California proves we had no business going to Iraq. Never mind Hussein's long history of openly supporting terrorism. Forget that he tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush. Forget that he made Iraq a haven for murderers like Abu Nidal. Try not to think about the fact that he ejected UN inspectors. Don't let it bother you that he had intelligence agents pose as scientists and researchers and lie to UNSCOM.
Clearly, we should have waited around until he melted Wall Street with an atom bomb, and then we should have gotten together with him and dialogued about his rage and tried to find out what we had done to cause him to blow us up.
Guess what, folks? There's a damn good chance we're going to see a nuclear blast in D.C. or Manhattan in the next five years. Bombs just aren't that hard to make any more, and they're small. But don't let that bother you. The important thing is to get your petty revenge for the 2000 election, and if that means you have to hamstring the only man on earth who can protect us, so be it. When the bombs go off, it won't matter, because you can make up some new lies and pin it on Halliburton. They won't be any dumber or more outrageous than the lies the left believes now.
Here are a few links for people who want to read more about the lies of Joey Wilson:
Bob Novak's latest Wilson column.
Christopher Hitchens: "Plame's Lame Game."
Tim Graham at The National Review, on the suction the liberal press applied to Joey Wilson's backside.
And just for fun, Ann Coulter.