Soccer Dad

That inaccurate op-ed

Joseph Wilson IV is getting quite a bit of attention these days. Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy criticizes the softball treatment he got on the Today Show. PostWatch asks a question that I wondered about. Does Howard Kurtz read his own newspaper?

In his online Media Notes column, Howard Kurtz repeats something he's said one or two times recently:

...So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story (actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong).

Actually, the Senate Intelligence Committee's 8-gazillion page report issued a year ago this month concluded that Wilson lied about the information he found, what the Bush Administration did with it and who sent him to Africa in the first place.

I have more to write, but have to run right now.
UPDATE: Though I haven't read the whole thing I find the following from last year's Senate report (pdf) to be interesting:

Throughout the time the Niger reports were being disseminated,the CIA Iraq nuclear analyst said he had discussed the issue with his INR colleague and was aware that INR disagreed with the CIA’s position. He said they discussed Niger’s uranium production rates and whether Niger could have been diverting any yellowcake. He said that he and his INR counterpart essentially “agreed to disagree” about whether Niger could supply uranium to Iraq.
The CIA analyst said he assessed at the time that the intelligence showed both that Iraq may have been trying to procure uranium in Africa and that it was possible Niger could supply it. He said his assessment was bolstered by several other intelligence reports on Iraqi interest in uranium from other countries in Africa.

Clearly there was a quite a few reports - albeit not conclusive - that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from at least one African country. Wilson's trip to Niger was only part of the effort involved in trying to ascertain the truth of those reports. Wilson acts as if he were the sole arbiter of the question.
A question he asked at the end of his infamous op-ed betrayed his self importance and has simeltaneously guided the news coverage:

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

Of course there are many inaccuracies and omissions in his op-ed. (He doesn't mention his wife's role in getting him the job to go to Niger; he mentions a memorandum that was not yet in American hands at the time he wrote his op-ed.) Despite these inaccuracies the MSM has been treating Wilson as the last honest man in Washington.
Of course since Wilson is curious as to why his findings weren't use to answer the vice president's question, that's in the Senate report. Though his report was judged "good" (the middle level):

Because CIA analysts did not believe that the report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers. For the same reason, CIA’s briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President’s previous questions about the issue.

His report wasn't deemed inaccurate; it was deemed not useful. In other words Katie Couric finds Joseph Wilson a lot more informative than the CIA did. No wonder he's showing up on the networks now. It makes him feel important.

Posted by SoccerDad at July 14, 2005 04:45 PM | TrackBack