The Left Coaster Blog Interview of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson

[Dudley_DUright]

PART 1 OF THE INTERVIEW

eriposte @ The Left Coaster (TLC), Question 1 (Q1): Prior to last week, were you aware that the information that led to your trip to Niger in early 2002 was based on contents from the same forged Niger documents that emerged in the hands of an Italian journalist in October 2002? Does this raise any new questions in your mind about what you have known regarding this whole issue?

Amb. Joseph Wilson: I deduced that the forged Niger documents were what the report that led to my trip to Niger was based on. At the time I was briefed on the case, the documents were apparently not in the hands of the US government. But the substance of the documents, when they were made public dovetailed with what I had been told. I never believed there were two sets of documents relating to Niger sales of uranium to Iraq.

Eriposte comments: After the Bush SOTU claim in 2003, some of the top spokespersons of the Bush administration admitted that the forged Niger documents were the basis of the SOTU claim (in some cases, even before Wilson's op-ed). His op-ed related to Niger and it precipitated the retraction of the SOTU claim, with a firm acknowledgement that the SOTU claim was based on Niger and the forged Niger documents (even though the Bushies changed this story later). That alone should have provided sufficient circumstantial evidence to deduce what Wilson did. Independent of that, even a cursory review of the most important allegations in the forged documents (which were widely reported in the Press) shows how similar they are to the allegations that formed the basis of Wilson's trip to Niger. So, even if one had not known to a 100% certainty that the forged documents were indeed the basis of Wilson's trip to Niger, it was/is not at all unreasonable for someone to have derived the conclusion that Wilson did.

TLC, Q2: There is a mass of evidence that proves without any doubt that the Bush 2003 State of the Union (SOTU) claim about Saddam Hussein's alleged attempt to seek uranium from Africa was based on Niger alone (especially the fake Niger documents) and not on intel from African countries other than Niger (e.g., the Congo or Somalia). Do you feel some vindication based on that?

Amb. Wilson: Vindication is not a term that comes immediately to mind when over 1800 Americans have been killed, over 10,000 wounded and thousands upon thousands of Iraqis killed, wounded or displaced because of a war entered into under false pretenses. My heart goes out to the families of all who have been directly impacted by this. I always knew that the “Africa” claim was based on Niger; after all the White House acknowledged the day after my article appeared that the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address. The White House has never said otherwise since. All the talk about Somalia, Congo or elsewhere was clearly part of the effort to protect the coverup of the lies that underpinned the justification in the first place.

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http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005126.php

[slipslidingaway]

1. Thanks and nominated earlier. nt