My message to Bob Somerby on Joe Wilson: Don't do Rove's dirty work.

BurtWorm

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Wed Jul-20-05 04:39 PM
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My message to Bob Somerby on Joe Wilson: Don't do Rove's dirty work.

Dear Bob:

I'm one of the rare long-time Daily Howler readers who really tried to see your point of view about Joe Wilson's credibility, even to the point of taking a Somerby-like position on the 16 Words with other lefties. Now I'm very sorry I did that, because I had my ass handed to me, and boy! did that hurt. But worse yet, I had my credibility injured. I don't know what it will take to heal that.

Before you think my taking a "Somerby-like" position is my problem and doesn't concern you, I want to say that your contrariness on Wilson is, I'm afraid, more of a black mark against you among your most loyal audience than you may be aware of. For some time, I have been annoyed hearing some lefties dismissing every column of yours I'd point them to just because you'd said some unflattering things about Joe Wilson and his fan club on the left and in the media. If they let one disagreement with you interfere with getting the good stuff they could learn from you, I thought, it was their loss.

But it isn't just over a disagreement that you've lost them. They don't trust your judgment anymore, and I can understand why.

It's funny, because I know how an expression of doubt about someone's integrity or credibility can infect the uninoculated with doubt as well. Your doubts about Wilson got to me. It's why I started to think the 16 Words in Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address had nothing to do with Joseph Wilson and everything to do with some mythical "British intelligence" separate from anything the CIA was working on. I started to think the word "Congo" has some magical significance to the 16 Words.

I was wrong, Bob. You may want to double check your facts on that score, too, if you haven't already. Reread those patently phony--Judy Milleresque, you might say--reports about Congo gangs in the Guardian and Times that you linked to (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh072803.shtml) again. There is really no good reason to think, as you suggested last week, that British Intelligence concerned Congo. There's less reason to think it did *not* concern Niger.

Today, while arguing on a public Internet forum that the 16 Words were irrelevant to Wilson and getting no answers to my questions about why anyone would get the mistaken impression that they were relevant to him, I was rereading material I'd read many times in the past two years, usually when I was more sympathetic to Wilson, and I suddenly realized that I'd made a serious mistake with an important date. Perhaps you were aware that the notorious Niger document that the Italian journalist gave to the US embassy, the one the Butler report said British officials were unaware of until early 2003, the one that the IAEA eventually dismissed as an amateurish forgery in March 2003, the one the Bush administration then shrugged its shoulders over saying, "We got fooled"...perhaps you knew that that document did not get into the hands of the US intelligence community until October 2002--eight months AFTER Wilson returned from Niger. I had made the mistake of thinking that it was THAT document that Wilson was sent to check out. But that would have been impossible, of course.

I've done more searching, looking for evidence of a previous primary source that someone at CIA or DIA could have held in their hands to document an alleged Iraq-Niger sale. Do you know of one? The SIR is very vague about what form the original document that sparked the internal debate about Niger took. They mention a cable from a foreign government (evidently Italy). Why did Wilson never see the document he was sent to Niger to check the veracity of? Is it possible he didn't see it because it didn't exist?

As you might say, we here don't have a clue. The media (as usual) have done a horrid job helping us keep the details of this complicated story straight. But there's a 50-50 chance that the "not very detailed report" Wilson refers to that started the Niger investigation rolling started its life, not as a document at all, but as something "not very detailed." Considering how manifestly bogus the October 2002 document was, does it seem to you that this might be a case in which a fact was fixed (after the fact, when the IAEA began asking to see the document right after Tony Blair's WMD assessment speech on Sept. 24, 2002) around the policy.

I recommend reading, or rereading as the case may be, Seymour Hersh's March 2003 story on the phony documents: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1 In light of everything that has happened since, it's an eye-opener. It's very likely Wilson read it, and if he did, he must have felt like a tool. I take him at his word that he felt that way when he heard the 16 Words, too; but if he didn't know about a British connection to the Niger forgeries in January 2003, and if he did read Hersh, then he absolutely did know about it in March.

I also take Wilson at his word--strange as it may admittedly be--that he can't consider his report on former Prime Minister's Mayaki's supposed contacts with Iraqis at the 1999 Organization of African Unity meeting in Algiers as proof positive that the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake. And furthermore, considering how unreliable British and American intelligence has been, I have come to the well-considered conclusion that neither government's word is worth a dime on anything having to do with Iraq and the so-called intelligence that got us there. Every statement either government makes in this area should be greeted with skepticism. This may seem extreme, but I've been burned giving them credit (particularly the reports on pre-war intelligence) and I'm not eager to get burned again.

In conclusion, Bob, I am asking you to please rethink the whole Joe Wilson thing. Consider that it might not be illogic you're responding to. Maybe it's just a style you don't like. I don't know. But I do know Wilson was right about the monkey business with pre-war intelligence and he was wronged because he was right, and it makes absolutely not one iota of difference how grating his personal style is to you or anyone else.

The bottom line is that someone in the administration wants people like you and me to have doubts about Wilson's credibility. It serves their purpose very well. Please be very careful not to serve their purpose for them.