Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document--now known to be a crude forgery--that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.

What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the Vice President's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax.

Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the US security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the President did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the US ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the President's State of the Union address," Wilson said Sunday on "Meet the Press."

Although a British Parliament report released Monday exonerated the Blair government of deliberate distortion to justify invading Iraq, it urged the foreign secretary to come clean as to when British officials were first told that the Iraq-Niger allegation was based on forged documents. The report noted: "It is very odd indeed" that the British government has still not come up with any other evidence to support its contention about an Iraq-Niger connection.

Nor has the US Administration told its public why it ignored the disclaimers from its own intelligence sources. In order to believe that our President was not lying to us, we must believe that this information did not find its way through Cheney's office to the Oval Office.

In media interviews, Wilson said it was the Vice President's questioning that pushed the CIA to try to find a credible Iraqi nuclear threat after that agency had determined there wasn't one. "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," Wilson wrote in an Op-Ed article in Sunday's New York Times. "A legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

In a Washington Post interview, Wilson added, "It really comes down to the Administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, What else are they lying about?" Those are the carefully chosen words of a twenty-three-year career diplomat who, as the top US official in Baghdad in 1990, was praised by then-President George H.W. Bush for his role as the last American to confront Hussein face to face after the dictator invaded Kuwait. In a cable to Baghdad, the President told Wilson: "What you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspiring. Keep fighting the good fight."

As Wilson observed wryly, "I guess he didn't realize that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son's Administration." And that fight remains the good fight. This is not some minor dispute over a footnote to history but rather raises the possibility of one of the most egregious misrepresentations by a US Administration. What could be more cynical and impeachable than fabricating a threat of rogue nations or terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using that to sell a war?

"There is no greater threat that we face as a nation," Wilson told NBC, "than the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of nonstate actors or international terrorists. And if we've prosecuted a war for reasons other than that, using weapons of mass destruction as cover for that, then I think we've done a great disservice to the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat."

The world is outraged at this pattern of lies used to justify the Iraq invasion, but the US public still seems numb to the dangers of government by deceit.

Indeed, Nixon speechwriter William Safire this week in his column channeled the voice of his former boss to reassure Republicans that the public easily could be conned through the next election.

Perhaps, and far be it for me to lecture either Safire or a reincarnated Nixon as to the ease of deceiving the electorate, but as we learned from the Nixon disgrace, lies have a way of unraveling, and the truth will out, even if it's after the next election.



Copyright © 2003 The Nation

just a thought...

too many top officials get away with being crooks. The way our nation dealt with Nixon set a bad example. Our country essentially let Nixon off the hook. We told the crooks that worked with him that the punishment for dishonoring the people of the US was that you had to step down, that is all. Obviously, the punishment isn't stiff enough to keep our president and his team from selling us a rusted lemon of a car.

I say, the nation should make an example with the top officials who go before Congress. Those that our found guilty of lies, must be hung in front of the Capitol. To hell with resignations, and being black balled politically. Hang the bastards, and then put the dead out in tidal flats for three tides. After which put their corpses in cages and hang them at the entrance of Congress and the White House. So. that all who enter to do the business of our country can be reminded of the punishment for committing high crimes against our great country.

hang them, then twirl them for all to see. Just like the Brit Empire did three centuries ago when it caught pirates stealing from her majesty. after all, we are empire. you know it is true- they must hang for all those who have died on the battle fields of Iraq.

(this is just a proposal, maybe it is not very realistic. i can take criticism.)

treason calls for the gallows, right? the country should also have the right to seize all property, including money and stock options, from the guilty wo/man's family. it seems only fair. after all, if they are criminally minded enough to lie to an entire nation, most likely all the money and wealth they own was acquired the same way.

aren't you glad i'm not a judge? what? other criminal types suffer similar fates? No?!



emperor clothing options?

hang them if they prove to be guilty.

to hell with simply flip'n the bird at them as they go off to live in multimillion dollar compounds never again to be seen publicly.

hang them in front of the Capitol and let the corpses rot in cages high enough so that the stench travels a good distances beyond the normal crowds that will come to be photographed in front of the remains of crooks. And politicians wanting to make the population ecstatic will show to publicly spit on the corpses of those guilty of taking our fine country into a war where thousands have died, where 10's of billions of dollars have been spent. A war that has no end, and no justification for beginning.





just a hypothetical scenario.

a brain storm of ideas for what Congress might think of doing if privateers took over our country.

...that Nixon was not let off the hook by the American People it was Gerald Ford and the Rockefellers who pulled his strings.

Otherwise, traditionalist that I am I find some merit in your proposal.

In the case of someone responsible for having our Service People die for their benefit I do not think Drawing and Quartering would be too severe.

yes, I generalize. The people never forgave dick.

nevertheless, don't you think he'd be such a happy prick

if he was still alive

to watch his old buddies inside the white house today?



how proud he would be of his old team. I'm certain he'd blush

simply at first, but later maybe he'd go public in an ego charged

moment to steal, once again, a piece of the national conscious. Waving his fingers violently above his head, he'd proclaim that

they once were his men, and they served the president well.

Bush would be unsure what to do because he had never played football, but Dick had- and he was known to mix barbiturates with alcohol before shuffling off to the country's scrimmage line

now were talking. Raise the dick from his grave. God damn it,

it is show time. Bush, et al could use a little moral support.

where is that dead dick raising potion?

he-he, I saw a toe of newt around here somewhere....