In the LA Times today, Joe Wilson once again tries to turn his shopworn lies into truths by sheer force of will and repetition—and with the help of legacy media editors who are so committed to the tolerance of alternate ”truths” that they can’t bring themselves to demand opinion pieces be grounded in facts that are objectively provable. Here’s Wilson:
I knew that the statement in Bush’s speech  that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium in Africa  was not true. I knew it was false from my own investigative trip to Africa (at the request of the CIA) and from two other similar intelligence reports. And I knew that the White House knew it.
This is, of course, utter bullshit—but then, to Wilson, “truth” is whatever he can make people believe it to be, and he’s got millions of willing acolytes ready to insist along with him that his lies are true, and to defend and embrace him even after he’s been proven a self-aggrandizing liar time and time and time again.
Here’s Patterico, expressing the appropriate outrage:
Lyin’ Joe, it is highly ironic that a liar like you would accuse the White House of lying. You lied about whether you had debunked the “sixteen words†claim. You lied about whether the White House was told about your findings. You lied about whether your wife recommended you for the trip. And you lied to various journalists about having determined that the relevant documents were forged  seeing as how you had never seen these documents at the time you talked to those journalists.
Full details here and here and in the links cited therein; I’m getting tired of repeating myself.
Yup, me too.
But so long as Joe Wilson isn’t, we’re going to need to keep doing it anyway.
****
update: “MY FAMILY AND I JUST WISH TO BE LEFT ALONE! PRIVACY! PLEASE! I BESEECH YOU!”
(h/t Cole)
My biggest question is why Joe is not under any scrutiny, he has been worse than just about anyone in this.
I updated my post that explains why Plame was not covert, and also questions Joe, Val and her bosses at the CIA.
Fitzgerald: No crime to name Plame
Cordially,
Uncle J
The guy has almost as much integrity as Andrew Sullivan.
Is there a more diplorable human being on the American political scene today?
One question that needs to be asked—if Valerie Plame is really this super-secret, undercover, Jennifer Garner-like CIA Killer, what in the blue hell is she doing with Joe “The best part of me dribbled down mom’s thigh” Wilson?
TW: Road, as in “Does this freaking Plamegate road ever end?”
You’d think someone that has been refuted as a liar by the SSCI report would find it impossible to get the time of day, much less space in a newspaper.
But then thinking would be involved.
Did Joe Wilson really misspeak when he claimed that the “names and dates” on those documents were wrong —or did he forget that he wasn’t supposed to openly refer to classified information that his wife had slipped to him early on?
Sooner or later a liar will fall.
Patience.
It is annoying to watch though.
You know, I’ve got a “Joe Wilson” in my basement encased in a tub of Cheez-Wiz with an eight-inch concrete lid.
I’m hoping it’s the same guy.
Won’t that ruin the Cheez-Whiz?
Well, it depends on which Joe Wilson you use.
That’s why I need to know if I’ve got the right guy.
Good luck with that.
They just want privacy… right up until the subpoena’s for Libby’s trial are dropped in their laps…
My hope, against hope, is that Fitzgerald did not go after Joe Wilson because there is a separate investigation into the forged documents and Fitzgerald knows that Wilson’s “misspeak” was not a misspeak because he saw the forged documents and knew they were forged way back when and Joe is going down big time on his involvement with those documents.
Reality tells me, however, that Fitzgerald bought the poor Mr. and Mrs. Wilson the victims of this great tragedy, hook line and sinker, and was blinded to any misdeeds they may have committed.
Only time will tell. But if the Wilson’s and their cronies in CIA don’t go down, I will forever feel that Fitzgerald was an abject failure in seeing justice was done.
Four words …. The Los Angeles Times (the l.a. daily dog trainer). Now, comes prepackaged with it’s own doodie. Saves you and your dog the trouble.
Wilson: “increased hatred of us and made terrorist attacks against our interests more likely in the future”
Plame Privacy/Covert watch exhibit A:
Vanity Fair
Sometimes I feel the whole nation has been dragged into Joe Wilson’s “my wife is Jane Bond” sex fantasy.
I think he types his op/eds with one hand.
I like Harrison’s post and Lew Clark’s hope…
One thing I relish is that this outcome is virtually the WORST scenario for Wilson.
Had there been a crime of outing he would be vindicated…had there been no indictments this whole story would have died. As it happens, no indictments for the crime he alleges (so he is revealed yet again to be a big fat liar) BUT the story continues and we get constantly reminded what a big fat liar he is.
HE is the one on the defense, trying to convince everyone he was attacked and his privacy invaded, while the image of a Vanity Fair spread uncomfortably sits to the side.
Additionally I HOPE AND PRAY he goes through with his threats of a suit. Sadly, I think it just one more Wilson lie. Journalist privilege may protect sources in a criminal investigation, but will be devastating when Kristof and Pincus plead the 5th in a civil proceeding.–they probably didn’t realize the debriefing took place in the Wilson home with only the envoy and 2 De-briefer (who didn’t interrupt Wilson’s trip the way he did) and his wife acting as “hostess”—when they quoted the CIA official present at the debriefing
and then there is the problem of “the names were wrong, the dates were wrong”…I think this will be a case of be careful what you wish for
See, it was such a big secret that she waited until the 3rd or 4th date to give that up.
dampen my ardor
Even his words wear cologne.
It is official…Valerie should tie his hands to a chair and duct tape his mouth.
Vanity Fair 2004:
Plame herself thought instantly that the leak was illegal. Even members of her family did not know what she did.
LA Times Op-Ed:
But on July 14, 2003, our lives were irrevocably changed. That was the day columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie as an operative, divulging a secret that had been known only to me, her parents and her brother.
Also, notice the admission that she had told people classified information
Tenet had this crap referred to the DOJ as payback to the White House for trying to scapegoat him.
I think we’re square now.
I wonder if this is like the Christmas in Cambodia memories that are indelibly seared into John Kerry’s memory?
First we have to endure Joe Valerie Plame Wilson leaking his lies to the media followed by outrage that someone would dare to expose the details of his bullshit story. Now we have to suffer through Joe’s victimhood accompanied with pleas for privacy for him and his family, as if you can tell a whopper of a lie with the potential to disrupt US policy and expect no one to notice.
An epic narrative played out in the legacy media. As Jeff Jarvis so aptly put it:
The legacy media presses on to destroy what little credibility it has left.
TerryH–
It’s sad to say, but not anybody can get the factsâ€â€at least if the anybodies happen to be reporters for the mainstream media. How hard is it to download the PDF of the SSCI and hit WIlson, CTRL-F ?
When these bozos can’t even use the tools
Al Gore’sthe DOD’s blessed Internet has given to sixth-graders, how can they possibly be expected to analyze and synthesize discrete units of information to come up with a plausible storyline?Cheez Whiz for all of them. Any room left in that tub, Ian?
I, for one, can think of no better way to protect my wife’s secret identity than to write an NYT Op-Ed about the CIA sending me on a mission to Africa and calling the President a liar. Face it, the Wilsons are pulling off what Mary Mapes and Rather Dan botched.
I remember reading a CNN transcript someone had linked to dated back in July where Lyin’Joe Wilson said to Blitzer something along the lines that his wife was not covert when Novak blew her cover.
tw: “long” How long do we have to keep listening to him?
All conservatives have to sympathize with the appeal to “rule of law,” but I gotta wonder if dropping drawers and taking a spanking, as Andy McCarthy seems to suggest we do, is the exact wrong approach. The situation seems to instead demand a full-throated emphasis on Libby trying to save the country from a bunch of people who would rather see dead Americans than a successful Bush foreign policy. Look at where we are: an opposition party that calls our troops Nazis, a former president who offers a seat of honor to a guy who calls the enemy “freedom fighters,” a media that jumps to report fictional reports of Korans flushed down toilets, half of Americans wavering on a just war that it looks like we are winning to change the world, etc, etc, etc.
I say Jeff, Mark Levin, and everyone else calling “bullshit” needs not only to keep it up, but rev it up. Libby may indeed be a hero and Wilson may be pawn that decides the game.
Bush should wait until Libby goes to trial (just to prove there was no coverup – give the mad hatters their best shot) then pardon Libby. Then go on television and tell the American people why he did it, and announce that he was immediately yanking press credentials of all journalists who deliberately lie about facts.
I’d pay to see Schumer’s head explode…
How did Wilson know his wife worked at CIA if she was covert ? There is no exception allowingor a wife to reveal classified info to her husband. Unless Valerie outted herself to her husband. Also, if her simple employmnet at CIA was classified, again how did Wilson know it ?