cuckoofrommars

Remember the diplomat who's wife (Valerie Plame) was revealed by Bob Novak as a spy, probably revelaed by high-up in the Bush whitehouse? Remember he was the guy who tried to prove that the claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa was bogus because he'd been to Niger and drunk tea with a few people? Well, he was in Germany last week and came up with this whopper in the left-wing Spiegel Online about why the US media is so intimidated with fear that it never prints bad stories about GWBush...
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,303914,00.html

“Some of them (journalists) answered that they are afraid. One said he didn’t want to be sent to Guantanamo, which I saw as a metaphor, another said he had two kids in private school and a mortgage on the house. Even light criticism of this administration leads to calls from high government circles to the editors-in-chief.�

Sent to Gitmo!! What has the guy been drinking!?

Oh, and it turns out he may have been wrong on the uranium point too -
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...=1012571727085

"Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq."

Lion in Winter

Key phrase - "a metaphor". i.e. Not literal, as in not really go to Guantanamo.

cuckoofrommars

Granted it's a metaphor, but still, they are the words of a loon.

Lion in Winter

World's full of them. Still, it would be naive to suppose that pressures are not brought to bear by vested interests, including those that own the major media outlets, as to what is and is not investigated and published. Well, look at Disney and Moore

cuckoofrommars

True.

My problem tho is that it's common practice to read the European daily papers and magazines, or read reports of conferences and see accounts of America as some sort of totalitarian police state. So magazines like Spiegel jsut lap it up whenever anybody, even a media-junkie like Wilson, comes up with pap like that.

Lion in Winter

Well I'm a Guardian reader meself, which is pretty decent. But there is always the Telegraph, designed for the, um, Conservative reader (country's going to the dogs, dontcha know).

Here you go. All the news that's fit to print.

http://www.thebigproject.co.uk/news/

nxylas

I think "sent to Guantanamo" is a perfectly valid metaphor for the actions of a government which is notorious for its use of thuggery and intimidation in order to silence its critics.

cuckoofrommars

Thuggery? Did Ashcroft send the "browshirts" (TM Al Gore) to a reporters house to duff him and his family up?

I think the press have been pretty visceral at times. That's why you've gotta love America!

nxylas

He doesn't need to, when his zillionaire supporters own most of the media. But the title of this thread ought to remind you that this is a government that is prepared to out its own agents, placing their lives in danger, just because members of their families have the temerity to criticise the Fuhrer.

cuckoofrommars

Looks like Joe Wilson lied after all.

link

"
WASHINGTON - A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

A Friday report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offers new details supporting the claim.

French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien officials, the report said."

and "Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly."

And from the FT-
link

"Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq."


Is anything Wilson claimed true? Maybe he sipped too much tea.

elfman

And maybe you've been sipping too much Kool-Aid.

Where did you get the bit about Wilson being recommended by his wife? It's not in the article you linked to.

cuckoofrommars

That'd be here (register only) -
link


Nothing to do with kool-aid. The guy had an agenda, and lied. He was caught lying by the 9/11 commission, and by a few of the other intel committees. And what he didn't lie about was deemed inconsequential. In other words, anything Wilson has said is worth ignoring.

Alternatively you could try-:

Jeff Jacoby - link Boston Globe
John Podhoretz - link NY Post
Jac Kelly - link PA Post-Gazette

elfman

In simple terms, what was Wilson's agenda? Wasn't he a republican and a Bush 1 appointee?

And thinking people will never, ever take the NY Post seriously.

If the Bush gang had better evidence than the obviously forged stuff, why didn't they use it to counter Wilson's claims instead of blowing his wife's cover in an act of vindictive retaliation?