About what is the Right claiming Joe Wilson lied?

[Tamarin]

I just saw Ken Mehlman calling Joe Wilson's story bogus. What is bogus (according to them)?

[dogday]

1. He never says what is wrong with Wilson's story

if your are going to debunk something or say it is wrong, you need to say what is wrong. He is just pissing in the wind.....

[lovuian]

2. When in doubt attack and destroy the enemy's reputation

but Kennie

Joe Wilson has a helluva reputation and can chew you up and spit you out!!!

Plus who lied about WMD!!!

[oasis]

13. The Swift Boat Veterans will soon chime in with their defense of Rove.

[htuttle]

3. That's why this tactic won't work

Everyone now knows Joe Wilson was right about the yellowcake, and the Bush administration was wrong.

Didn't the Bush administration itself admit it shouldn't have included those 16 words in the State of the Union address?

[unschooler]

4. Oh. So now Ambassador Wilson is a political operative?

That's a laugh!

[wryter2000]

9. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[unschooler]

21. Thank you very much, wryter2000!

That's very kind of you.:hi:

[wryter2000]

41. You're welcome

Newyawker99 has us trained to say hi to newbies. :)

[Blue Gardener]

Because the truth is too damaging

They will never admit they got us into a war based on a pack of lies.

[Career Prole]

5. That. Does. Not. Matter. n/t

[WilliamPitt]

6. They say he lied about his trip to Niger

and about how he got the gig.

Neither claim is true. Mehlman wouldn't know the truth if it was pissing in his face after eating asparagus for a month.

[Lex]

10. But Rove was trying to sell Cooper a lie, right?

.
Wasn't Rove trying to sell Cooper on idea that Wilson was sent by his wife, the CIA WMD specialist?

That's a lie because she didn't authorize him, did she?

Do we know who did at this point?

[kanrok]

14. Asparagus piss!

Keerist, get that picture of Mehlman getting pissed upon out of my head!

[Tamarin]

33. LOL, So, Mehlman is not on your Christmas Card List? n/t

[LSK]

7. saw some freepers claim Cheney saying he never met Wilson

Of course Cheney claimed to have never met John Edwards also.

[librechik]

23. Cheney has a terrible memory for facts

all he can remember is what he made up.

[boston bean]

26. Who was it in the debates he said he never met....oh it was

John Edwards, then when shown the physical proof. Him standing there with Edwards at a couple of dinners, he finally remembers...Remember?

[Catrina]

8. Good question

but that's the Repub talking point to try to save Rove, as if one thing had anything to do with the other.

Wilson told the truth. Iraq bought no uranium from Niger. He was backed up by the forged documents, which the Bush administration accepted, but which the IAEA proved very quickly were forged. That's another crime that has never been solved, who forged the Niger documents?

I hope the media has done its homework so that the propagandists don't get away with this. This is a perfect opportunity to use their lies to tell the truth, now that the press seems to be getting back a teeny bit courage!

[oasis]

11. Karl Rove performed an act of treason. He outed a deep cover CIA agent.

Joe Wilson may be an axe-murderer but Karl Rove is still a traitor.

[skids]

16. bingo.

Don't let the subject be turned to Wilson. Keep Rove front and center.

[leftofthedial]

12. they don't know and it doesn't matter

they've just learned that yelling "Liar!" about their enemies works with Murka's idiot press and bigger idiot population.

[Richard Steele]

15. Unfortunately, it's not working so well with the press these days.

Reporters are starting to actually REPORT again, and that's not good for them at all!

[Disturbed]

19. Rethugs doing what they are best at.

Lying and attacking to deflect their criminal acts.

[caledesi]

17. You my friend are SO obvious. nt

[Tamarin]

24. I've been on this board for two years, I'm not one of "them"

I just had no idea what Mehlman was talking about when I watched the news tonight. I'm still not clear on all of it. He also said that Rove was trying to prevent Cooper from printing a story that was not true. What is that about?

[Azathoth]

18. I think the primary thing they've latched onto is the role of his wife

Wilson, as I recall, initially denied that his wife had anything at all to do with him going to Niger. Later on, he sort of changed his story and admitted that his wife had in fact recommended him to her bosses for the trip. The Right has seized on this and twisted it into the notion that (1) Plame was the one who single-handedly picked Wilson and ordered him to Niger and (2) Wilson lied about it and then engaged in a Watergate-style cover-up to hide it. It's the standard Freeper diversion tactic; it allows them to hysterically try to switch the focus from Rove to Wilson.

[Tamarin]

25. Thanks n/t

[caledesi]

39. My apol...nt

b

[dbonds]

20. Wilson's story still has a smoking gun in it.

Who forged those documents indicating Iraq was purchasing Yellow Cake from Niger? They probably want to squash anyone following that lead.

[TripleD]

22. A winger posted this on another board

- Wilson lied and told the press that Cheney sent him on a mission to Niger and he found nothing that supported the yellowcake uranium allegation made in the President's speech. Wilson's claim, as well as many others by him, were proven to be lies by the Senate intelligence committee.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html


The link is to "Steno Sue" Schmidt's article that the WP had to run this correction on:


_____Correction_____
In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.




If this winger is using the same talking points then they are basing their "Wilson lied" claim on Steno Sue's debunked WP story.

[Tamarin]

28. Thank you. n/t

[Hamlette]

27. raw story has the RW talking points, outlined there.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Exclusive_GOP_talking_points_on_Rove_seek_to_discre_0712.html

[Tamarin]

31. Thank you, that is very helpful. n/t

[librechik]

38. good grief, whoever wrote these has a thing about Capitalization

it looks like one of those weird Bible pamphlets--you know , "The Word of God is Coming to Get You in This the WORLD'S FINAL HOUR" type thing?

[yurbud]

29. sounds like a load of crap

their original spin was his wife pitched him for the job of checking out the Niger uranium story, and he was fishing for a job in the possible Kerry administration.

They don't have shit.

Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[seabeyond]

30. they say......wilson said cheney hired him

cheney says he didnt hire him

that is the only one thus far i know of

[demgurl]

32. I hate RW talking points.

Let us not focus on that as much as what we should focus on.

Did Wilson send him? They say she recommended him but she did not send him. Let us just say for a second that he sent himself. W@e will picture him as a true American patriot. He saw what the * regime was saying about the yellow cake and felt it was false. As a true American he decided to go over and he found out that the yellow cake documents were false.

Who the heck cares who sent him over? Although I do believe Cheney did. What I say is what we all know for a fact is Wilson said the yellow cakes claims were false and they were. France and Germany said they did not believe Saddam was a threat. They were right. The UN said they had found no WMD's and neither did the US after all this time. The UN was right.

You can explore the UN front a little farther. One reason we went in and attacked Iraq was that it was said Saddam was not complying with the UN demands and they did not have unfettered access. Meanwhile, we had to warn the UN to get out of Iraq so we could attack and no UN members could be hurt. The UN only needed a little more time to know positively no WMD's were in Iraq but we would not give it to them. We would not because we needed the WMD claim as an excuse for occupation.

What else do we know? Well let us not get off topic. We know that * was said to fix intelligence and them trying to discredit Wilson would seem to go right in line with fixing intelligence.

But what is the most important part of all this? They tried to discredit Wilson to get their war and they did not learn their lesson the first time and are trying to discredit him again. This is a patriot, a hero, if you will. His life has already been ruined once by the regime and now they are trying to do it again just to benefit themselves. We must call them on their attacks of someone trying to save the lives of all of the US soldiers and innocent Iraqis. This is not an acceptable way to do government.

Wilson never threatened our national safety. Rove, on the other hand,outed a CIA operative. But this did not just effect Valerie and her husband. This put in jeopardy anyone she had been associated with. In the much bigger picture, Valerie had been working undercover on WMD's. This may have put our whole country in an even weaker position to defend itself. What Valerie was doing was defending our country against terrorism on a very real level, not what Bushco was doing against terror. This made us much more vulnerable in the long run. What Rove did poses more danger for our country than any fake papers they had on Saddam.

Keep your eye on the ball folks. They smeared Wilson before for their benefit and they are trying to do it again. The truth is that no matter what Wilson did or said, what Rove did was place all of us in danger.

[Tamarin]

34. Thanks everyone, I appreciate the posts. n/t

[MidnightWind]

35. Tucker Askew tried to do the exact same thing on Hardball

he branded Wilson a liar. I imagine Faux is probably running crawls saying Wilson is a liar by now. :puke:

[librechik]

36. Here is the Mehlman/Blitzer transcript from today

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/12/wbr.01.html

here are pertinent clips:
BLITZER: The president went on to say, in response to other questions, that he would fire any such official. Do you think at that time the president knew that Karl Rove was talking about Valerie Plame with Matt Cooper of "TIME" magazine?

MEHLMAN: I don't know the answer to that question. But I think what the president's statement the other -- you just showed and what we learned this past weekend doesn't change anything at all. The fact is, Karl Rove did not leak classified information. He did not, according to what we learned this past weekend, reveal the name of anybody. He didn't even know the name, so he couldn't have revealed it.

BLITZER: But he did say that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

MEHLMAN: Well, what he did is he tried...

BLITZER: He didn't reveal her name specifically. But it wouldn't be difficult to find out her name, because Joe Wilson's biography is published all over the place.

MEHLMAN: He tried to discourage a reporter from writing a story that was false. He said it would be false. He said, "You shouldn't write it." And the reporter wrote it anyway, even though it turned out to be false. I think what Karl Rove was saying was right; what Joe Wilson was saying was wrong.



AND



BLITZER: Was it bad judgment on the part of Karl Rove to tell Matt Cooper that Joe Wilson, the former ambassador's wife, came up with this idea and worked at the CIA?

MEHLMAN: Let me say, Wolf, I think what -- according to what we've learned from this past weekend, I think what Karl Rove said turned out to be right. In fact, Joe Wilson's story was not accurate. It was based on a false premise, and he tried to discourage the writing of an inaccurate story based on that false premise.

Unlike Senator Biden, unlike Mrs. Clinton, unlike Chairman Dean, unlike Harry Reid, I'm not going to go out, and I'm not going to prejudge what is an investigation, which is being fully cooperated with by Karl Rove when I was at the White House, at the same time they work on the people's business.

I frankly think that it's unfortunate that all of these Democrat leaders aren't talking about saving Social Security, aren't talking about how we're going to have an energy plan. Instead, they're engaged in a partisan smear campaign.



Nope, he doesn/t say what Wilson "lied" about.

Also, the transcript leaves out Blitzer saying to Ken at one point, Well, Joe Wilson was right wasn't he? About the yellowcake?"

And Mehlman caught doing this thing Pukkkes do which is start talking about one thing, and then switch to another thing somewhere hazy in the middle, so that the original reasonable thing you said is taken to also apply to the second thing. Really Ken? Wilson was lying? Well he wasn't lying about the yellow cake, right? We know that. So yeah, Ken what was Joe lying about?

Well, nothing, but if you are a freeperyou hear "Clinton Lied about a blowjob" and hear"Clinton lied about National Security"

Ken changed the subject quickly, but none of this exchange is reflected in the transcript. Meanwhile, when they played a clip of the interview they ONLY played the bit with Mehlman angrily accusing Wilson of lying, and not of Blitzer correcting him.

[lovuian]

37. I think Cheney is after Wilson for fingering him for sending him to

Niger... thats why the assault on Wilson's character!!!

[Garbo 2004]

40. Wilson did not say that Cheney sent him. That's GOP/WH disinformation.

It's part of their talking points. The CIA asked him to go to Niger. (And no, his wife didn't send him either. The WH/GOP talking points vary between Plame being a low level CIA file clerk to someome with enough authority in the CIA to send Wilson to Africa. It's more disinfo.)

What Wilson said from his Times op ed piece:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government....

...The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm