Seattle’s The Stranger offers a look into a recent speech given by Joe Wilson at a Seattle event:
People told [Wilson] over and over: “Thank you so much.” They were thanking him for writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times in July of 2003, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”
It showed that the Bush administration’s pre-war claims about Iraq trying to purchase “yellowcake” uranium from Niger were bogus, or as he put it, “twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” By undercutting a central rationale for the war–that Iraq was on the verge of sending a nuclear “mushroom cloud” to America–Wilson’s Op-Ed began a cascade of events: Retaliation from the White House, the outing of his CIA-agent wife by columnist Bob Novak, the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the outing, the jailing of Times reporter Judith Miller as part of that investigation, and now, reports say, a raft of imminent indictments that could shatter the Bush administration.
Not only does the article provide some insight into Wilson’s role in carrying the mantle against Bush’s violations of power, but it also provides a good summary (above) of the bigger story to Plamegate: the White House lied about its reasons for going to war is now paying the price. Too bad over 102,000 Iraqis and Americans had to pay with their lives, but at least some justice may be coming for those most repsonsible.
Cross posted: Political Porn
