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[SlaveNoMore]

Sidd Finch
How fascinating -- he has a motive for slanting the report. Pity no one figured that out before giving him the assignment.... or maybe the motive just didn't exist then.

Wilson's report:

• 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. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.
  
  I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place

The CIA dismissed his tea conversations out of hand. And that was the end of it. Until the entire 16 word issue surfaced once the docs - that Wilson never saw - were claimed to be forgeries (still disputed by the Brits) and Wilson mugged for the cameras at every opportunity to decry Bush and state that he knew this all along.

maybe, just maybe, he was the one who was wrong about the supposed uranium buy.... but no, that didn't happen either.

According the FT, the Niger claims are looking pretty accurate.

And what about the findings he made, or claimed to have made, has been debunked?

"Debunked" was the word he used repeatedly for the Niger claims. That he debunked the claims and that Bush knowingly lied in the SOTU. This led to questions as to his motives and why he was sent overseas in the first place. And thus his wife's name was reported.

And what, finally, about Ty's point -- one that you agreed with -- that if this was above-board and principled, whoever did it would just say so? You agree with that, yet seem to ignore it.

I don't ignore it at all. Someone should just step forward at this point.

Finally, you seem to be calling Wilson a liar because he didn't identify his wife's position as the (supposed) reason he was given the job. Fascinating theory. Yet doing that, of course, would have meant exposing his wife as a CIA operative. So, either he does that, or the Admin does it to punish him for not doing it in the first place?

Um, he repeatedly denied it after the fact.

• For those who would assert that somehow she was involved in this, it just defies logic. At the time, she was the mother of two-year-old twins. Therefore, sort of sending her husband off on an eight-day trip leaves her with full responsbility for taking care of two screaming two-year-olds without help, and anybody who is parent would understand what that means. Anybody who is a mother would understand it even far better. Secondly, I mean, the notion somehow that this was some nepotism, that I was being sent on an eight-day, all-expense-paid--no salary, mind you--trip to the Sahara desert. This is not Nassau we were talking about. This is not the Bahamas. It wasn't Maui. This was the Sahara desert. And then, the only other thing I can think of is the assertion that she wanted me out of the way for eight days because she, you know, had a lover or something, which is, you don't take lovers when you have two year old kids at home. So there's no logic in it.

So, simple question: What was the principled reason for identifying his wife as a CIA operative? Do you think that was a decent, legal, moral, ethical thing to do?

Legal has yet to be determined. As for decent, moral or ethical - as if you or me would recognize that if we saw it.