Hey Democrats--Do You Really Want an Investigation...

into the pre-Iraq war intelligence?

Bring. It. On. Suckers.

Here's a taste:

Meanwhile, from as early as at least January 6 2003–prior to President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address where the President made the African reference which Wilson criticizes–the Democratic National Committee was already circulating a memo planning a public relations strategy which would include “[c]laiming the Bush administration has ‘manufactured’ evidence against Saddam Hussein and used that would be used to encourage Britain and other allies to join the American fight against Iraq.”34

And...

OK, if - and this is all speculation here folks - Wilson was assisting folks in Pakistan, Libya and the AQ Kahn network in acquiring uranium, and the French were getting close to finding the deal out - some forged documents in 1999 pointing to Saddam would throw them off the trail real nicely. And again, in 2002, when the forgeries were out and there was the build up to war, maybe Wilson went to Niger to establish another cover (shipments to Iraq) or do something else. It would explain why Wilson never gets agitated about the build up to the war until after December of 2002, when the uninvestigated lead shifts attention away from uranium shipments out of Niger and onto something heading to Iraq. The financial Times article gives the impression there were legitimate monitor and control concerns in 1999. That means there could have been something going on for real.

And...

As I posted before, there is no doubt that Wilson went in 1999 (under the guise of investigating a 1998 deal), to broker what I believe were ongoing sales of Uranium from Niger to other rogue nations including Iraq. Of course detractors note that since France controlled the mines, this would be impossible, but the findings of the Oil for Food Scandal are shedding a differing light on COGEMA.

And...

Wilson’s business and political background raise questions about the motive behind his wife’s recruitment of him to assist the CIA’s Niger investigation, and about his subsequent politicization of the investigation to undermine the Bush administration’s Iraq policy. While the media has focused attention on the question of who leaked the fact that his wife worked for the CIA, Wilson has attempted to evade the natural question of what role his wife’s CIA connection played in the CIA’s decision to send him to investigate the Niger uranium report. In his book, published in April 2004, Wilson wrote, “Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger’s uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip. The suggestion that Valerie might have improperly influenced the decision to send me to Niger was easy to disprove."35 But contrary to Wilson’s confident-sounding denial, in July 2004 a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report found that, as The Washington Post reported, “Wilson. . .was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has stated publicly. . .[A] CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame ‘offered up’ Wilson’s name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband ‘has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.’"36 So it turns out that Wilson lied to conceal his wife’s role in procuring his CIA assignment. This raises the question: why?

I think that an investigation would be great!