Spin/Counterspin

Kevin Drum does a nice job of presenting the Joe Wilson spin:

JOE WAS RIGHT....For all the frothing and fulminating about the minutiae of Joe Wilson's op-eds, speeches, and books over the past year, it's worth remembering that his central claim continues to be supported by everyone who looks into it.

Really? And what was his central claim?

...Wilson's central claim was that there was virtually no evidence to back up the idea that Saddam had sought uranium from Niger. The CIA agreed with that assessment before the war, it agreed with it after the war, and it still agrees with it — and the Senate Intelligence report backs them up.

Oh, back up - that was his central claim? What about "Bush lied", what about "They manipulated the intelligence", what about "They knew"?

From his book, page 1:

In [my July 6 op-ed], I stated that the Bush Administration had been informed a year and a half earlier that their claims of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger were false. I knew what information the administration had about Niger because in early March 2002 I had briefed the CIA on the results of a trip I had made for them to that African country... My report - and two others from American officials - had apparently been disregarded.."

Or, let's look at the lede to his July 6 op-ed:

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Well, was his report "twisted" or "disregarded"? Actually, it was misrepresented in his NY Times op-ed, since he neglected to mention the Iraqi contacts that were interpreted as a sign of their interest in uranium purchases. The CIA found that part of his report quite interesting; perhaps NY Times readers would have as well.

The oft-cited Conclusion 13 from p. 73 of the Senate Report said this, as Kevin is surely tired of being told:

Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

So let's see - his report was not disregarded, the intelligence he provided was not manipulated, and Bush did not lie. Wilson offered his (inexpert and partially informed) opinion about Iraqi overtures in Africa, which went into the overall analysis, and changed no minds.

I need help with Kevin's conclusion:

Wilson may be guilty of overembellishing his case on several minor points...

Such as? I don't know where to finish with Wilson's overembellishments, but since the Nick Kristof columns triggered Wilson's rise to prominence, let's start there. Does any aspect of Wilson's story bother Kevin, in terms of Wilson's credibility, media accountability, or Kerry's judgement in keeping Wilson around (and held in high regard by some!).

...on the central question he brought up — should the president have made those claims about African uranium in his State of the Union address? — he was right. The CIA admits it, the White House admits it, and the Senate Intelligence committee admits it. Republicans ought to keep this in mind.

I would be curious to see where the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the President should not have uttered the 16 Words in the State of the Union. I do see this, from Conclusion 19 on p. 77:

Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.

Now, the CIA eventually found out they were wrong, but that is still a long way from "Bush lied".

That said, a confused White House, buffeted by frenzied media reporting that someone knew about the forgeries in the spring of 2002, and unable to prove the negative (Nope, no one knew. NO one!), backed down. I will keep that in mind.

MORE: Joe hammers the "They backed down on the 16 Words" theme in his conclusion to the LA Times editorial, and it is probably his best argument. Odd that the NY Times didn't run it...

Comments

[melior]

That's a wordy but ultimately weak attempt to turn focus away from the real issue. The onus to defend the 16 scary words in the SOTU is on the POTUS. Not the whistleblower you're trying so hard to smear.

It's really not for someone else, even if he was in a position to be the first to point it out publicly, to prove Bush's statements are baseless, when the White House has admitted they were.

Your kneejerk defense is threadbare, and endlessly twisting Wilson's words won't change what POTUS did: he fibbed to get his war approved. And got caught.

[IceCold]

Great and well-deserved rejection of Drum's bizarre non-sequitirs and counter-factual dogma. However ....

The WH "backing down" isn't an argument, and like everything else in the Wilson non-case, is not relevant to the matter at hand -- whether in fact there were Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium in Africa. The backing-down doesn't even touch on the substance of the intel report cited in the SOTU -- nor does it constitute evidence of any dishonety or manipulation.

That was an incompetent White House, not a confused one. Wilson's limited information as presented in his op-ed didn't provide any evidence of manipulation, didn't even pretend to bear directly on the subject (the British assessment), and since it was focused only on Niger immediately raised the question of whether it even dealt with the right country or countries (surprise, seems it didn't). This was all obvious to many on July 6, 2003, who were utterly astounded by the WH's response.

Mimimally competent staff work would have produced a well-crafted dismissal of Wilson's off-topic slanders by dinner time (his report added little and maybe even corroboration, forged documents not part of Brit effort, etc. -- all readily ascertainable info to a WH thinking clearly and using the phone). Instead, we got the circular firing squad -- and the current situation, where it looks almost as if the only intel-related part of the SOTU deemed "unfit" for such a speech is looking like the most accurate one!

Don't you fundamentally misstate the situation here when you say "Now, the CIA eventually found out they were wrong ...."?

Maybe I'm confused, but I thought both the British (3 times) and the SSCI in fact found the Brit assessment that is the subject of the whole brouhaha (referenced in the SOTU) to be reasonable and well-founded. In the realm of public information, I thought the accuracy of assessments re Iraqi uranium acquisition efforts remained indeterminate, while they had been found reasonable by the several official reviews. Am I misreading this part of your post?

[HH]

Pointing out lies about weapons of mass destruction used to be something the left was very big on doing... Now it's a "smear."

[TM]

That's a wordy but ultimately weak attempt to turn focus away from the real issue.

I happen to think that the real issue is whether the Yankees have enough pitching to win the World Series.

But on the subject of Joe Wilson, I think the questions about his credibility, media accountability, and Kerry's judgement in keeping him around are at least as "real" as your belief that this is all about the (eminently defensible) 16 Words.

Especially since the 16 Words were true, well founded, and hardly the only basis for going to war.

[Eric Anondson]

Seems that the only times the anti-Bush partisans rave about the CIA is when the CIA's analysis concludes the US should do nothing to defend itself. Do folks forget so quick that this is the same agency that fell on its ass Sept. 11th, 2001? Besides the Patriot Act, what changed about the CIA since 9/11 and the "16 words"?

This deconstruction of what "evidence" actually means, and the raising of the bar by tin-foil helmet critics of Bush for what acting upon the "evidence" should be allowed is very distracting about what the state of the world was like between 9/11 and the "16 words".

Forgotten was how the US and UK were enforcing No-Fly zones that Ba'athists were in constant violation of. Forgotten is what happened that caused those No-Fly zones to get created; they were aspects of the armistice from the the 1991 Iraq invasion of Kuwait. Forgotten is that that war was never over, and that Saddam declared he would overcome his temporary defeat. Forgotten is that while the Kurds in the north were functionally independent, they were not free, nor sovereign, nor could protect their territory, and that the UN recognized only Saddam's territorial sovereignty upon the land; thus why Saddam let Ansar al-Islam (the al-Qaeda splinter) to exist within Iraq's borders, Ansar fought the rebelling Kurds to the north. Forgotten is that after a decade, weapons inspectors and ALL the world's intelligence agencies believed that Saddam was acting upon his publicly stated intent to rebuild (not shut down) his WMD industry. Forgotten are the thousands of dollars Saddam paid to each suicide-bomber's family to reward killing of Jews. Forgotten are the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that Saddam allowed to die of starvation while he violated the terms that ended hostilities from his 1991 invasion of Kuwait and diverted Oil-for-Food resources to rebuilding his military so as to tyrannize his country and sabre-rattle against his neighbors.

It is amongst this environment that the "16 words" have meaning. And amongst all this "evidence", they were only "16 words" more added to the encyclopedia-worth of evidence against Saddam that he was a serious potential threat in the US' post-9/11 worldview. Saddam's threat wasn't in direct action against the US, his threat (in the post-9/11 worldview) was in how al-Qaeda could leverage Saddam's resources against the US.

[Forbes]

When someone such as Drum uses the word "overembellishing" (is there really such a word?), I think you can conclude that his argument is long over. Perhaps his writing career should be, too.

[J Mann]

To be more fair to Wilson than he deserves, Wilson didn't find evidence to suggest that Saddam had sought "significant" quantities of uranium in Africa.

He didn't disprove the statement either, of course. What he did find, according to him, was (1) some evidence that Saddam extended one or two tentative invitations to trade uranium in Niger and (2) some evidence that Saddam had not been successful in even opening negotiations.