Demosophia

"Yellow-cake Joe" Mystery Solved (Sort Of)

There are still lots of mysteries associated with this so-called issue, including why there's an investigation without a crime in the first place, but the thing that has always stumped me was why the Bush Administration just didn't undermine "Yellow-cake Joe's" authenticity by pointing out that his report said just about the opposite of what he was claiming in his NYT Op-ed, and on CNN. Well, it turns out the Administration couldn't have taken that direct route to clarity by referring to what was in his report, because he didn't write one.

How he got away with conducting a well-endowed national security assignment, without a written "deliverable" requirement is another matter that deserves explanation, because I doubt that I'd be able to pull than one off and I don't know anyone else who could, either. If you're paid for researching a topic, you write a report documenting that research... period. But the implication of the following paragraph from Mark Levin is that the CIA apparently held Wilson to about the same standard they'd have held Agent Cody Banks:

When Wilson returned from Niger, he never got around to filing a written report. After all, why produce a written report that would be circulated to real professionals and policymakers, who would subject it to serious scrutiny. However, Wilson was debriefed by the CIA and his debriefers did take notes. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the debriefers’ didn’t share Wilson’s information with, among others, the White House because they concluded Wilson didn't come up with much.

So that resolves the dilemma. The White House had no idea what Wilson had found, because the CIA didn't consider it significant enough to warrant distribution. Basically they handled it with the same degree of importance they'd have reserved for a Boy Scout Merit Badge. But that didn't prevent Wilson (with the complicity of his wife, as Levin points out) from touting what he claimed he'd found (a claim not substantiated by the belated committee report) as the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant.

Calling Wilson a "liar" isn't the half of it. He's a boy pretending to be a man. Which explains why he fits in so well with what these mostly leftist authors from Unite Against Terror have appropriately tagged the "pseudo-Left." (Hat tip: Belmont Club) Turns out the great political divide, at least as related to the "War on Terror," isn't between Right and Left after all. It's between mature and immature.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Posted by Demosophist at July 19, 2005 04:07 PM | TrackBack