Joe Wilson On Campus This Afternoon
From an e-mail sent to the University community:
The record is now quite clear, and has been detailed not only in conservative blogs, but in the Washington Post.
Wilson’s claim that White House officials “outed” his wife Valerie Plame to punish him for negative statements about the Bush Administration. In reality, Richard L. Armitage revealed her name.
The willingness of Clinton to use Wilson radically compromises her own credibility.
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson—The husband of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, Wilson is making a just-announced campaign visit to Milwaukee on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Wilson is a former diplomat, who accused the White House of intentionally leaking his wife’s covert role to the press after he contested the administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq. Last–minute scheduling allows Mr. Wilson to answer questions “On the Issues” with Mike Gousha at Marquette Law School this afternoon, Tuesday, at 4:00 p.m. in Eisenberg Hall, 3rd floor, Marquette Law School.We won’t be able to attend, because of office hours, but we hope that some well-informed people will be there so hold him accountable for some of the untruths he has told.
The record is now quite clear, and has been detailed not only in conservative blogs, but in the Washington Post.
Wilson’s claim that White House officials “outed” his wife Valerie Plame to punish him for negative statements about the Bush Administration. In reality, Richard L. Armitage revealed her name.
The willingness of Clinton to use Wilson radically compromises her own credibility.
Labels: Joe Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson, Marquette Law School
posted by John McAdams at 1:24 PM
5 Comments:
Who is even going to show up? Was this in the newsbriefs - I didn't get an extra email about it. (Maybe it was item 47 or 103 in the newsbriefs yesterday).
Can someone ask him to list the liberal publications who still consider him to be a reputable source on the War on Terror?
"The willingness of Clinton to use Wilson radically compromises her own credibility."
And the willingness of you to use the NRO and Powerline as "sources" radically compromises yours.
The Washington Post article was based entirely on "additional comments" added to the Senate Intelligence Committee report by three partisan, Republican members of the committee.
Wilson responded to that appendix on July 15, 2004 and his response casts serious doubt on the claims of those partisan members of the committee. Furthermore, there was never a response from the committee to Wilson's argument.
My guess is most of your readers would rather simply believe the conventional wisdom at right-wing outfits like Powerline or the NRO. But just in case there are any readers with open minds, the text of Wilson's response can easily be found on the web, as can alternative perspectives about who is actually doing the dissembling. (I tried to post a link but it different work with the comment's formatting.)
JS,
It turns out declassified CIA documents (May of 2007) reveal that Plame was in fact covert at the time of the Novak article (but hey, we liberals probably shouldn't believe what the CIA tells U.S. Attorneys about its own employees).
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/
And in fact, Plame's career at the CIA (working on WMD counter-proliferation issues) was destroyed as a result of the Novak article. There is simply no getting around that.
By the way, it is an article in the MSM (Washington Post) who McAdams cites as the primary support for his claim that Wilson is a liar. And you guys seem happy to accept that article as the final word about the Plame-Wilson affair. You should probably be a little more skeptical. It looks like the author of the WP article simply (and uncritically) reported as fact some material that three partisan Republicans added into the report at the last minute, to which Wilson has offered a cogent response.
Well, at least we can agree on one thing: you shouldn't believe everything the MSM says. (Judith Miller anyone?)
Joe,
You attack NRO and Powerline (since they are conservative) but don't bother to discuss the evidence they provide.
As for the Select Committee on Intelligence: don't you think the Washington Post has the capability of judging whether the material about Wilson was credible or not?
So you are knocking the mainstream media now? Their biases are well known. The Washington Post is not a Republican paper. If they are going to show a bias, it will be a liberal bias.
As for Judith Miller: she just reported what everybody, including virtually all the Democrats who even mentioned WMDs, believed.
You seemed to have relegated yourself to a fringe position where liberal outlets like the NYT and WP are Bush Administration lackeys.
"You attack NRO and Powerline (since they are conservative) but don't bother to discuss the evidence they provide."
But you don't discuss any evidence either. You just say Wilson is a liar and then cite these right-wing sources. Furthermore, you don't bother to discuss any evidence BUT that provided by these admittedly partisan, conservative websites. Have you read Wilson's response to the appended portion of the committee's report? Have you read any alternative views about who might be doing the dissembling in this case? Do you have anything to say about any of this? My guess is that you don't, and yet you are happy to call the man a liar. Real big of you.
The fact is, you're the one who called Wilson a liar, and so the burden of proof is on you to show that he actually is; and citing biased sources and failing to engage with cogent responses to those sources is not the way to make a very convincing case.
And by the way, I did go read the linked articles on Powerline and the NRO before commenting, and it is very clear that their evidence does not go beyond the material that was appended to the report by partisan Republicans and uncritically reported by Schmidt.
"As for the Select Committee on Intelligence: don't you think the Washington Post has the capability of judging whether the material about Wilson was credible or not?"
This is absolutely hilarious. You're defending the reporting of the WaPo? Look, I read that thing too and it was clear the author was uncritically reporting as fact what was appended at the last minute to the report by a few Republicans. Does she mention going to Wilson for a rebuttal or a response? Does she mention that this material was added by partisans at the last minute? No. In fact, she refers to it as a bipartisan report. This is simply a piece of shoddy journalism on her part. The fact is, reporters in the MSM often do a very sloppy job of reporting. And this looks like just such a case.
The bottom line is you can't cry out that the media has a liberal bias when something is reported with which you disagree, and then cite the same media outfits in support of your claims when you agree with what's reported. That's called being hypocritical. (I know, I know, it's only biased when it reflects poorly on conservative positions.)
"You seemed to have relegated yourself to a fringe position where liberal outlets like the NYT and WP are Bush Administration lackeys."
The fact is, the NYT (and especially Judith Miller) did to a certain extent act as White House lackeys. She reported what Rove and the Office of the VP were feeding her. Then to make matters worse, on at least one occasion, the day after reporting what had been leaked to her by the office of the VP, Cheney went on the Sunday morning talk shows and cited her reporting as evidence of his claims! Whether she knew it or not she was used; and the fact that she had no suspicions about that is pathetic.
Look, if you really think it is a fringe position to say that the MSM dropped the ball prior to Iraq--then consider me part of the fringe. If the MSM had actually done their jobs, we might not have pointlessly invaded a country that posed no threat to us. And you can't say that everyone agreed with what was being reported because Knight-Ridder reporters were in fact able to see that the claims being reported in the NYT and the WaPo were bogus--and they were right, it turns out. The reason they could figure it out is that they were not beholden to White House access and they were actually doing real investigative journalism, unlike Miller. Unfortunately, they were kept on the sidelines of the national debate in the run-up
I guess beating the drums probably sells more papers.
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