Friday, July 15, 2005

RTE, read this

From the Washington Post's editorial today on the Rove/Wilson thing:
Mr. Wilson made his trip in 2002 to look into reports that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. A year later, he publicly surfaced and loudly proclaimed that the Bush administration should have known that its conclusion that Iraq had sought such supplies, included in the president's 2003 State of the Union address, was wrong. He said he had debunked that theory and that his report had circulated at the highest levels of government.

One year after that, reports by two official investigations -- Britain's Butler Commission and the Senate intelligence committee -- demonstrated that Mr. Wilson's portrayal of himself as a whistle-blower was unwarranted. It turned out his report to the CIA had not altered, and may even have strengthened, the agency's conclusion that Iraq had explored uranium purchases from Niger. Moreover, his account had not reached Vice President Cheney or any other senior official. According to the Butler Commission, led by an independent jurist, the assertion about African uranium included in Mr. Bush's State of the Union speech was "well-founded."
How does this compare to:
He went to Niger, in West Africa, in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq was buying weapons grade uranium. Later he published a report saying there was no evidence to support the claim.

He claims the leaking of his wife's identity was aimed at discrediting him and the report.
There is no good reason for RTE to present such a limited picture of what Wilson's report said or what the subsequent investigations found.