Yet, what is remarkable about Cheney's interview " beyond his inability to recall key facts " is that all the anti-Wilson complaints that Cheney cited, no matter how minor or contradictory, became the cornerstones of a sustained assault on Wilson by the Bush administration, congressional Republicans, and right-wing and neoconservative pundits.
It was as if Cheney had written the script not only for his Republican defenders but for the Washington Post's neocon editorial pages, which waged its own war of words against Wilson after he blew the whistle on President George W. Bush's false claims about Iraq seeking uranium.
Even Cheney's weakest points were amplified and exaggerated as they moved through the Republican-neocon echo chamber. For instance, a small point of misunderstanding " Wilson's belief that Cheney had been made aware of the Niger trip since it was Cheney's concern that prompted the mission " was transformed into an accusation that Wilson was a liar.
Wilson was painted as a liar again after Cheney transformed Wilson's accurate comment " about taking on the CIA assignment with the understanding that Cheney was interested in the Niger issue " into a suggestion that Wilson was claiming that Cheney personally picked him for the mission.
Another point made by Cheney " and picked up as an anti-Wilson attack line " was Wilson's remark to CIA debriefers that Niger's prime minister initially suspected that an Iraqi feeler about improved commercial relations might have related to uranium, though it turned out the Iraqis expressed no such interest.
According to the FBI summary, Cheney said he underlined this portion of a March 8, 2002, CIA report on Wilson's debriefing because "he believed it raised a ˜red flag,' seeming to show that the former Niger Prime Minister [Ibrahim] Mayaki had been approached about commercial relations with Iraq which the former Prime Minister believed meant yellowcake uranium sales.
Even though it turned out that Mayaki's suspicion was baseless " and thus inconsequential " Cheney's "red flag was raised repeatedly by Republicans and neocons in their attacks on Wilson, including by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee which cited this irrelevant point to suggest that Wilson's report had actually supported the Bush/Cheney case for war.
More Quibbles
Cheney also quibbled with Wilson's comment in his New York Times op-ed that "it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Cheney countered that "such a transfer had already happened once before. Therefore, " it did not mean that it could not occur.
But there is no real difference between saying something is "exceedingly difficult and that it possibly could "occur. Both indicate that something is feasible, even if unlikely.
Despite the pettiness and contradictions of Cheney's anti-Wilson attack lines, they reverberated for several years. They were given credence not only in right-wing circles but in Establishment (pro-Iraq War) places like the Washington Post.
More smears of Wilson and Plame were added as the ugly process moved forward. For instance, Bush-Cheney backers began insisting that Plame did not qualify as a covert officer deserving of special protection because she hadn't "resided or been "stationed overseas in the five years before her CIA identity was exposed.
But the actual language of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was that a covert officer must have "served abroad in the previous five years, which Plame had in undertaking intelligence missions outside the United States (although she was based at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia). The Bush-Cheney backers, especially right-wing lawyer Victoria Toensing, had engaged in word substitutions.
Overall, the 28-page FBI report on the Cheney interview recalled the anything-goes hostility that the Bush administration and its media acolytes directed at anyone who dared criticize the Iraq War in its early days. Besides Wilson, others on the White House enemies list included former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter and even the Dixie Chicks whose lead singer had spoken out against the war.
If Washington circa 2002-2004 had been a normal place, Wilson would have been praised for his service to the United States. Not only did he take on a difficult government assignment pro bono, he reached the accurate conclusion that Iraq was not seeking uranium from Niger and so informed the CIA.
Then, after Bush included that false claim in his 2003 State of the Union Address, Wilson began briefing a few journalists on the deception. Ultimately, he went public despite his awareness that he would anger the White House and damage his career prospects.
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