perfidy

Hey, how about figuring out WHEN Wilson said that. I bet is Mrs. B was a covert operative and somebody outed HER, you'd be damn pissed off about it. You might even say a few mean, insulting things about them.

Why is Wilson a part of your thinking at all? How does that have ANY relevance?

What do Wilson's politics have to with the price of beer in Munich?

Wilson went public with what was nominally a covert mission to Nigeria. This resulted in Novak's article back in July and the (possible) leak of his wife's status. His motivations are certainly relevant - though how the knowledge that his wife works for the CIA would discredit him is beyond me - if anything, it would increase his credibility.

Also, if Mrs. B was a covert operative, and somebody revealed that, I would be pissed. But (even assuming that Clinton or the like were in office) would I respond that way? Probably not. It would be more on the lines of, "These cocksmokers have endangered my wife, and I will not rest until they are hanging from the neck until dead, dead, dead."

I would not be talking about tin foil hat conspiracy theories about how the commies have subverted the administration, and are threatening to pollute the purity of essence of our precious bodily fluids, and that as a result, it is my god-granted destiny to be the bright shining spear of God's wrath, the instrument to bring down the heathen democratic administration.

Wilson admitted on PBS that he hadn't even thought about the possibility of there being any risk to his wife. This is all about his personal vendetta (sorry, mission) against the Bush administration.

btw, get together for beer tonight or tom?

I think Wilson got pissed when his findings (no Niger connection) were utterly misreported in the State of the Union address. You can track the rest of his quotes. The one you highlighted allegedly appeared last week, according to the Washington Times columnist, and I can't find a google hit for it... in any event, it was well after somebody called up a bunch of journalists to sabotage his wife's work on weapons of mass destruction.

I mean, just read the rest of the article after the unsourced quotation, for cripes sake! Pretty bad apologeia, Buckethead, but I've seen worse (Bill Hobbs).

Well, if he was pissed that his findings were misrepresented - or rather, that the administration chose to go with the British version of events, that's even worse.

Norbizness, which part of my thoughts on this are you criticizing, exactly? The kind of mindset indicated by the quote I mentioned does not happen all at once, which is what I was trying to point out in my comment above. Maybe I went over the top, but it sounds like he's had that sort of opinion for a long time.

I think there should be an investigation into possible leaks. What I have been trying to say, over the last couple days, is that there is as yet no compelling evidence in favor of the scandal to be, and some reason to doubt the people who are pushing it.

But my beloved coblogger, and some (okay, all) of the other commenters disagree - but they have seemed to my eyes altogether to eager, and in some cases rather gleeful about the prospect of an honest-to-god-presidential-scandal.

First, I read the Washington Times article, and then tried to find a source for that quote. I still don't know whether it's an amalgam of quotes, a direct quote, or a paraphrase. So I don't know whether your initial question "So why was this guy accepting a secret mission from the Bush administration to go to Nigeria in the first place?" makes any sense, especially in light of Wilson's extensive experience with Africa (and Niger in particular), as well as his yeoman's work for Bush I during the first Gulf War.

In addition, I've seen interviews of the guy from March 2003 (PBS), and he hardly seemed like any sort of firebrand. (http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_wilson.html). Like I said, it's not going to be tough to fine some sort of timeline on his (actually sourced) quotes.

Okay, fair enough. My thought was that if he was that opposed to the Bush II administration, why was he working for them?

Maybe he was just pissed. But the jury is still out on the rest of the deal. And there has been a pattern of crying wolf from the democratic side, trying to spin everything (or at least many things) into a Bush scandal, going back to Enron. All bad things must be Bush's fault.

I am not the biggest Bush fan. But it is obvious to me at least, that he is in no way Satan, Beelzebub or Lucifer, let alone Hitler. The gleefulness of many of those pushing the scandal meme is rather disturbing - just as the most ardent of the Clinton haters were rather unsettling.

We should not be praying for scandal, just to discredit Bush.

Buckethead,
not exactly [em]eager[/em], but [em]credulous[/em] is the word to describe me. And I would like to point out that at no point did I say "Bush diddit!" I was very careful to frame my comments in a smartass negative: "could they RILLY do THIS?... nooooo."

As unresolved as the story currently is in terms of whether it's actually a big deal, the defenses of the administration are equally flimsy. I gotta go with Norbizness here on this one. I still don't see how Wilson's interview constitutes a vendetta.

But, perhaps I should look closer. You're a smart guy, and not very frequently prone to imagining things.