Mr. Wilson's Take

This is beautifully done. In an article on a newly declassified document on a State Department analysis arguing Niger would not have dealt on uranium, the Times reporter first delicately sidesteps the question of what Joe Wilson's position was entirely. Look at how artfully this paragraph is constructed:

In early 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency sent the former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger to investigate possible attempts to sell uranium to Iraq. The next year, after Mr. Wilson became a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi intelligence, the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer who suggested him for the Niger trip, was made public. The investigation into the leak led to criminal charges in October against Mr. Libby, who is accused of misleading investigators and a grand jury.

A careless reader could assume that Wilson agreed with the State assessment, but in fact the reporter never simply never brings the inconvenient issue up.

Then we get this at the very end of the article:

Mr. Wilson said in an interview that he did not remember ever seeing the memo but that its analysis should raise further questions about why the White House remained convinced for so long that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

"All the people understood that there was documentary evidence" suggesting that the intelligence about the sale was faulty, he said.

Comments

[Exguru]

Sending Wilson was his wife's idea.

There is no question Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa, not only in Niger but also in another country, and this NY Times article reads like that was not so... On any subject like this, which reflects on the job President Bush is doing, the NY Times is completely untrustworthy, to put it mildly. More accurately, they are full of lies and half-truths and unconscionable omissions.