If at first you don't succeed...lie, lie again

Great article by Michael Barone on the failure (despite desperate attempts) of the liberal left to 'tank' the Bush presidency, entitled "Bush Bashing Fizzles".

Now the unsupported charges that "Bush lied" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key witness for the Democrats and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Unfortunately for his advocates, he turned out to be a liar. A year after his famous article appeared in The New York Times in July 2003 accusing Bush of "twisting" intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan report, concluded that Wilson lied when he said his wife had nothing to do with his dispatch to Niger, and Chairman Pat Roberts said that his report bolstered rather than refuted the case that Saddam Hussein's Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. So despite the continuing credulousness of much of the press, it appears inconceivable at this point that Karl Rove will be charged with violating the law prohibiting disclosure of the names of undercover agents. The case against Rove -- ballyhooed by recent Time and Newsweek cover stories that paid little heed to the discrediting of Wilson -- seems likely to end not with a bang but a whimper.

Apparently, Greg Stamford from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel hasn't gotten the word. Here he demonstrates why he is my leading contender for "Moonbat of the Month".

So ask yourself: If you were serious about fighting weapons of mass destruction, would you blow the cover of an agent gathering intelligence about them? Would you put at risk her network of spies and informants? Well, some official in the White House seems to have done precisely that. And a leading suspect is Rove. Also implicated is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Their apparent motive? To discredit Wilson, who had sought to set the record straight about a claim Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Trying to scare the bejabbers out of us, Bush said that Iraq had "an advanced nuclear weapons development program" and that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein had recently sought to purchase uranium, the key ingredient, in Africa. But at the request of the CIA, Wilson had investigated the African connection and found it to be bogus. It rested on a forged document. After futilely going through channels to correct Bush's statement, he went public.

So...where do I start? Powerline had a great analysis of what is going on in the press regarding the Wilson 'affair'. I quote:

The quality of the reporting on the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame story has been appalling. It raises in stark form the question whether "mainstream" reporters get facts wrong because they are ill-informed, or because they are counting on their readers being ill-informed.

That, or they think that if they repeat the lies enough times in bold print, people will start believing them.

Valerie Plame was actually 'outed' in the mid-1990s by a spy in Moscow. And then the CIA accidentally blew her cover when certain classified documents were compromised by the Cuban government. How do we know this? Through the media's friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, trying to defend Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper. Read the brief here.

Read the excellent article by Andrew McCarthy on this topic here.

Read this entire post on the subject from Powerline.

And for more, check out GOP.com's "Joe Wilson's Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements". (Lies?)

Stamford concludes his piece with the following:

The dangerous theory emerging in my mind does explain a puzzle: why Bush embarked on a vaguely defined and, thus, unwinnable war on terrorism in the first place.

The seemingly more sensible course would have been to declare war on the group that warred on us - namely, al-Qaida - and those who abet that group. A virtue of the narrower focus is that it puts victory, though tough to reach, in view. After experiencing the modern equivalent of Pearl Harbor, America needed to lift its spirits with the equivalent of a V-J Day - al-Qaida's destruction.

The defeat of terrorism ought to be a goal of national policy. But in the wake of 9-11, America needed a real war against the real culprit, not a metaphorical war, as in the never-ending war on drugs.

But for Bush, winning may not be the point - at least not that kind of winning. Making political gains may be the point.

Huh? The only dangerous thing about Stamford's mind is that he is allowed to air its contents in the pages of a sizeable Midwest newspaper. Give us a break.