Who to Believe? Who's More Trustworthy?

In regard to the whole WMD debate; whether or not Iraq had them, and whether or not Iraq sought to buy yellow cake from Niger, I'm left with a dilemma. Who to believe?

Consider Joseph Wilson's OpEd in the LA Times this morning... "Our 27 Months of Hell." Here are a few choice quotes. First, the preamble...

"After the two-year smear campaign orchestrated by senior officials in the Bush White House against my wife and me, it is tempting to feel vindicated by Friday's indictment of the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby... But on July 14, 2003, our lives were irrevocably changed. That was the day columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie as an operative, divulging a secret that had been known only to me, her parents and her brother... It was payback -- cheap political payback by the administration for an article I had written contradicting an assertion President Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address...."

[Emphasis Mine]

"Why did I write the article? Because I believe that citizens in a democracy are responsible for what government does and says in their name. I knew that the statement in Bush's speech --— that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium in Africa --— was not true. I knew it was false from my own investigative trip to Africa (at the request of the CIA) and from two other similar intelligence reports. And I knew that the White House knew it...

"Going public was what was required to make them come clean. The day after I shared my conclusions in a New York Times opinion piece, the White House finally acknowledged that the now-infamous 16 words "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address..."

"The attacks on Valerie and me were upsetting, disruptive and vicious. They amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months...

"But more important, they did it as part of a clear effort to cover up the lies and disinformation used to justify the invasion of Iraq. That is the ultimate crime."

Let's turn now to Former President Clinton who said the following...

Larry King Live, July 7, 2003.

KING: President [Clinton], maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear weaponry in Africa?

CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than either side.

First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said -- that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe they shouldn't have put it in.

Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions.

I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's what I think.

KING: What do you do, Mr. President, with what's put in front of you?

CLINTON: Well, here's what happens: every day the president gets a daily brief from the CIA. And then, if it's some important issue -- and believe me, you know, anything having to do with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons became much more important to everybody in the White House after September the 11 -- then they probably told the president, certainly Condoleezza Rice, that this is what the British intelligence thought. They maybe have a difference of opinion, but on balance, they decided they should leave that line in the speech.

I think the main thing I want to say to you is, people can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks...

DOLE: That's right.

CLINTON: ... of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in '98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn't know it because we never got to go back in there.

KING: Yes.

CLINTON: And what I think -- again, I would say the most important thing is we should focus on what's the best way to build Iraq as a democracy? How is the president going to do that and deal with continuing problems in Afghanistan and North Korea?

We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn't have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think.


How utterly refreshing. And how utterly strange that the media seems to have conveniently forgotten former President Clinton's appearance of Larry King Live. Regardless of what I feel about him personally, he was the President of the United States, and as such, is still in the loop-- ex-President's are kept in the loop; they get briefings all the time, and Clinton's take on the whole situation is far more relevant than Mr. Wilson's.

What Mr. Wilson felt he had to gain by falsifying his report, I can't say, though it is indisputable he first told one story-- that the charges surrounding Saddam and Niger were credible --then changed that story in an OpEd for the N.Y. Times. If the White House did indeed sic the attack dogs on Wilson and Wife, and did indeed knowingly out a CIA operative, heads should definitely roll... whoever it is. But Mr. Fitzgerald didn't bring a single indictment against that charge. It is still unclear whether or not Valerie Plame was even covert at the time. There are still questions as to when she was actually outed, and whether or not it was actually the Wilson's themselves who did the outing.

But as to who has the most relevant perspective on those "infamous 16 words" I'll take Clinton's over Wilson's any day of the week. President Clinton has far more credibility.