Tuesday, June 29, 2004

It's Boris and Natasha Again

Just when we thought we had heard the last on Joe "Sweet Mint Tea" Wilson and "Secret Spouse" Victoria Plame, James Taranto has an update:
Oh, Those Weapons of Mass Destruction
Remember the Joe Wilson brouhaha? (It was the one that begot the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.) Wilson emerged as an opponent of Iraq's liberation after he claimed to have debunked reports that the erstwhile Baghdad regime sought to buy uranium from Niger. This seemed plausible, since some of the documents that bolstered the Iraq-Niger connection turned out to be forgeries.

Yet Wilson changed his own story in his recent book, as we noted in April, and now the Financial Times reports there's new evidence that Baghdad did seek uranium in Niamey:
European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.

These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.
But not so fast! Blogger Josh Marshall says the FT is wrong:
I hear something different.

In fact, I know something different. . . .

I cannot begin to describe how much I would like to say more than that. And at some later point in some later post I will do my best to explain the hows and whys of why I can't. But, for the moment, I can't.
If that doesn't convince you Saddam Hussein was innocent, we don't know what would.
Ole Josh is sure one heck of a spinner. I bet if the newshawks caught Lurch on video tape in the back of his deluxe campaign plane having carnal knowledge of a goat, Josh would be telling us about his fondness for animals.