Scrapbook

...We're saddened—though not really surprised—by the amazing ability of Democrats to forget that last summer the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence thoroughly shredded Wilson's credibility...

...Which would be a plenty interesting development all by itself, of course...

...Whereupon a reporter pointed out that Wilson's credibility is seriously in doubt...

...But his account didn't bear up under close scrutiny...

...The essence of his tale was that he had self-lessly gone to Niger and personally debunked reports that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium there to reconstitute its nuclear program...

...The Intelligence Committee found otherwise when it questioned Wilson under oath: On at least two occasions [Wilson] admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims...

...Take New York senator Charles Schu-mer, for instance, who held a joint press conference with Wilson in the Capitol last Thursday...

...Niels-Aage Bjerre, the Danish pizzeria proprietor who first drew international attention in February 2003 for his refusal to serve French and German tourists—on account of how they're all "disloyal" and "anti-Ameri-can"—is headed for the slammer...

...Turns out what was actually there was al Qaeda...

...What the record shows is that almost every public pronouncement of Joe Wilson's from the spring of 2003 forward is either an exaggeration or a falsehood or both...

...As Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen...

...But buried five paragraphs down into the Treasury news release about MIRA and al-Faqih we find this still more interesting tidbit: In 2003, MIRA and Faqih received approximately $1 million in funding through Abdurahman Alamoudi...

...But he remains proud—and undeterred...

...Government, the September 2003 arrest of Alamoudi was a severe blow to al Qaeda, as Alamoudi had a close relationship with al Qaeda and had raised money for al Qaeda in the United States...

...He might have paid a $900 fine instead...

...Eight days is a small price to pay when American soldiers go to Iraq and risk their limbs and lives...

...MIRA is run by a certain Saad al-Faqih, who'd already earned his own, separate such designation last December, and whom Treasury now identifies as al Qaeda's principal representative in England since 2001...

...III...

...Moreover, it found that "no one believed" Wilson's trip "added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story...

...We're speaking, of course, about the spectacle of leading Democrats and sympathetic media types performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on former ambassador Joseph c. Wilson IV's moribund reputation...

...When Newsweek discovered emails suggesting senior Bush adviser Karl Rove had discussed Plame with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper, for example, Wilson hustled to the nearest available television camera—in this case one from NBC News—to say that, while he'd "never spoken to Karl Rove," the man was nonetheless guilty of a flagrant "abuse of power...

...And that same incident was apparently at issue last Tuesday when yet another Danish court sentenced Bjerre to yet another eight-day term in the lock-up...

...Meanwhile, a grand jury still sits in the inquiry into whether someone in the administration broke the law by leaking Plame's name...

...Wilson insisted both that he had debunked reports of Iraqi interest in Niger's uranium and that Vice President Cheney, whose interest in the subject reputedly prompted Wilson's trip, had to have been informed of this...

...Pat Roberts concluded in the "Additional Views" section of his report: "The former ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading...

...In fact, according to the bipartisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wilson's wife "offered up his name" at a staff meeting, then wrote a memo to her division's deputy chief saying her husband was the best man for the job...

...IV...

...I think that will brighten up the room...

...Wilson's confidence that Cheney knew about his trip served as the basis for his accusation, passed along uncritically by the New Republic, that it "was a flat-out lie" for President Bush to have accused Saddam Hussein of trying to obtain uranium in Niger...

...Sad but true, Wilson has seen yet another spike in what he once dubbed his "Notoriety Quotient...

...CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue...

...Alamoudi, SCRAPBOOK readers may remember, is currently serving a 23-year sentence for his participation in a Libyan assassination plot targeting Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah...

...lost business cost him thousands...

...government's official list of terrorist-associated organizations and individuals...

...2002 mission to Niger to investigate reports of an Iraqi uranium deal was suggested by his wife, who worked in the CIA's counterproliferation division...

...This, thanks to new developments in the ongoing investigation into who in the Bush administration, in the aftermath of an op-ed by Wilson attacking the honesty of the White House, told reporters in July 2003 that Mrs...

...and he was prosecuted and jailed for violating Denmark's antidiscrimination laws...

...I'm doing it to show my sympathy with the United States," he told the Associated Press...

...The Intel Committee's findings: "Because CIA analysts did not believe that [Wilson's] report added any new information to clarify the issue...

...Last July, having hired on as a counter man at the Napoli Pizzeria in Klaksvik, Denmark, Bjerre was fired for waving off a group of German tourists...

...A capital idea...

...There Was a There Last Thursday, the Treasury Department added a London-based outfit called the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia to the U.S...

...But he refused—on principle...

...And Alamoudi is also the man who, for nearly a decade, successfully gulled both the Clinton and Bush White Houses into accepting him as a spokesperson for moderate Islam and Arab-American civil rights...

...We hope the outcome doesn't hinge on the reliability of testimony from her husband...

...What's happened to him since, said Schumer, groping for a novel literary allusion, is downright "Kafkaesque...

...Bjerre's initial "no dogs, no French, no Germans" policy earned him a heap of trouble: His shop was vandalized...

...What the "abuse of power" may be, Wilson didn't say, perhaps overwhelmed with emotion: "I'm really very saddened by all this...

...He told Meet the Press interviewer Andrea Mitchell, "The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there...

...I would urge you to go back and read the record," Wilson said...

...It found that "for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal...

...But the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA (and Wilson) had been unaware of the documents until eight months after his trip...

...In the spring of 2003, after a purported "memorandum of agreement" between Iraq and Niger was shown to be a forgery, Wilson began to tell reporters, on background, that he'd known the documents were forgeries all along...

...According to information available to the U.S...

...I. Wilson denied that his Feb...

...Bjerre plans to hang an American flag and a photograph of President and Mrs...

...Bush in his cell...

...For example, when asked how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, [Wilson] told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair...

...Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent...

...So are we...

...There's no there there...

...In June 2003, when the Wall Street Journal asked whether people like Alamoudi might be exercising "undesirable influence" with the White House, Karl Rove snapped, "What's the evidence...

...Prisoner of Conscience Bad news...

...This man has served his country," Schumer said...

...Again...