The Plame Lawsuit - Plenty Of Laughs To Go Around

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Whoa boy. I cannot tell you how floored I am that Joe and Valerie Wilson have decided to sue pretty much everyone over their supposed "outing" in the media. I mean they have both displayed a large amount of common sense and intelligence……

Ok, seriously now. This lawsuit which can be found here is the biggest joke I have seen come from the left side of the aisle in quite some time. You really need to read the whole thing to understand what a field day the defense will have with this case…if it ever sees the light of day, which it will not. Yes, I am calling it here and now. This will NEVER see the light of day in court. Can you imagine what the defense is going to do just in the discovery phase along?

Check out some of the outright falsehoods and lies:

The audacity and malevolence of that campaign is compounded by the fact that at the same time the Wilson's were being attacked, the administration in fact was acknowledging the validity of Mr. Wilson's public statements.

Oh really? The Administration told the world that Iraq had not tried to obtain yellowcake from Iraq? Even when Joe Wilson's own after action report stated the exact opposite?

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

More from the suit:

On May 6, 2003, the New York Times published a column by Nicholas Kristof which disputed the accuracy of the "sixteen words" in the State of the Union address. The column reported that, following a request from the Vice President's office for an investigation of allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, an unnamed former ambassador [now known to be Plaintiff Joseph C. Wilson IV] was sent on a trip to Niger in 2002 to investigate the allegations. According to the column, the ambassador reported back to the CIA and State Department in early 2002 that the allegations were unequivocally wrong and based on forged documents.

Check out the last sentence…."according to the column".

Funny how this column by Nicholas Kristof is of such importance to Joe's suit when he was the source for that column.

Then the suit tries to side step an outright lie by naming the column, instead of Joe's report to the CIA. The column states Joe denied the yellowcake allegations, but his intelligence report stated that there WAS evidence that Iraq had sought yellowcake.

Ok, more of the suit:

On or about June 1 1,2003, Libby spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson's trip and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed [erroneously] to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.

Are you freakin kidding me? "Erroneously"! Can they be this stupid?

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region …

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

The above is taken from the "REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ" by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Onwards back to the suit:

On July 6,2003, the New York Times published an Op-Ed article by Wilson entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." On that same day, the Washington Post published an article about Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger, which article was based in part upon an interview of Wilson. Wilson appeared as a guest on the July 6 television interview show "Meet the Press."

In his Op-Ed article and interviews in print and on television, Wilson asserted, among other things, that he had taken a trip to Niger at the request of the CIA in February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had sought or obtained uranium yeIlowcake from Niger, and that he doubted Iraq had obtained uranium from Niger recently, for a number of reasons. Wilson stated that he believed, based on his understanding of government procedures, that the Office of the Vice President had been advised of the results of his trip.

But the 16 words that Joe said were unequivocally false stated that Iraq had SOUGHT not OBTAINED uranium from Niger. He came back with proof that they had indeed SOUGHT uranium as evidenced by his after-action report. His reporting of the facts to the media were somewhat different.

The British still support their intelligence which states Iraq was seeking Uranium, whether they were successful or not is not the issue. Joe Wilson reported back with a report that confirmed their finding.

Niger Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

You see where I'm going with this? I'm no lawyer but a law school student could drive a semi-truck through the holes in this suit.

Can these two really be this ignorant?

My prediction, they drop the suit in a few months claiming that they took the high moral ground and they could never get a fair shake in the courts.

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