Christopher Hitchens is still waiting for some substantive answers from Joe Wilson:

...it's true that the two men knew each other during the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991. Indeed, in his book The Politics of Truth, Wilson records Zahawie as having been in the room, as under-secretary for foreign affairs, during his last meeting with Saddam Hussein. (Quite a senior guy for a humble mission like violating flight-bans from distant Niger and Burkina Faso.) I cite this because it is the only mention of Zahawie that Wilson makes in his entire narrative.

In other words (I am prepared to keep on repeating this until at least one cow comes home), Joseph Wilson went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country had renewed its uranium-based relationship with Iraq, spent a few days (by his own account) sipping mint tea with officials of that country who were (by his wife's account) already friendly to him, and came back with the news that all was above-board. Again to repeat myself, this must mean either that A) he did not know that Zahawie had come calling or B) that he did know but didn't think it worth mentioning that one of Saddam's point men on nukes had been in town. In neither case, it seems to me, should he be trusted with another mission that requires any sort of curiosity.

Hitchens is worked up because an Iraqi might have been looking for uranium in Niger in 1999 (not that there's actual evidence of this, say, from the Iraq Survey group or recovered Iraqi files -- just that it's the explanation that makes the most sense to Hitchens). Never mind that Zahawie didn't get any, or that there wasn't any likelihood of him (or any other Iraqi) getting any, or that all the yellowcake on the planet would not have put Iraq one millimeter closer to posing any sort of military threat to anyone, much less to a superpower.

Hitchens thinks the Niger forgeries have misled everyone into missing the real story: that Iraq did want uranium. But Hitchens completely misses the fact that no one should care -- yellowcake in Iraq is no more threatening than yellowcake in Niger.

For the sake of argument let's say that Wilson was an incompetent fool. From that we can conclude that the administration based its public case for war on a reed so slender that it had to be retracted after being criticized by said incompentent fool. That an administration renown for its discipline and political smarts could not fend off the attacks of said fool without getting itself subpoenaed and indicted. That years later it has fallen to Chris Hitchens to spin conspiracy out of 1999 travel itineraries, in order to protect the administration's credibility from that incompetent fool.

Either Wilson is a political genius, or the administration was so wrong that even a fool could call them to account.

Hitchens thinks the Niger forgeries have misled everyone into missing the real story: that Iraq did want uranium. But Hitchens completely misses the fact that no one should care -- yellowcake in Iraq is no more threatening than yellowcake in Niger.

The only reason anyone cares is because disingenuous creatures like you have been screeching for years that Bush was "lying" when he simply said that Saddam had sought uranium in Niger--something that anyone with any perspicacity can see is true, though Wilson lied to pretend it wasn't.

Oh, wait. Bush didn't even say that. He only said that British intelligence believed that.

Oh, wait. He didn't say that they even believed that. The phrase was "from Africa," not Niger.

Okay, so Bush couldn't have lied, because he was just making a vague, second-hand statement that he did not necessarily even believe himself. An argument to make Bill Clinton proud.

So why did he say it? The president didn't give himself many words to make the case for war with Iraq -- why did he use 16 of them for this not-false-because-it-doesn't-say-anything statement? Why did the White House push to have those words in the October, 2002 speech as well?

He said it because vague and discredited nuclear innuendo was the best he could come up with. He counted on a gullible audience figuring that if the president of the U.S. says that Iraq is seeking uranium, then there must be a nuclear threat that needs to be countered.

Is that the sort of non-lying we should want from our president?

The president didn't give himself many words to make the case for war with Iraq -- why did he use 16 of them for this not-false-because-it-doesn't-say-anything statement?

That address contained many hundreds of words, many of which made the liberal enlightenment case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. The fact that leftist nutcases choose to focus on a particular sixteen of them (a tiny percentage to anyone who understand mathematics, understandably a generous assumption in their, and your case), when they were truthful, says more about them than they do about the president.

the threat of nukes is what put some people over the edge. al franken has admitted to being in favor of the war before the invasion because he believed this, for example.

and, the president said that saddam hussein's attempts were recent.

im kind of tired of arguing this issue though.

im kind of tired of arguing this issue though.

Having the facts against you will do that.