Sunday, July 18, 2004 :::
 
A certain pudgy, balding English teacher is scheduled for a week of R&R in the lovely seaside town of Wilmington, NC, and then three weeks of research in the archive of his late, beloved uncle, so there has been little time for blogging, which is a pity.  An acquaintance asked whether the blog left any time for anything else, to which A Mind That Suits replied that it was not much of a burden, as he just reads the indispensable Wall Street Journal until something makes him furious.  Alas, these days it is often the editorials, and not the news reports, that set him off, but it is a stable and longlasting relationship, and as soon as one or two people up in NYC come to, things will continue on as before.
 
Well, actually, one half of the relationship could not care less what the other half thinks, but we'll let that go...
 
But A Mind That Suits is happy to report that the editorial page was its old self this week, and that made him particularly happy.  What made him really and truly happy in particular was the good and proper drubbing they handed out to one Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who gained his brief fame for claiming that the President stated that Saddam was seeking uranium in West Africa even though said Amb. Wilson had proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it had not occurred.
 
Except that a British government inquiry has conluded that those famous "16 words" were in fact based on good intelligence, and a Senate Committee has, at delicious length, sliced to bits everything that Amb. Wilson said.  Most particularly, both committees drew attention to the fact that Amb. Wilson kept saying Saddam could not have bought uranium, whereas all the intelligence discussed was that he had sought it.
 
Amb. Wilson now says that he was not referring to the 16 words in that case, but to a transaction referred to in documents that were obvius forgeries.  Except that they came to light after his trip, and he had no involvement whatsoever in analyzing those documents, both because he did not have high enough security clearance, and because no one even knew of their existence.
 
So, as a certain pudgy, balding English teacher pointed out to a prominent writer, Amb. Wilson is now saying that "the CIA sent him to investigate something they hadn't heard about, and he proved that it didn't happen?  Now that is a real accomplishment."
 
The good ambassador's defenders are now few, and the Washington Post, which gave him far, far too much ink during his bried stay in the limelight, officially and finally pulled the plug on him this morning.  If Amb. Wilson thinks that this amounts to betrayal, he should be reminded of the wisdom of Harry Truman (a Democrat, lest we forget), who famously commented, "If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog."



::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 10:16 AM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.