July 13, 2004 [LINK]
Joe Wilson: less than truthful
Well, well, well! Based on the Senate's recent scathing report on intelligence, it turns out that Joseph Wilson, the center of last year's scandal over the leak of his wife's identity as a CIA analyst by Robert Novak, was not telling the truth about a number of key points. His previous denials notwithstanding, Wilson in fact was recommended for the special mission to Niger by his wife, Valerie Plame. Furthermore, as reported in the Washington Post:
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.
As they say, read the whole article. It's good. (Why are so many of the loudest critics of Bush, the ones who call him a "liar," liars themselves?)
John Kerry, the ultra-cautious candidate who wants to be on both sides of every major issue, stubbornly evaded a key question put to him by Leslie Stahl in Sunday's CBS 60 Minutes. Was he for the war in Iraq or was he against it? He kept saying "the president made a mistake in the way he took us to war," meaning that Bush should have tried harder to get other countries to join us, but he left unclear what his position on the war itself. To her credit, Stahl pressed him more than once to get him to say whether he opposed the war, but he just said he thought he had answered her question. Unfortunately, the CBS Web site did not include a complete transcript.
I've written before that the idea of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is almost as silly as the idea of gay "marriage" itself. It ought to be self-evident that marriage is by definition a heterosexual union, and I think legislating social norms would probably backfire. Alas, we live in strange times in which such norms carry no weight. I heard several congresspersons and political figures such as Walter Fauntleroy making impassioned pleas on behalf of the Federal Marriage Amendment yesterday, and I was almost convinced.