For instance, in 2005, when secret documents were disclosed in Great Britain describing Bush's efforts in 2002 to "fix" the Iraq WMD intelligence to justify the war, the Post first ignored the so-called "Downing Street Memo" and then disparaged those who considered this powerful evidence of Bush's deceptions important.
On June 15, 2005, the Post's lead editorial asserted that "the memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002."
But Hiatt's assessment simply wasn't correct. Looking back to 2002 and early 2003, it would be hard to find any "reputable" commentary in the mainstream U.S. press calling Bush's actions fraudulent, which is what the "Downing Street Memo" and other British evidence have since revealed them to be.
Yet despite this disturbing record of the Post's credulity (if not outright dishonesty), Hiatt has published yet another editorial concentrating his ugliest attacks not against the administration for misleading the nation to war or against the failure of officials (like Powell) to express their misgivings in a timely fashion, but against Joe Wilson.
The context of this latest broadside is a recent published report asserting that former deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first administration official to leak to right-wing columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer and that she had played a small role in Wilson's Niger trip.
Because Armitage was a reluctant supporter of the Iraq War, the Post editorial then jumps to the conclusion that "it follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House - that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity - is untrue."
But does it lead to that conclusion? Just because Armitage may have blurted out this classified information to Novak supposedly as gossip, that doesn't mean that there was no parallel White House operation to peddle Plame's identity to reporters as retaliation.
In fact, evidence uncovered by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald supports a conclusion that White House officials, under the direction of Vice President Cheney and including Cheney aide Lewis Libby and Bush political adviser Karl Rove, approached a number of reporters with this information.
Indeed, Rove, who remains in Bush's inner circle and presumably still sees secret information, appears to have confirmed Plame's identity for Novak and leaked the information to Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Meanwhile, Libby, who has been indicted on perjury and obstruction charges, pitched the information to the New York Times' Judith Miller.
Blaming the Victim
The Post's editorial does acknowledge that Libby and other White House officials are not "blameless," since they allegedly released Plame's identity while "trying to discredit Mr. Wilson." But the Post reserves its harshest condemnation for Wilson, blaming his criticism of Bush's false State of the Union claim for Plame's exposure.
"It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson," the editorial said. "Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming - falsely, as it turned out - that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.
"He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously."
The Post's editorial, however, is at best an argumentative smear and most likely a willful lie. Along with other government investigators, Wilson did debunk the reports of Iraq acquiring yellowcake in Niger and those findings did circulate to senior levels, explaining why CIA Director George Tenet struck the yellowcake claims from other Bush speeches.
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