1 Well, Hayes can sometimes be an idiot. Here he misstates the facts. While it is true that Wilson never worked for the CIA, this was his SECOND trip to the region for the CIA. Although not an agent, he had some experience inthe area, and had experience with Iraq. In addition, the CIA ddn't expect to find any evidence of iraq obtaining anything on the trip. the aqmbassador had recently asked for and received assurances from the government that there had been no deals for uranium with any rogue nation. To maintain the diplomatic niceties, she asked Wilson to avoid talking to members of the current government. Both the CIA and Wilson were aware that the goal of those speaking to him may well be to manipulate. The problem is not the mission, nor its report, but whith how Wilson has represented its conclusions and what he has done since then. This notion that the trip was a CIA plot, (or, even more amazingly, a plot by the Dmeocrats!!) to bash Bush is just silly. If one is going to concoct a conspiracy theory, why not go whole hog and say that the CIA didn't actually have an intelligence failure, but actually invented all that bad intelligence to make the Bush administration look bad? One could add a cap on such a conspiracy by postulationg that George Tenet, a loyal Democrat appointed by Clinton, actually was the soldier in this Clintonesque stragey to insure that Mrs. Clinton would eventually be lecrted president. (Willy, who appointed Tenet, would be the brains.) Tenet's job was to make sure the faulty intelligence was created and documented, to funnell it to the administration, and to make sure that the administration was convinced. he did the latter by repeating the embarassingly bad intelligence in his daily briefs and by cutting off any doubt with phrases like "It's a slam dunk." Hayes is sounding like a stupid liberal here. Maybe he has a contract with Oliver Stone.

2 But someone referred this to the Justice department.

3 fyi - my contributor Dorkafork said "no." I'm agnostic on the matter.

4 It? I must here admit that I confused Mr. Rabbin's piece, quoted in the link, with that of hayes. So my commentson hayes should be diverted to the Rabbin piece.

5 The evidence is pretty strong that the report of Iraqi uranium purchases was forged. It is also fairly clear that Wilson wrote his editorial after members of the administration continued to blandish it. Saying this is illegitimate because Wilson was partisan and a blow hard also invalidates a lot of stuff from the right. The right has also discredited itself by shunning values that Bill Buckley and others in the mainstream are reminding them of: http://www2.operationtruth.com/dia/organizations/OpTruth/blog/comments.jsp?blog_entry_KEY=20292 Also note that many of the fiercest critics of the Bush administration have also been fierce critics of the way the CIA was run. THe problem is that the administrations "reform is worse than the disease. Ignoring Colonel Wilkerson and others may be good partisan politics, but it shows a hostility to the United States. We are at war and need functioning institutions. To rebuild the CIA along the model of Brownies Fema or Bremer's Iraq is to risk our future. I ask you and your kind, have you no shame?

6 But certainly we needed to have some intel reform, didn't we? Granted, a lot of what we had previous to 9/11 had to do with miscommunication, turf wars between agencies, and FBI failures. But certainly the Church restrictions had something to do with the failures that allowed 9/11 to happen . . .?