California Conservative

It’s nice to see the Washington Post published this editorial against the Wilsons.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. 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.

While I appreciate the Post’s pointing this out, it doesn’t absolve them from guilt in the matter. Jim VandeHei and Dana Millbank frequently appeared on Hardball, each time wildly speculating about whether Karl Rove would eventually be indicted. The Post doesn’t get a free pass by saying “It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.” Before they’re ‘forgiven’, they must acknowledge that their reporters were part of the problem.

The Post must also acknowledge that supposedly unsophisticated bloggers reached the right conclusion long before they admitted who Wilson was. They haven’t admitted that bloggers were right in calling Wilson’s credibility into question. They haven’t admitted that they didn’t come to that conclusion sooner.

Technorati: Washington Post, Plamegate, Karl Rove, Joe Wilson

Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 9:06 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iraq, Media, Subversives, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.