Joseph Wilson, U.S. diplomat who spoke out on Iraq War, dies at 69 - NYT

By Jan Wolfe

 

FILE PHOTO: Former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson leave a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington in this file photo taken on July 14, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

 

(Reuters) - Joseph Wilson, a U.S. diplomat who questioned the central underpinning for the invasion of Iraq under former President George W. Bush, died on Friday at the age of 69, the New York Times reported.

 

Wilson's ex-wife, Valerie Plame, a former CIA officer now running for Congress, told the Times his cause of death was organ failure.

 

Wilson died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Times reported.

 

Wilson served in several diplomatic posts during a 23-year career that began in 1976.

 

In 2002, the CIA asked Wilson to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium yellowcake, a nuclear material, from Niger.

 

Bush, in his State of the Union address in January 2003, made a case for the Iraq war by saying the country's leader at the time, Saddam Hussein, had recently sought "significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

 

Wilson challenged that claim in an opinion piece published by the New York Times in July 2003, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”

 

One week after Wilson's op-ed was published, Plame's work as a covert CIA operative was revealed by a Washington columnist, setting off an investigation into whether White House officials leaked her identity as retribution for his public criticisms.

 

No officials were prosecuted for the leak, but a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of lying to investigators.

 

Wilson wrote in a 2004 memoir that he felt a duty to publish the Times op-ed.

 

"Time after time during the previous four months, from March to July, administration spokespeople had sloughed off the reality that the president of the United States had sent our country to war in order to defend us against the threat of the ‘mushroom cloud,’ when they knew, as did I, that at least one of the two ‘facts’ underpinning the case was not a fact at all," Wilson wrote.

 

Plame, whose marriage to Wilson ended in divorce in 2017, is running for a congressional seat in New Mexico.

 

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Tom Brown)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-09-28

Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking Thailand news and visa info

A hero in a time when there were mostly American villains. RIP. Still think Bush, Chaney, Rummie and the others should have been  prosecuted by the World Court in The Hague as war criminals. Lot of blood on the hands of that bunch.

2 hours ago, rooster59 said:

"Time after time during the previous four months, from March to July, administration spokespeople had sloughed off the reality that the president of the United States had sent our country to war in order to defend us against the threat of the ‘mushroom cloud,’ when they knew, as did I, that at least one of the two ‘facts’ underpinning the case was not a fact at all," Wilson wrote.

And this is why GW is the worst president in American history. His unlimited pursuit of war across the globe makes him worse than Obama, who tried to expand more than a few wars himself, and even Trump. Trump is busy destroying the economy through building up debt and he is probably the most personally indecent human being to lead a major world power since Caligula. But at least he hasn't bombed half the globe. Bush, Cheney, and all the liars from the 2000s need to be in prison, fined, and their property and wealth forfeit as partial reparations.

Afraid that honor of being the worst president in the History of America belongs to the gentleman from Kenya. 

Wilson was an honest and courageous man, who stood up to a major gangster in the form of Cheney. All intelligence was highly vetted in the run up to the Iraqi invasion and an enormous fraud was perpetrated on the American people. Wilson was simply stating the facts and in return, Cheney outed Plame, which was an act of treachery, punishable by death in many nations. He was not a patriot on any level. Wilson was. 

 

The dignity and honor of Wilson makes Cheney look like a fraud, a cheat, and a liar of monumental proportions. 

28 minutes ago, zydeco said:

And this is why GW is the worst president in American history. His unlimited pursuit of war across the globe makes him worse than Obama, who tried to expand more than a few wars himself, and even Trump. Trump is busy destroying the economy through building up debt and he is probably the most personally indecent human being to lead a major world power since Caligula. But at least he hasn't bombed half the globe. Bush, Cheney, and all the liars from the 2000s need to be in prison, fined, and their property and wealth forfeit as partial reparations.

Remember the pallets of cash that went missing as soon as they arrived In Iraq? Where would one suppose they went? We are talking about billions of dollars. My guess? Offshore accounts of Cheney, Bush Jr., Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. So, in addition to be hyper incompetent, perhaps they were also super corrupt. 

8 minutes ago, Boon Mee said:

Afraid that honor of being the worst president in the History of America belongs to the gentleman from Kenya. 

Time to put that rumour to rest. Trump was actually born in New York. It was the doctor responsible for his delivery that was believed to be Kenyan. He was allegedly later struck off the registrar for failing to inform Trump's mother about abortion choices early in her pregnancy.