Posted 9:02 PM by steve

Despite the liberals being unable to accept the truth, it's clear that Joe Wilson lied about Cheney being the one who sent him to Africa and about what he found out while he was there....

I don't know why, but the thought just occurred to me: why did Wilson lie? He was asked to go to Africa, he did so, he came back and reported on his findings and he went back to doing whatever it was that he was doing before he left. I assume he got paid whatever was the going rate for such trips and, while it wasn't enough to make him rich, represented a fair shake for the time he spent on this mission. So why the lies? Why lie about him going at the request of Cheney's office? Why lie about what he found out while he was there?

It seems unlikely that he would lie in order to curry favor with a (hopefully) future Democratic White House... the whole brouhaha started in early 2003, well before the 2004 elections and at a time when Bush was still relatively high in the polls and presenting the Democrats with an uphill battle to recapture the White House. And, while Wilson might have hoped that his lies would go uncovered (and they did for a fair amount of time), he would have had to have guessed that once those lies were uncovered that he would be too radioactive even for a Democrat in the White House.

Was it because he was (and I don't know if he was, I'm just laying out possibilities) so opposed to the war that, like so many other anti-war types, everything he looked at was tinted by his anti-war perspective?

Or was he asked by elements within the CIA or State Department who were opposed to the war to contribute in whatever way he could to their effort to to discredit Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld... and making up some aspects about his trip was the best he could offer?

Now, I don't buy the idea that the Bush Administration decided to leak his wife's name and role in a heavy-handed attempt to punish him. But even Wilson couldn't have been stupid enough to think that what he was doing would have been good for his wife's career ("hey, Joe Wilson's been making up stories, so let's give Valerie a raise and a promotion"?), so let's rule his trying to advance his wife's career as a possible motivation for what he did.

I don't know why he did what he did... and it would sure be nice to learn why.

MORE: What did she know, when did she know it, and how is she dealing with it?


And, thanks to the good Professor and Lucianne.com for their links... and the traffic...

UPDATE: A number of commenters make the argument that Wilson never said 'Cheney' sent him to Africa. Others argue that Wilson was less than honest in how he described where the request for him to go originated. As this is the least important of the issues I have with him, I won't quibble one way or the other, and hope that this peripheral issue doesn't detract from getting an answer to my question of what his motivations were for saying what he said.