Safire's ashes

Bill Safire recalls his days sitting at RMN's knee, learning the gift of misleading the American public, and pens this little melody about those infamous 16 words.

Josh Marshall has been dismantling the argument that the (Republican) Senate Intelligency committee's report has "proven" that Bush did not mislead us into war. Meanwhile, Eschaton's Holden reminds us that it was the White House who backed away so quickly from the claim made in those 16 words, and is in fact, still backed away from it.

And the Wall Street Journal weighs in as well.

Mr. Wilson says the question of whether his wife suggested him for the trip "is absolutely irrelevant" to the decision on bringing charges against whoever leaked her name. In his letter to the committee last week, he argued that his wife simply recited his credentials to CIA officials making the choice.

Yet Republican Party officials have seized on the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings in an effort to counteract the damage done to President Bush from the leak affair and, more broadly, from Mr. Wilson's criticism in dozens of speeches and television appearances over the past year of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie in a statement calls Mr. Wilson "a liar" who has made "allegations against the president that have now been proven false." On CBS's "Face the Nation" yesterday, Mr. Gillespie said that Mr. Wilson "is an adviser to the Kerry campaign" who has been "entirely discredited."

That overstates the report's findings about Mr. Wilson. But whether it damages him or not, the report, in strictly legal terms, shouldn't have any effect on Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into whether the White House violated a law that makes it a crime to disclose the name of a clandestine intelligence officer. At the same time, Mr. Fitzgerald must weigh whether to push his case all the way to its potentially messy end -- namely, indicting administration officials before the election.

Whatever action Mr. Fitzgerald takes will have political implications. "I think this [Senate report] was an effort on behalf of the Republicans to discredit Mr. Wilson by showing why the White House outed his wife and maybe head off an indictment. Nice try, but the law says you don't out a clandestine operative no matter what the reason," says Larry Johnson, one of a group of former CIA officers that has pushed for indictments in the case.

Mr. Bush started the whole affair in his 2003 State of the Union speech before invading Iraq. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," he said. His statement was based in part on documents purportedly from Niger recounting Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium; the documents are now considered to be forgeries and the White House later acknowledged the sentence shouldn't have been included in the speech.

The Senate report and a similar one by British authorities released this month make clear that the question of whether Iraq sought uranium in Africa is a murky one that may never be fully resolved. The reports show that intelligence agencies from both countries have multiple unconfirmed reports that Iraq made such an attempt in Niger and elsewhere. French and British intelligence separately told the U.S. about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger, the U.S. report said. There were other unverified reports as well. As a result, the 511-page British report backed the U.K. government's claim that it had intelligence that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, and said Mr. Bush's claim on the subject and a similar one by British Prime Minister Tony Blair were "well-founded."

Um, Bill, "well-founded" does not equal "true," and "murky" does not equal "the plain truth."

But hidden at the bottom of the story are these interesting words:

Under Justice Department guidelines, prosecutors must show they have pursued nearly all other means of obtaining information before calling a reporter before a grand jury, a Justice Department official says. Because it is considered a last resort, sending subpoenas to journalists may indicate the investigation is winding down, Justice Department and FBI lawyers say.

I wonder what Ashcroft, Cheney, Rove, and Bush will do to try to run out the clock before they have to give the ball back.