Back to the Beginning
Rove-a-Palooza/Take a Letter from Libby/Miller's Crossing/Big Time!

If you're new to PlameGate or have a basic idea of what's happening but aren't sure how it all started, Think Progress takes us back in time to the summer of 2003 and helps put things into perspective. it all started with Joseph Wilson's NYTime op-ed--"What I Didn't Find in Niger" (which is available at Common Dreams)--in which he debunked the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had been seeking yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger, a claim that had made it into President Bush's State of the Union address just months earlier and had helped sway (scare) public opinion toward supporting the war. So why is this important? Here's the intro summary from TP:

Wilson put into motion a series of events that were not only politically damaging but began to expose how the nation was misled into war. In the days immediately following Wilson’s op-ed:

- Bush officials admitted their intelligence on uranium was a lie

- Congress was calling for an investigation

- the intelligence on the aluminum tubes (the other half of the nuclear argument) was falling apart

- the nation’s leading newspapers and television shows were headlining the story that the Bush administration had misled us into war

Check it out and see the gathering storm that was facing BushCo, which can help put into perspective how this vindictive smearing began.