There's every reason to assume that both Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joe, have served their country well and fully. Joe Wilson's hard knock on the door of the Office of the Vice President was a great wake-up call for all of us. That said, it has also been evident to many of us -- grateful though we are to the Wilson's for their stand against the administration -- that they are also less than the sum of their moments in the limelight. Most people are complex. Even the less admirable can also be noble on occasion. For some, serving one's country doesn't preclude being self-serving.
We don't like Joe Wilson's statement implying that he was closer than any of us to the Iraq debate and can claim special knowledge. A lot of us were following it minute by minute, in grief and in fury. Given the evidence that there were no good reasons for the invasion or even for authorizing the use of force, it remains a mystery to us why so many were so blind -- particularly people who like to present themselves as opposing an out-of-control right wing administration and Congress.
For Joe Wilson to defend Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton for her vote and her subsequent refusal to step back from that vote just seems ... well ... deliberately blind. The worst of it is that Hillary seems to believe that if she did it then it was the right thing to do and no apology is necessary. That signals a character trait that we never admired in George W. Bush and it's not one we want in the next president.
Neither should it be forgotten that Wilson waited until after we had unleashed war to step forward with his revelation. Who knows how events might have unfolded had he shared that information with the American people the day after Bush's State of the Union address?
Posted by: Jim W | March 03, 2008 at 12:18 PM