Fair Haired Games

The Plame movie is out, and Jack Cashill has some comments for Sean Penn. Here's one:

In the film’s funniest moment—I spontaneously guffawed—the Wilson character claims that he and his wife had no interest in publicity.

The rest are better. As for me, I still have two main questions...

1) If Wilson knew there were no WMDs in Iraq after his February 2002 visit to Niger why did he sit silently until May on 2003? He claims to have yelled at someone in State after the sixteen word State of the Union speech yet waited until June to drop his Africa story (anonymously at first), conveniently after Miller had returned empty-handed from her WMD embed. She had Wilson's contact number in her day planner along with "Valery Flame" written as well, which she served jail time for refusing to answer about. As Cashill points out, after the invasion (but before May) Wilson spoke to a peace group and said Saddam still might use his WMDs. He was a TV analyst before the war yet never mentioned his insider knowledge.

2) What transpired during his breakfast meeting in May 2003 with NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof in which Plame was also in attendance? According to reports she didn't speak but if so, how did Wilson explain his trip to Africa? In his later NY Times Op-Ed he made it seem like Cheney sent him--did he tell Kristof this lie? Even the movie called that a deception (lie). What did Plame say other than good morning, and why would she even attend other than to give his story credibility?

There could have been deeper things going on. After all, both the Times and CIA had everything to gain from a "Bush lied, people died" meme after providing all the daily briefings and via reports from folks like Judith Miller and Tom Friedman. If the Times couldn't shift the blame they would soon become a target of their own far left clientele, perhaps to the point of being called war criminals (or even worse, Bush facilitators). Oh well, maybe we'll get a Wikileak on this one day.

UPDATE 12/5/10

Evidently the WaPo editorial board reached their limit of Plame movie chicanery this past Friday and penned this:

"It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: "For people who have short memories or don't read, this is the only way they will remember that period."

We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions.

And it gets better from there. Fair game? Here's another famous term--"case closed".