BOOK REVIEW: The Betrayal Of A Diplomat
The Politics of Truth; Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity
Joseph Wilson vents his professional and personal rage at the Bush administration in 'The Politics of Truth.'
By Tim Rutten, LA Times, May 1, 2004
No administration in history ever has approached its reelection campaign with so many insider accounts of its most sensitive deliberations freely circulating through the country's bookstores and libraries. To the expanding shelf of books that propose descriptions of how President Bush and his advisors did or did not meet the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and of how and why they marshaled the march to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we now can add former ambassador Joseph Wilson's "The Politics of Truth," which goes on sale today...
...His account of his service in Baghdad and of his fierce, face-to-face encounters with Hussein and his foreign minister, Tarik Aziz, are frankly gripping. Wilson's conduct of that mission was deemed heroic by then President George Bush, whose warmly congratulatory letter the author still hangs on his office wall. His work was similarly regarded by then Secretary of State James A. Baker III and national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. Moreover, Wilson is nobody's fool when it comes to dealing with Hussein. He strongly supported the Persian Gulf War and, up until recently, argued that if evidence of Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction were found, the dictator, whom Wilson flatly labels "a sociopath" had to be confronted with force.
Wilson's point, which is repeated at rather too much length in too many fashions in the book's concluding section, is that the administration distorted and lied concerning our intelligence on these issues and then behaved abominably toward his family and others when it was discovered. The author's rage over this alleged bad conduct - indecency, really - is what animates "The Politics of Truth." He is, at the end of the day, a patriot and a public servant, and he is furious over what he feels is a betrayal of those things. Fair play, trust and good manners matter in the world in which he chose to live his life. This is dissent then not from the radical fringe but from the heart of the establishment...
READ IT ALL AT:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-rutten1may01,1,6136422.story