Anybody who denigrates this man is the enemy.

'' In 1991, President George Bush introduced Joseph Wilson to his war
Cabinet, calling the veteran diplomat "a true American hero." By any
standard, Wilson deserved such praise. As the senior U.S. diplomat in
Iraq during Operation Desert Shield, the massive U.S. military buildup
in Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Wilson was
responsible for freeing 150 American hostages seized by the Iraqi
dictator. Indeed, he was the last U.S. diplomat to meet with Saddam
Hussein, in August 1990, following Saddam's notorious July 25 meeting
with U.S. ambassador April Glaspie, who failed to warn Saddam not to
invade Kuwait. Wilson advocated a muscular response to Saddam's
aggression, and though he sought a diplomatic solution, supported
Operation Desert Storm. During his highly decorated 23-year career,
Wilson also held the position of political advisor to the commander in
chief of the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe and was ambassador to Gabon.

In July this year, Wilson staked out another claim to heroism when he
revealed in a New York Times piece that Bush administration claims
that Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium from the African nation of
Niger were known by the Bush administration to be false. In February
2002 Wilson himself had been assigned by the CIA -- acting,
ironically, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney -- to
investigate the uranium allegations in an attempt to strengthen the
administration's arguments for war. He reported back to his superiors
that there was no basis for the claims. But in January 2003, to
Wilson's amazement, President Bush made the same discredited claim in
hyping the terrifying nuclear threat posed by Saddam. In the New York
Times article, Wilson wrote that that "I have little choice but to
conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear
weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Along with a host of other revelations about cherry-picked
intelligence, bogus claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction
and arm-twisting from administration officials to find usable
evidence, Wilson's bombshell made it clear that the Bush
administration had decided to go to war first and come up with the
justification for it second. As 9/11 hysteria faded, WMD failed to
turn up and the invasion's aftermath turned brutally ugly, the fact
that false evidence was used to sell the war became a major political
problem for Bush. Questions about his leadership of the "war on
terror" -- the heart of his appeal -- became louder. The GOP had to
stop the bleeding. A decision was reached that the best way to do that
was to take Wilson down. ''

salon