Joseph Wilson's war

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...441697,00.html

[...] "I never said that I was perfect," says Wilson. "But it wasn't about me, damn it. It was about a war. They just made it look like it was about me. That's the way Karl Rove operates. He attacks people's character."

It is as a result of these character attacks that everyone now knows that Joseph Wilson wears Hermes ties, and that he loves Cuban cigars, surfing, skiing and golf. We know his handicap and that he has been married several times. We know that he likes to quote Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell when he talks about his case. We are familiar with his penchant for forceful language and celebrities. All of this combined doesn't produce a likeable image, and that was precisely the point. When someone on the street asked columnist Robert Novak about the yellowcake affair, Novak's only response was: "Joe Wilson is an *******." That was his only answer.

Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby went after the man. They made him seem less significant, taking the same approach Republican candidates have frequently taken in dealing with their adversaries. When Texas Governor Ann Richards ran against George W. Bush in his first political campaign in 1994 and won, the Republicans told Texan voters that she was a lesbian, and when Vietnam veteran John Kerry ran for president, they made him out as a coward and traitor to his country.
"They throw **** into the wind and hope that some of it sticks," says Wilson. And it worked. Plenty of **** has remained stuck to the walls of their respective adversaries.

When Valerie and Joseph Wilson filed a civil suit against Cheney, Rove and Libby this summer, CNN reported it as a sort of joke and ran James Bond music in the background. Three years after Joseph Wilson and his wife were the hottest news in Washington, they've now become open targets for every reporter's jokes and disparaging comments. The Wall Street Journal called him Joseph "Yellowcake" Wilson, as if he were a comic figure. [...]