Joe Wilson - US Should Negotiate With Iraqi Terrorists

Since 06-17-06

By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer

June 15, 2006

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200606/NAT20060615a.html

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife was at the center of a CIA leak case that led to the indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, argued Wednesday that the U.S. needs to bring Iraqi insurgents and their "foreign patrons" to the conference table for negotiations.

During a panel discussion at the liberal Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C., Wilson said diplomatic efforts to establish Iraq as a democratic power in the region should also include "the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Iranians ... the Turks, probably some leading powers from Europe and Russia, all of whom have interests at stake."

Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq and ambassador to Gabon, has been a leading critic of the Bush administration since his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA operative in 2003. He alleges that the White House leaked her identity as payback for an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times arguing that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the aftermath of the Plame leak case, but this week Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, learned that he will not be indicted in the case.

"Make no mistake about it, if you still support the [war] policies of this president and this administration, you don't deserve the vote of Democrats, independents or, shall I say, even Republicans," Wilson said, echoing a larger theme of the three-day conference.

Several organizations passed around informal pledges asking conference attendees to promise not to vote for a candidate in the 2006 election who does not support an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

But Wilson implied that for political reasons, he does not support an immediate withdrawal. "Talk of a strategic withdrawal is the wrong discussion to have at this time," he said. "We're in there; people are dying."

Republicans, he said, are trying to score political points by baiting Democrats into calling for an immediate withdrawal. "What they want to do with this debate, by sucking us into this debate, is ensure that for the next 40 years, just like for the past 35 years, we the Democrats will be accused of cutting and running. We don't want to give them the moral high ground on that."

He said the "absence of American leadership" gives Democrats the opportunity to take control. "The sooner we can get back to playing that role of leader, the easier it will be for us and the sooner we can get back to promoting those values and those policies that we hold dear."

Wilson declined to comment on the announcement this week that Rove will not be indicted in the Valerie Plame (Wilson) leak investigation. "This is a marathon ... it's not over," he said, referring other questions to a statement released by his lawyer, Christopher Wolf.

"While it appears that Mr. Rove will not be called to answer in criminal court for his participation in the wrongful disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified employment status at the CIA," Wolf wrote in the statement, "that obviously does not end the matter. The day still may come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons."