A Factual Smackdown For The New Valerie Plame Movie - From The Washington Post!

The final end to the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame scam comes from, of all places, the editors of the Washington Post, who dubs "Fair Game" the new movie that attempts to make heroes out of them, 'Hollywood myth-making':

Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "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. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

The British investigation the Post mentions was the Butler Commission, which still stands resolutely by it's findings.

The Post also debunks the story pushed in "Fair Game" that Valerie Plame's 'exposure' was the result of a White House conspiracy. Aside from the fact that her employment with the CIA was known to her neighbors and was not covert in any sense of the word, the investigation by a special prosecutor the Post dubs 'lengthy and wasteful' not only found there was no conspiracy,but that the person who leaked Plame's identity was Richard Armitage, who worked for the State Department - not the White House.

And then, there's this surprising finish:

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; "Fair Game" is just one more example. But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth - not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife - the myth endures. We'll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

Sort of pops the 'Bush lied, people died' balloon quite nicely no? A pity it took so long.

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