Christopher Hitchens is dogged in his pursuit of Joe Wilson, the man who claimed to have debunked the president's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

Hitchens explains that "in February 1999, Saddam Hussein dispatched his former envoy [Wissam al-Zahawie] to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and former delegate to non-proliferation conferences at the United Nations, to Niger." Hitchens asks a reasonable question, what was Zahawie doing in Niger in 1999, and why didn't Joe Wilson have anything to say about it? After all, Joe was well-connected with Niger government officials, that's why the vice president, the CIA, former Clinton official and Kerry supporter Mary McCarthy (?) sent him to Niger on a special mission to discover whether dispel any claim that Iraq had contacted Niger regarding yellowcake uranium.

Joseph Wilson went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country had renewed its uranium-based relationship with Iraq, spent a few days (by his own account) sipping mint tea with officials of that country who were (by his wife's account) already friendly to him, and came back with the news that all was above-board. Again to repeat myself, this must mean either that A) he did not know that Zahawie had come calling or B) that he did know but didn't think it worth mentioning that one of Saddam's point men on nukes had been in town. In neither case, it seems to me, should he be trusted with another mission that requires any sort of curiosity.

What is curious is why this was an ongoing, 24 hour a day story when Joe Wilson announced in the New York Times the results of his secret mission. Yet now that Wilson's claims are throughly, if not debunked, then rebutted, why has the media not worked itself into a frenzy? Where are the questions for Wilson's supporters? Where are the investigative journalists who are all too willing to dig up classified information that they can publicize at the risk of endangering U.S. policy and U.S. troops?

Certainly there must be some reason that there is no effort to undermine the primary narrative of the Iraq War and how we got into it. It must be more than incompetence on the part of the news editors and their inability to put two and two together.

Hitchens is calling for a special counsel to investigate the McCarthy leaks and throw reporters in jail if they don't turn over their notes, a la Scooter/Rove/Fitzgerald.

If it happens, it will be interesting to watch the Bush-haters, in the CIA and the press, themselves get what they wanted for the President.