A memo for David Brooks

David Corn thinks David Brooks may be a little off in his op-eds.

He claimed his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts, though his own report said nothing of the kind.

He did not claim his trip had "proved"--your word--the matter. He wrote that after speaking with past and present officials of Niger and "people associated with the country's uranium business," he had concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." (We can forward you a copy of his op-ed.) And, as you know, columnists of the Times are not fact-checked. But we would point out that in his Times op-ed, Mr. Wilson did not claim, as you state, that "his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts" to purchase uranium. He maintained that "there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." And--not to belabor what might be a fact-checking issue--according to a Senate intelligence committee investigation, the report written by the CIA on Mr. Wilson's trip "described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to any rogue states."