Joseph Wilson lied

This morning, before I left on a trip I read yet another statement by Joseph Wilson the former ambassador where he reasserts that the Bush White House lied on the Niger connection to Iraq. What is most troubling about this, besides the impression that he is passionately dedicated to opposing the Iraq policy, is that his continued lying in public goes unchallenged. Doesn't anyone read how the former Niger prime minister has said that the Iraqui trade mission where they asked to get closer relations was in his mind only related to the purchase of uranium - doesn't seem like oil would be a big buy for Iraq.
The media coverage of all sides of this story seems lax (at best) or malevolent.

There are several things that the media seems to conviently forget. First, beginning in 1999 the intelligence communities of several nations seemed to believe that Iraq was moving to WMDs - that turned out to be a bluff - but it was one that almost every nation fell for. Second, Wilson came back from the trip partially set up by his wife (he did have some credentials to be in Africa and did know something about the Middle East so it wasn't a complete fraud) and the Senate Intelligence Committee report seems to say that the CIA thought his report reinforced the notion that the Iraquis were going after WMDs. Third, if the Wilson's neighbors knew what Valerie Plame Wilson did for a living it is hard to believe that the administration's efforts to discredit a critic were outing an agent. Fourth, the rationale for going to war with Iraq included the possibility of WMDs but it also included a lot of other notions (read Ws second inaugural which was preceeded by several policy speeches where he laid out the broader purposes of the war).

But what bothers me the most about this story is not that a White House official is accused of lying to a grand jury - I am confident that the legal system will be able to sort out the issues there. Why in the world would a person like Wilson - with such obvious and unrelenting passion on one side be quoted as a reliable source?