Joe Wilson, skeptic on Iraq War intelligence, dies at age 69

Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who set off a political firestorm by disputing US intelligence used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion, died Friday, according to his ex-wife.

He was 69. Wilson died of organ failure in Santa Fe, said his former wife, Valerie Plame, whose identity as a CIA operative was exposed days after Wilson's criticism of US intelligence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium.

The leak of Plame's covert identity was a scandal for the administration of President George W Bush that led to the conviction of vice presidential aide I Lewis "Scooter" Libby for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.

President Donald Trump pardoned Libby in 2018.

Plame, who is running as a Democrat for Congress in part as a Trump adversary called Wilson "a true American hero, a patriot, and had the heart of a lion."
Wilson dismissed those claims, later authoring the book "The Politics of Truth."
"We should have pursued that objective. We did not need to engage in an invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in order to achieve that objective."