Joe Wilson Was Right About What, Howard Kurtz?

In his online Media Notes column, Howard Kurtz repeats something he's said one or two times recently:

...So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story (actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong).

Actually, the Senate Intelligence Committee's 8-gazillion page report  issued a year ago this month concluded that Wilson lied about the information he found, what the Bush Administration did with it and who sent him to Africa in the first place.

As reported July 10, 2004 by the Washington Post's Susan Schmidt:   

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address...   

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.   

Good summation by RedState.org on Joe Wilson (fyi not what Howard Kurtz imagines about Joe Wilson):

So let's review - Wilson lied about how he got to Niger, he lied about seeing a report that didn't even exist at the time, he lied about the conclusions of his own report(!), he lied about what the administration had been told, and his wife, Valerie Plame, specifically sent him on a mission to intentionally debunk a claim, not to find facts or perform inspections. I'd say the WaPo's conclusion is pretty sound on this one

LINK NOTE: Changed link to the Senate committee's report to GPO. Original FindLaw link appeared broken.