Former Ambassador Joe Wilson — who found himself and his then-wife Valerie Plame in the middle of a political firestorm when he contradicted President George W. Bush’s rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — has died at the age of 69.

Plame, a former CIA operative who was outed in apparent revenge after Wilson blew the whistle on Bush, said the cause was organ failure. Wilson and Plame ended their marriage in 2017.

A veteran, 23-year diplomat, Wilson had been assigned by the CIA as a private citizen to go to Niger in 2003 and investigate reports that Iraq had been sold uranium yellowcake by the African country in the 1990s. Wilson found nothing — and said as much in a New York Times op-ed headlined, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” in July 2003.

“If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why),” he wrote in the column.

“If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.”

Wilson’s words contradicted Bush’s contention in his January 2003 State of the Union that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

American troops invaded Iraq that March — and no WMDs were ever located.

A week after Wilson’s op-ed ran, conservative columnist Robert Novak exposed Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative — an act that looked to be revenge from within the Bush administration.

Prior to the outing, Plame had conducted her work as an undercover operative.

The saga would later be made into a movie starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.

That leak eventually caught up with Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, who was indicted for perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice.

Bush commuted Libby’s sentence down to 30 months, while President Trump granted him a full pardon.

Earlier this month, Plame announced her intentions to run for Congress, seeking New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional seat. She’s running to replace Rep. Ben Ray Luhan (D-N.M.), who’s seeking a Senate seat.