The President's state of the union address included information the president and his men solicited...NOW they admit it was forged...Hello, earth to jla...they are admitting they are liars and laughing all the way to the bank with money they're making off kickbacks and oil stolen from the citizenry of Iraq.
White House Says Iraq Uranium Claim Forged
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger was based on forged information, the White House National Security Council said on Tuesday.
"At the time, the national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction referred to attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from several countries in Africa," said Michael Anton, a spokesman for the security council.
"We now know that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged," Anton said.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that the president's comments on Iraqi attempts to buy nuclear weapons from Africa were based on incomplete and possibly inaccurate information from intelligence agencies.
"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said in a statement authorized by the White House, the Post reported.
Controversy is raging in the United States and Britain over charges the governments of the two countries manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to make the case for war against Iraq.
No evidence of such weapons has been found by the occupying forces in Iraq.
The Post report said the administration official's statement came in response to questions about a British parliamentary commission report that raised questions about the reliability of British intelligence cited by Bush in his Jan. 28 speech.
The statement, released late on Monday, effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's uranium purchase claim was wrong, the Post said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in March dismissed a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger as being based on forged documents.
Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson disclosed he had traveled to Africa in 2002 to investigate the report.
Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, told The New York Times and NBC on Sunday that he had reported back to the CIA that it was highly doubtful any such transaction had ever taken place.
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