NOW WH says Tenet does not have to take blame. IN fact, WH NOW says the Nigeria/uranium/Iraq info in SOTU IS factual. Administration says Bush's uranium statement was accurate www.usatoday.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration said Sunday the president's statement in the State of the Union address about Iraq seeking uranium was accurate and is supported by other British and U.S. information.
Nevertheless, said Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, the statement should not have been in the Jan. 20 speech, in which Bush laid out reasons for military action against Iraq.
"We have a higher standard for presidential speeches" than raw intelligence, she said.
In the speech, Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
U.S. intelligence agencies had raised questions previously about assertions of such activity by the Iraqi president. Rice said CIA Director George Tenet had removed from a Bush speech in Cincinnati three months earlier a more specific reference to Iraqi efforts to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. Underlying documents to support the British contention proved to have been forged.
After the controversy over the State of the Union comment followed Bush around Africa during his trip last week, Tenet assumed responsibility Friday for not insisting that the statement be removed. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," Tenet said.
"It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa," Rice said on Fox News Sunday. "This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.
"But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate," a classified document compiled by U.S. agencies, she said.
"The British stand by their statement," Rice said. "They have told us that despite the fact that we had apparently some concerns about that report, that they had other sources, and that they stand by the statement."
Asked whether she or her colleagues in the administration had seen such additional British evidence, Rice said: "The British have reasons, because of the arrangements that they made, apparently, in receiving those sources, that they cannot share them with us. We have every reason to believe that the British services are quite reliable."
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