"There has not been one shred of evidence that Iraq wasn't buying yellow cake from Niger."
Is there a shred of evidence that Cuba wasn't buying yellow cake? Indonesia? Your neighbor down the street?
Do you see the issue with 'evidence that X wasn't doing Y?' It is easier to prove someone WAS doing something than someone WASN'T.
However, the evidence used to claim that Iraq WAS buying yellow cake has not only been discredited, but has raised serious questions about not only the trustworthiness of this administration, but it's competence. From Time.com:
Just last weekend, the man sent by the CIA to check out the Niger story broke cover and revealed that he had thoroughly debunked the allegation many months before President Bush repeated it. Ambassador Joseph Wilson emphasized that he had reported back through traditional channels, and asked whether his report had been ignored because it didn't fit with the administration's preconceptions about Iraq.
More troubling questions arise from the claim by IAEA chief Dr Mohammed el-Baradei, who was in charge of the nuclear component of the prewar UN inspection program in Iraq, that he was provided with the Niger "evidence" only in February, despite it having been shared on Capitol Hill the previous October. The U.S. and Britain were publicly committed to sharing intelligence with the UN inspectors in order to help them find a "smoking gun," yet el-Baradei was kept in the dark about evidence that was ostensibly directly relevant to his inquiry. And, of course, almost as soon as he was shown the Niger documents, el-Baradei and his team concluded that they were forgeries. Also, despite U.S. and British claims that "other sources" had indicated Iraqi efforts to buy uranium in Africa, el-Baradei stresses that the Niger forgeries were the only evidence offered to the investigators.
Even more damning are reports that CIA sources insist the Bush administration was made aware some time before the State of the Union address that the Niger allegation was false. If those prove true, it kicks the jams out from under the administration's claim that the presence of a falsehood in the President's case against Iraq was simply the product of ignorance. And it may be expected that the CIA will more and more sharply signal that it passed its findings up the food chain, because on the basis of Ambassador Wilson's revelations, they'd be left to take the blame if they didn't. Then again, the media may turn its attention to the role of the Vice President's office: After all, Ambassador Wilson claims his inquiry was initiated by a request from Dick Cheney's office to check out the allegation. So presumably, Wilson's findings will have been reported back there. If so, the former ambassador is not the only one who will want to know what they, and other top officials, made of, and more importantly did with his information.
time.com |
