<font size=4>Sixteen Truthful Words<font size=3>
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times
<font size=4><font color=blue>"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."<font size=3><font color=black>
— George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 28, 2003
WASHINGTON — <font size=4>Those were <font color=blue>"the 16 words"<font color=black> in a momentous message to a joint session of Congress that were pounced on by the wrong-war left to become the simple centerpiece of its angry accusation that <font color=blue>"Bush lied to us"<font color=black> — or, as John Kerry more delicately puts it — <font color=blue>"misled"<font color=black> us into thinking that Saddam's Iraq posed a danger to the U.S.
The he-lied-to-us charge was led by Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat sent in early 2002 by the C.I.A. to Niger to check out reports by several European intelligence services that Iraq had secretly tried to buy that African nation's only major export, <font color=blue>"yellowcake"<font color=black> uranium ore.
Wilson testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had assured U.S. officials back in 2002 that <font color=blue>"there was nothing to the story."<font color=black> When columnist Robert Novak raised the question of nepotism by reporting that he got the assignment at the urging of his C.I.A. wife, Wilson denied that heatedly and denounced her <font color=blue>"outing,"<font color=black> triggering an investigation. The skilled self-promoter was then embraced as an antiwar martyr, sold a book with <font color=blue>"truth"<font color=black> in its title, appeared on the cover of Time and every TV talk show denouncing Bush.
Two exhaustive government reports came out last week
showing that it is the president's lionized accuser, and
not Mr. Bush, who has been having trouble with the truth.
Contrary to his indignant claim that <font color=blue>"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter"<font color=black> of selecting him for the African trip, the Senate published testimony that his C.I.A. wife had <font color=blue>"offered up his name"<font color=black> and printed her memo to her boss that <font color=blue>"my husband has good relations"<font color=black> with Niger officials and <font color=blue>"lots of French contacts."<font color=black> Further destroying his credibility, Wilson now insists this strong pitch did not constitute a recommendation.
More important, it now turns out that senators believe his report to the C.I.A. after visiting Niger actually bolstered the case that Saddam sought — Bush's truthful verb was <font color=blue>"sought"<font color=black> — yellowcake, the stuff of nuclear bombs. The C.I.A. gave Wilson's report a <font color=blue>"good"<font color=black> grade because <font color=blue>"the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999 and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium"<font color=black> — confirming what the British and Italian intelligence services had told us from their own sources.
But a C.I.A. analyst opined <font color=blue>"the Brits have exaggerated this issue"<font color=black> because <font color=blue>"the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."<font color=black>
State Department intelligence also was dubious, reports the Senate, more so in October when an Italian journalist brought in a bunch of phony documents somebody was trying to sell him about a Niger uranium transaction. This outweighed the report of a top security official in the French Foreign Ministry, who told U.S. diplomats in November 2002 that <font color=blue>"France believed the reporting was true that Iraq had made a procurement attempt for uranium from Niger."<font color=black>
Two months later, with no objection from C.I.A., the
famous 16 words went into Bush's 2003 State of the Union.
But when word leaked about the fake documents — which were
not the basis of the previous reporting by our allies —
Wilson launched his publicity campaign, acting as if he
had known earlier about the forgeries. The Senate reports
that in his misleading anonymous leak to The Washington
Post, <font color=blue>"He said he may have misspoken . . . he said he may
have become confused about his own recollection. . . ."<font color=black>
The subsequent firestorm caused the White House to retreat
prematurely with: <font color=blue>"the sixteen words did not rise to the
level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."
<font color=black>
That apology was a mistake; Bush had spoken the plain
truth. Did Saddam seek uranium from Africa, evidence of
his continuing illegal interest in a nuclear weapon? Here
is Lord Butler's nonpartisan panel, which closely examined
the basis of the British intelligence:
<font color=blue>
". . . we conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
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