Just checking in folks.. Been hot as hell here lately.. and supposed to get hotter.. For those who don't know, I'm in Iraq (and that's all I'll say)..
Been a lot of controversy over that Niger/Iraq Uranium claim in the news recently..
Here's some OSINT for all of you to ponder just to keep you up to date.. And remember, when Bush was discussing the issue of uranium from Niger, he was quoting British Intelligence, not that schmuck, Wilson, who decided to politicize the issue, despite British urgings that the Intel was credible (and allegedly from a French source involved with the running of the mines..)
story.news.yahoo.com
Conflicting reports leave uranium case open
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
In the case of Iraq (news - web sites)'s alleged attempt to buy uranium in Africa - a key reason the Bush administration cited for its belief that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction - not even hindsight is 20/20.
Two reports released this month disagree on whether that uranium-buying attempt ever happened. The issue gained prominence when President Bush (news - web sites) declared in his State of the Union address in January 2003 that Iraq tried to buy a critical ingredient for a nuclear bomb in Africa. Bush's 16-word charge, which cited British reports and formed part of the rationale for the invasion of Iraq two months later, became hugely controversial when critics said it was based on bad intelligence. In July 2003, the White House said the charge should not have been in Bush's speech.
A unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report released this month said U.S. intelligence lacked evidence that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime even attempted to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, let alone actually made a deal. At the same time, however, the report raised sharp questions about former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has positioned himself as a chief critic of the White House's allegations of an Iraq-Africa-uranium connection.
Meanwhile, an examination by a British investigative panel that was released days after the Senate committee report said that the allegations about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa were "well-founded" and that Bush was on solid ground to repeat Britain's concerns in his speech.
In the heated environment of the presidential campaign, the new reports, and the reaction to them in conservative circles, have ignited the issue of Wilson's credibility to a point that has eclipsed questions about whether Iraq actually sought uranium.
Wilson charged last July that his own investigation in Niger, done at the CIA (news - web sites)'s request, revealed no evidence that Iraq had sought to buy uranium there, and that the White House knew or should have known that. His whistleblower message gained credibility because at the time he delivered it, U.S. forces occupying Iraq were failing to find any evidence of Saddam's allegedly extensive nuclear weapons development program, or any of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
But in its new report, the Senate Intelligence Committee says Wilson's report from Niger modestly bolstered the case for an Iraq-Niger connection. And the committee disputed his claim that his wife, a CIA employee, played no role in getting him the Niger assignment.
Republicans have seized on the issue, making Wilson fodder for conservative talk radio and frequent e-mails to the news media from the Republican National Committee (news - web sites). They've used it to attack Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), whose campaign is allied with Wilson and had been paying for Wilson's web site attacking Bush.
Critics have also accused the media, including USA TODAY, of trumpeting Wilson's original charges, not doing enough to check his credibility and underreporting the new concerns about the accuracy of some of his statements.
Bush joined the fray Tuesday when an audience member at a political rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, asked him, "Did Ambassador Wilson lie?" (Hawk: I think President Bush has something up his sleeve, but I can't tell you what it is)
"Well, you need to ask the press that question," Bush replied.
In another twist, a federal grand jury has been interviewing White House officials in an investigation of whether someone there violated security laws by disclosing that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is an undercover CIA officer. Bush and Vice President Cheney were interviewed and have retained private attorneys.
Despite its complexities, the controversy surrounding Wilson and the Iraq-uranium allegations can be boiled down to some simple questions:
• Why would Iraq try to buy uranium from Niger when it already had uranium of its own? Iraq had 550 tons of partially processed uranium ore, or yellowcake, that it had mined and processed itself or imported in the 1980s from Niger. But the material was subject to United Nations (news - web sites) inspections, and Iraq's uranium mining and processing facilities had been destroyed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites). British intelligence believed Iraq wanted a secret source of uranium to evade U.N. inspections. U.S. intelligence said Iraq was unlikely to risk exposure in an international uranium deal and would more likely divert its own stockpile because the U.N. inspections occurred only once a year.
• What was Wilson's role? Wilson had been an ambassador to Gabon and was posted to Niger earlier in his career. In 1999, he had gone to Niger to gather information about rumors of uranium sales to Iraq. The CIA sent Wilson back to Niger in February 2002 to check on unconfirmed reports about an Iraqi contract to buy uranium. Wilson reported that he found no evidence of a contract and that Niger's uranium was under French control and could not be diverted to Iraq.
He said Niger's former prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki, had told him that in 1999 he had been approached by a businessman who urged him to meet with an Iraqi delegation. Mayaki said he assumed the meeting would be about uranium, but uranium never came up.
• What did the Senate Intelligence Committee report say about Wilson, and how does he respond? The committee reported that CIA analysts believe Mayaki's comments about the meeting, while inconclusive, tended to support allegations that Iraq was at least trying to buy uranium. Wilson says the Mayaki information was thin and notes that the CIA did not deem it important enough to report to the White House.
The committee reported that Wilson conceded he may have "misspoken" when he told a reporter last year that documents purporting to confirm an Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries when, in fact, he had no access to those documents and could not have known they were forgeries. Wilson says he never claimed to have known about the forged documents.
The committee also questioned Wilson's repeated denials that his wife had "anything to do" with his selection by the CIA to go to Niger. It quoted from a memo by Plame that lays out Wilson's qualifications for the assignment. Wilson and the CIA confirm that the agency, not Plame, selected him for the mission. He says the memo merely laid out his qualifications after he was picked.
•Did Iraq, in fact, try to buy uranium in Niger? The Senate Intelligence Committee report accepted the CIA's ultimate assessment - not reached until after the war - that there was little if any credible evidence available to U.S. intelligence to support the charge that Iraq sought, let alone bought, uranium from Niger.
• Has the White House changed its position on Bush's January 2003 charge? The White House has not withdrawn or amended its statement last July that the intelligence behind the charge "did not rise to the level of inclusion in a presidential speech."
*******************************
And let me ask you all one more question.. Were I a "NOC" (non-official cover) CIA agent, why in the hell would I advocate that my spouse, a former Ambassador of the US and highly visible as such, to go to Niger to "find the truth"?
That was just POOR, POOR, OPSEC on her part.. If anything, she contributed to the blowing of her cover by enlisting her husband into an intelligence operation.
Hawk |
