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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (19286)	5/19/2003 11:06:18 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

You're going to use evidence provided by the US and UK governments, to prove that the statements of US and UK leaders aren't lies? Remember, these are the leaders who have already been caught, citing evidence in their speeches, evidence that later was proven to be crude forgeries. At this point, I don't trust, I won't take at face value, anything either of those governments say, unless I also hear it elsewhere (and I don't mean in an Americans Enterprise Institute position paper, or on Fox News). If they can do this, they are capable of anything: Fake Iraq-Africa Link That Drove America to War: DURING A crucial four-month period leading up to the current war in Iraq, US and British officials falsely charged that Saddam Hussein's government had tried to buy large quantities of uranium for nuclear weapons from an African country. Among those making the claim was President George W. Bush, who included it in his annual State of the Union address in January.The US State Department eventually identified the African country as Niger. In a "fact sheet" issued last December, the department said that Iraq's cover-up of the attempted uranium purchase showed that Baghdad was lying about its programme for developing weapons of mass destruction…. It was less than two weeks before the initial bombing of Baghdad that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency decisively discredited accusations that had all along been denied by both Niger and Iraq. Mohammed ElBaradei told the UN Security Council that the documents on which the charges were based had been found to be forgeries. The US now accepts that the apparent evidence of an Iraqi link to African uranium has been proven to be counterfeit. Secretary of State Colin Powell denies that Washington played any role in fabricating the documents, and US and UN officials say they do not know who is responsible for the forgeries. A US senator recently urged the FBI to investigate. "There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq," said John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat representing the state of West Virginia. Iraq's supposed connivance with an African nation was first cited by the British government in a dossier published on September 24. That same day, according to US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, CIA chief George Tenet said at a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had sought to buy 500 tonnes of uranium oxide from Niger. Secretary of State Powell made a similar charge to the same committee in another closed-door session two days later, Mr Hersh writes in the current edition of The New Yorker magazine. "The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the president a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq," Mr Hersh reports. The documents in question consisted of a series of faked letters between Iraqi and Niger officials. One letter, dated July 2000, reportedly bears an amateurish forgery of the Niger president's signature. Another letter was sent over the name of a person identified as Niger's foreign minister, when the signatory had left the position of foreign minister 10 years prior to the date of the letter. According to Mr Hersh's calculations, the 500 tonnes of uranium oxide mentioned in the purported correspondence would potentially be enough to build 100 nuclear bombs. Iraq did seek to assemble a nuclear arsenal during the 1980s and 1990s. And Niger Prime Minister Hama Hamadou recently acknowledged that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from his country in the 1980s. But that approach was rebuffed, Mr Hamadou said. Iraq's own nuclear-weapons potential was severely diminished as a result of US-led bombing raids carried out during the 1991 Gulf War. And UN weapons inspectors subsequently removed or destroyed all that apparently remained of Iraq's nuclear fuel and equipment. Mr Hersh, who came to fame by exposing a US platoon's massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1971, points out in his new article that Niger's entire output of uranium oxide is pre-sold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan and Spain. Mr Hersh quotes an unnamed official from the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying, "Five hundred tonnes can't be siphoned off without anyone noticing." But despite the many apparent discrepancies in the charges involving Niger, they were taken seriously by both the British and American governments for several months. Questions are now being asked as to why the forgeries were not uncovered sooner - at least in time to spare President Bush the embarrassment of making accusations subsequently shown to be unfounded. (3/31/03 article in East African) allafrica.com