To: Rascal who wrote (105138 ) 7/15/2003 9:38:22 AM From: stockman_scott Respond to of 281500 A Quilt of Misinformation? Letter to the Editor The Washington Post Tuesday, July 15, 2003washingtonpost.com CIA Director George J. Tenet's mea culpa does not entirely account for the burgeoning "yellowcake" scandal ["Bush, Rice Blame CIA for Iraq Error," front page, July 12]. If the CIA had warned the administration that the intelligence was questionable and had kept it out of the president's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati, how, then, did this intelligence become credible in time for President Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address, and who within the administration pushed for its use? More important, this controversy fits into what appears to be a quilt of misinformation sewn by the Bush administration. In the same State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein was aiding and protecting al Qaeda, an assertion that has never been proven. He also said that Iraq was "assembling" weapons and, as such, posed "a serious and mounting threat to our country," echoing an earlier statement by Vice President Cheney that "time is not on our side." Now Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says that the administration had no "dramatic new evidence" of the development of weapons of mass destruction. In March, a week after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the Niger documents were forgeries, Vice President Cheney claimed that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Further, a year prior to Mr. Cheney's assertion, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson concluded that it was highly unlikely that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger -- much less procured it. As U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, President Bush needs to account for his administration's misstatements, be they errors or lies. MICHAEL HINDS Chicago