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

To: jlallen who wrote (34908)	1/13/2004 5:24:38 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

The point is that Bush never mentioned Niger in his specch and the forgeries were not used in the SOTU. The reference in the SOTU was to an independent Brit intel assessment which Tony Blair backs up to this day..... I don't see what is "thin"....seems perfectly reasonable to me .... Is this you're attempt at misdirection? Good try; no cigar. My father was a baseball player. He taught me where to keep my eyes. The point is not Bush's carefully chosen words in the SOTU, designed to mislead. The point is the forgeries didn't appear by magic. Someone made them. Who? A mysterious unnamed African diplomat alluded to in an Italian paper - this should satisfy all curiosity? Riiight! What to try again? The point is that Bush never mentioned Niger in his specch Do you have a direct link to Rumsfeld's disinformation office? This is apparently the current standard RW line. "Niger wasn't mentioned". If not Niger, who? Maybe South Africa in 1988 - which the US approved. The BBC television programme Correspondent reported in March 2001 that Iraqi defectors, including a nuclear engineer and an assistant to Saddam Hussain's son Uday, had revealed that Iraq obtained uranium for its nuclear programme from South Africa. The deal had been signed in 1986 and the uranium delivered in 1988. An unnamed South African intelligence official was cited by the programme as saying that the US Government approved the deal. "The story is true," he told Correspondent. "About 50 kilograms were sold to the Iraqis. The Americans gave the green light for the deal." news.bbc.co.uk I don't think you really want to go there. Personally, I think the first part of talkingpointsmemo.com leaves little doubt that Niger is the unnamed African country. In fact if you google <african "identified as Niger">, you'll find many hits including The Uranium Fiction We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, stepped up to the issue yesterday when he said the C.I.A. had approved Mr. Bush's speech and failed to advise him to drop the mistaken charge that Iraq had recently tried to import significant quantities of uranium from an African nation, later identified as Niger. Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do. onlisareinsradar.com As for which Tony Blair backs up to this day..... that would be the intelligence that Blair has refused to give to the UN even though required to do so by Article 10 of UN Resolution 1441. It was in compliance of this same Article 10, that the US provided the documents that took the UN some two hours to decide were forgeries. Guess Blair doesn't want a similar problem. Actually he has little choice, but to "hold fast". He knows that otherwise his government would fall. Since the Iraq war, Mr Blair has stuck to the alleged "Niger connection" on the grounds that Britain has separate intelligence to documents dismissed as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). However, he and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, have also suggested that the claim is under review. Lynne Jones, a Labour MP, challenged Mr Blair on whether he would still use "words of such absolute certainty" as he did last September when he said: "We know that Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa." She told Mr Blair: "On July 3, the Government finally admitted that it had not passed to the IAEA the evidence on which you based your statement to the House that 'we know that Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa'. Are you not concerned that the failure of the source of that intelligence to pass it on to the IAEA for scrutiny is a breach of article 10 of [UN] Security Council Resolution 1441?" The Prime Minister replied: "I stand by entirely the claim that was made last September. The intelligence on which we based this was not the so-called forged documents that have been put to the IAEA, and the IAEA have accepted that they got no such forged documents from British intelligence we have independent intelligence to that effect." The Prime Minister continued: "We know in the 1980s that Iraq purchased from Niger over 270 tons of uranium, and therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility let's at least put it like this that they went back to Niger again. That is why I stand by entirely the statement that was made in the September dossier." His remarks drew gasps from MPs. Tam Dalyell, the longest-serving MP, said the Government was not backing down over Niger because "a pack of cards" about its case for war would then collapse. "This was one of the main arguments that persuaded many doubting colleagues to ... endorse going to war," he said." calpundit.com But, in fact, there is considerable doubt about this "independent intelligence". Part of this "intelligence" seems to be a trip made by Wissam al-Zahawie, an Iraqi diplomat, in 1999. But that doesn't hold up when scrutinized - see this Time interview time.com Moreover, Niger's Prime Minister Hama Hamadou has called on Blair to put-up or shut-up (see telegraph.co.uk, with the quote "Saddam never shopped for uranium in my country. Blair is mute. The other portion of the "independent intelligence" turns out to be not so independent. Apparently the Italians provided summaries to others including the French. So the British got summaries from both Italians and French even though they were from the same original source. Call it The French Connection. All of this has led to speculation that Did U.S. intelligence use Italian intelligence to con British intelligence into believing what U.S. intelligence knew to be a lie — that Iraq sought uranium from Africa for use in a nuclear weapons program? Is that the “back story” behind this discredited assertion — “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — in the Brits’ ballyhooed September 2002 dossier, which Bush cited in his 2003 State of the Union address? scoop.co.nz Now I'm sure that as you said this all "seems perfectly reasonable to me", but I'll maintain the forgeries have the potential for being the "oval office tapes" or if you prefer the "stained blue dress" of this investigation. JMO lurqer