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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kech who wrote (169662)	6/12/2006 10:00:55 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793781

No less than George Tenet, former Director of the CIA, says that both the CIA and the State Department disputed claims that Saddam was attempting to purchase yellowcake in Niger, more than Iraq had already acquired, was already known to the UN weapons inspectors, and was, in fact, under lock and key. Direct quote from Tenet, "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." globalsecurity.org

To: kech who wrote (169662)	6/12/2006 10:24:38 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793781

Interestingly, before Tenet fell on his sword vis-a-vis the "16 words, " Deputy National Security Advisor Steven Hadley fell on his own sword vis-a-vis the same "16 words". "[Hadley] said that he deleted a reference to Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium in Africa from President Bush’s October 7 Cincinnati speech based on a telephone call from Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and two CIA memos sent to himself—one of which was also sent to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley said that this second memo detailed some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence . . . based on what we now know, we had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn’t take them . . . having been taken out of Cincinnati, it should have been taken out of the State of the Union." carnegieendowment.org The document above linked is an excellent beginning primer on the willfulness of US intelligence failures prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If the Senate Intelligence committee ever finishes Phase Two of their own investigation, that may provide more insight. The wheels may grind slow but they grind exceedingly fine.