Nobody to match Bush

Blair ignored CIA weapons warning

Intelligence breakdown after Britain dismissed US doubts over Iraq nuclear link to Niger

Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday July 13, 2003

Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator.

In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister.

The letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the case for war against Iraq, reveals that Britain ignored a request from the CIA to remove claims that Saddam was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger, despite concerns that the allegations were bogus. It also details a government decision to block information going to the CIA because it was too sensitive.

As diplomatic relations between America and Britain become increasingly strained over Iraq's WMD, Straw said that the Government had separate evidence of the Niger link, which it has not shared with the US.

The revelations come just four days before Tony Blair travels to America for his toughest visit there since he came to power in 1997. As well as WMD, the Prime Minister will also raise Britain's 'serious concerns' over the treatment of British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay.

Straw's letter reveals:

· That evidence given to the CIA by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson - that Niger officials had denied any link - was never shared with the British.

· That Foreign Office officials were left to read reports of Wilson's findings in the press only days before they were raised as part of the committee's inquiry into the war.

· That when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq's WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with 'any explanation'.

Although publicly the two governments are trying to maintain a united front, the admission two days ago by the head of the CIA, George Tenet, that President Bush should never have made the claim about the Niger connection to Iraq, has left British officials exposed.

Last night, Downing Street and Foreign Office sources said that 'they would not blink' over the Niger claims. One Downing Street figure said that they were based on intelligence from a third country that was reliable. 'We are not backing down,' he said.

Another official said that the claim was based on the 'intelligence assessment' made at the time, leaving the door open to a climbdown if the intelligence is found to be wrong.

'I want to make it clear that neither I nor, to the best of my knowledge, any UK officials were aware of Ambassador Wilson's visit until reference first appeared in the press,' Straw said in the letter.

'The media has reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about this element [the Niger connection] of the September dossier. This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which had not been shared with the US. A judgment was therefore made to retain it.'

Straw said that the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment of the Iraqi nuclear threat did not just rest on attempts to procure uranium. There was also other evidence of links between the two countries and attempts to sign export deals.

Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary who has become a trenchant critic of the Government's case for war against Iraq, said that it 'stretched credibility' to say that the Americans and the British had failed to share such basic information.

'From all I know of the intimate relationship between the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Services, I find it hard to credit that there was such a breakdown of communication between them,' Cook said.

'It is time the Government came clean and published the evidence. The longer it delays, the greater the suspicion will become that it didn't really believe it itself.

'There is one simple question it must answer. Why did its evidence of the uranium deal not convince the CIA? If it was not good enough to be in the President's address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister's dossier.'

Yesterday, in another damaging broadside, Richard Butler, who was executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission to Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said that anyone who had claimed that there was a link between Niger and Iraq should resign.

Referring to Australian politicians who had made similar claims, only to withdraw them and apologise later, Butler said: 'In the justification for the war, these claims were false and known to be false.

'A Minister who misleads Parliament must accept responsibility for it and resign. Ministers must be held responsible, not public servants.'

 

Coming online in 08.

Possible dynasty in the making.

The country has changed to the right. Dems just look silly, weak and piss-stained - like Dukakis did driving that tank.

Looking out this far though, I am intrigued by the possibility of a watershed event or movement in American politics and what might precipitate it - something like the 60s. So, I'm keeping a close eye on the young people - painful as they are to look at and listen to.

Calling em like I see em.

Geo.

 

I should add that the one thing that might make me change my mind about prospects for the Dems is if someone quietly brought
in James Carville - the sharpest political cat I've seen in my lifetime.

Inexplicably, he was pretty much sidelined in 00. He would have found a way to weave Clinton's power into the fabric of the Gore campaign in some palatable way and they would have won it.

Geo.

 

North Korea

Kim Il Sung



Kim Yong Il



USA

 

QUOTE]Quote from KymarFye:

You keep on saying this, but, when challenged to provide supporting evidence, you punt.

I have not heard any challenge that would require "punting."

You continue to spew your denial and narrow minded opinions, I simply restate the obvious.


Okay - then I really wonder whether you put on a bib before opening your upper shithole. Is that the level on which you'd like to debate these issues? (If you follow your usual tactics, you will cut and paste part of the first sentence from this paragraph into some other post as some supposed demonstration that I argue solely by use of ad hominems and "flaming.")

I made a comment that I believed you to be more intelligent than a particular argument of yours suggests, and you respond with wondering if I "put on a bib before opening my upper shithole."

Was that escalation into gutterball really necessary? If you want to play that game, I doubt you have the stomach for it.

Your idea of analyzing the situation is to imagine totally counterfactual scenarios based on vague speculation about what might have been possible "behind the scenes," even though it contradicts everything that is known about the motives and statements of key participants, both as public stated and as revealed through analysis and actual behind the scenes reporting.

Counter-factual? That is your opinion. You don't know what went on, or goes on behind closed doors with high level politicians. I doubt you have even spoken with, or spent time with high level politicians or even understand the game of high stakes diplomacy.

Aside from being a fantasy, this response has nothing at all to do with the issue of utilizing a united front against Saddam. Your idea is that an effective united front could have been produced behind the scenes? That's a contradiction in terms. Just using France as the main example: When the French government's unambiguous opposition to the US was public stated, and verified by intensive French efforts to rally opposition to the US, any politically meaningful united front was finis. Imagining a set of circumstances under which it might have arised again, and could have been depended upon and therefore might have had the desired effect, would require imagining a complete transformation of all of the parties involved.

Your opinion, not an argument based in fact. Yes, my opinion is a deal could possibly have been struck in order to generate a unified front....or are you trying to tell us the the French position was purely a moral one, and not having anything to do with oil interests or other economic concerns. Bush tried to play hardball with other members of the security council, and when he couldn't win, he broke off the negotiations and did his own thing, needing to fabricate a threat to the American people to gain support in the process.

I took your reference to "chicken hawks" as a slur.

So you are saying there are absolutely no "chicken hawks" in league with the administration.

False accusations and repetions of big lies are also familiar fascist tactics. But no one claims that the Bush Administration isn't being forced to address these issues. There's a difference, however, between addressing the issues and merely conceding the critics' case.

False accusation and repetition of lies are employed by fascist regimes in power, not those who are trying to curtail the activities of the ones in power.

To this point, it was argued that Bushed used false information. The brain dead supporters of Bush immediately called those levying such criticism and anti-American and treasonous, etc.

But we now know that at least part of the intelligence was in fact Bogus, and we don't have certainty that Bush didn't fully know that when he used it, or that he didn't use other information that was bogus and known by him to be Bogus.

So those who knee jerked in support of Bush were wrong in their calling those who made the claims of bogus information liars.

Your tactic is not to admit the fact that bogus infomation was used, but to try to minimized the damage by attempting to minimize the value of that bogus information. You don't want to give any credit at all to those who were correct in their criticisms of Bush for using flawed data, and questioning his motives for doing so.

You are so busy always trying to spin the facts to your own agenda that you can't clearly see what is happening.

Again, you punt - and you repeat an unproven charge while seemingly assuming that it's fact - that Bush "was using fabricated intelligence." Your unsupported slur against Bush says more about your hostility towards him than about any of the facts and issues we're discussing.

Again, you see what you want to see. It is a fact that Bush did use fabricated, forged intelligence, even he has admitted that now. A slur is non factual, what I said is now a fact in evidence.
His real motivations to use this information may or may not be innocent and not knowing the information to be false. All we have is his word.



I've given examples of how such passages have been manipulated. (I see in the op-ed you c&p'd that Pat Buchanan repeated the dishonest use of the Cheney quotation in his own typically intemperate take on these matters.) I've also spoken about them in general terms. I don't accept any obligation to go through the list item by item.

You are playing the reverse equivocation game.

Here is an example of what I mean.

In the Nixon and Kennedy debate, most political historians will agree that if you look at the debate on transcript only, Nixon won that debate.

However, because Nixon did not come across as well as Kennedy, was not as charismatic as Kennedy, and because Nixon was sweating like a pig, the observers voted for Kennedy in that debate process.

I suggest that Cheney is a very smart man, a highly manipulative man, a politician, who knows how to convey a message and practice equivocation at the same time. It is the observation of the majority of politicos who saw those interviews with Cheney that Cheney was leading us to believe Iraq had nuclear designs and was working to get the tools necessary to do so, and as such represented a threat so intense and immediate that war was the only remedy and necessity for national security.

And no, Clinton did not have "sex" with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.

I've challenged you to back up your view of Bush's war justifications. I presented a major policy statement that directly contradicts your claim, and you have yet to produce a single item in support of it. The best you can do, apparently, is to repeat your empty assertions or change the subject.

Prove to me what Bush's real intentions were? Lacking proof and evidence of that, all views of Bush's war justifications are just opinions. You have yours, I have mine as to the veracity of what he publicly says. Of course Bush is going to issue a policy statement that you agree with. So what? It is still just opinion, not fact of real agenda.

There are plenty of theories floating around out there, and we now have evidence and admission that bogus information was given as a reason for war. Who knows how much more information was bogus? Who knows if Bush knowingly used that bogus information? Who knows if Bush did all that was possible to negotiate with the other members of the U.N.

What leaves me with a gaping hole in my view of your intelligence, is you speak as if you do know the answers to these questions from a factual, and not opinion formed basis.

You simply are without doubt, seeming to have fact, incontrovertible fact where there is really is none concerning Bush's motives and agenda, and I see no process by which anyone could have removed any and all reasonable doubt beyond sticking their big fat head up their big fat ass and repeating over and over again:

"George Bush is right. George Bush would never lie to the American people. George Bush always does what is right and best for America. George Bush only wants what is best for me. Yada, yada, yada...."

Reminds me of "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit." That kind of reasoning doesn't cut it in international affairs - war and peace is not a US murder trial, and enemies of the US don't get out on technicalities.

Oh, now you are the expert in international affairs and how they work. War and peace is waged on the basis of fact or fiction and ego.

When it is based on fact, like WWII, we have nearly full agreement here at home that it was right to engage in the war.

When war is engaged on agenda based policy lacking evidence and fact, the result is what we see now here at home and worldwide regarding the Iraq war.


You have not demonstrated, by far, the WMDs did not deserve to be a significant element in the case for war. You have merely offered suspicions extrapolated from one distorted analysis of one narrow aspect of the WMD issue.

I supported the war effort on the basis of Bush's claim that we were under the threat of use of WMD that existed, in the possession of Hussein, that Hussein had full intent to use them against the U.S., that he was sponsoring terrorists who would use these weapons against the USA.

If they existed and if Hussein was going to use them against the USA they were central and the key reason for war.

If they did not exist, and if Hussein was not going to use them, and if he was not arming terrorists with them, I don't see a reason for war.

So what do we have how? We have no evidence of WMD, nor of terrorists armed with WMD from Hussein. So I no longer see a case, and I question whether or not there really was a case based on WMD to begin with.

 

Resolution 1441 was a unified ultimatum: "full and immediate compliance" or face "serious consequences." Everyone know what it meant. Given the parallel statements and deployments, could any informed observer have had any doubt? Did you personally have any doubt what it meant?

You simply presume that an agreement was available and that no credible "behind the scenes" effort was made. You apparently cannot even conceive of a divergence of interests and intentions, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

I don't think that describes SH's "gamble." The pre-war statements of his government and the obvious state of American preparations and intentions strongly indicated the war was likely unless he was willing to offer much greater cooperation than he ever showed any willingness to offer. It appears to me that his strategy all along was, and remains, to string things out for as long as possible without ever truly giving in, while exploiting divisions in the West to the greatest attainable extent and effect.

I did not state a belief that France committed a pre-planned betrayal, merely that it was fair to consider the possibility. France's historical aspirations have frequently put it at odds with the US, sometimes dramatically. My own view is that, at the time France voted for Resolution 1441, the French had not yet decided whether and how to press their desire to reduce US preponderance in Europe, to create a global counterweight to US power, to assert leadership of the EU at the expense of the Atlanticist Blair, to appease its own large and militant Muslim population, and to stand by its economic, military, and even personal ties to the Iraqi regime. If Germany had waffled, if Russia had refused the golden opportunity to weaken NATO, if the Iraqis had played their game less effectively, France may well have decided the time wasn't right. Instead, the forces arrayed against US policy fed off each other, and became far too powerful to be easily handled through backroom diplomatic maneuvers.

Pure supposition, again. You can always imagine some alternative ideal scenario - it's especially easy if you're in no way constrained by facts and events as they actually developed.

When you are incapable of responding directly to the arguments advanced, you resort to accusing me of posturing as more knowledgeable than you.

The negative political ramifications to which I was referring were not domestic ones, though there would have been those as well. I was referring to the effect on US interests and standing internationally, especially in the Middle East, as per my earlier comments.

Again, you simply ignore the arguments for which you apparently have no response. For purposes of debate, you in effect concede that backing down would have entailed numerous immediate negative effects, and would have entailed very high risks over the middle and longer term.

Regarding your charge that Bush's "inflexibility" was the only explanation for US actions, the point is that giving in to the French and others and allowing a sidetracked inspections process to drag on, amidst heightening uncertainties and opposition, forced re-deployment, new opportunities for mischief, and so on, would have been far from a costless alternative either for the US or for other opponents of the Iraqi regime.

Rather than changing the subject and offering a merely emotional response, you could actually show how I was wrong in my assessment of your statements to this point, and how your approach would have been more likely to benefit Saddam's opponents and the Iraqi people.

The policies you apparently now prefer - no war, or, no war without the French - would have done nothing for Iraqi opponents of Saddam. At best, presuming that Saddam would eventually have been brought down even in the wake of a major political defeat inflicted on the US and a major political victory for Saddam, it would have exposed them to additional months or years of danger and oppression. Given past US history of abandoning the Iraqi opposition after giving them reason to hope, they would have had every reason to despair, and anyone on the fence would have had every reason to stick with Saddam. More likely, a US retreat would have left them (the ones who survived, anyway) under his thumb (or his sons' thumbs) in perpetuity.

You pose as a centrist merely interested in "objective" discussion, but, like the open opponents of the war, you refuse to acknowledge the implications of your own position.

 

As previously, pure supposition with no basis in concrete analysis or events.

I am saying that the term itself is a slur - typically aimed, of course, at individuals outside the military who promote hawkish views. Use of the term implies, in effect, that no one who is not actually a soldier can ever advance a credible position in favor of military action. The next question would be whether being a soldier is enough, or whether the only credible positions would have to come from front-line soldiers. Or maybe only from front-line soldiers who've previously seen action... or had been wounded...

No, that's not true. Fascists use those tactics whether or not they are in power. To give one example, Hitler's big lies and false accusations started long before he even had a political party behind him.

Many of those who made claims of bogus information have done so dishonestly. In this one instance, the Administration has taken the position that, in retrospect, the particular Niger-uranium item should not have been included in the SOTU speech.

Your claims against Bush have gone far beyond what the Administration has conceded in this instance. They have said that, based on the information they possessed, they shouldn't have included the particular claim, because they couldn't support it. They have also pointed out that Bush's actual statement, attributing the specific claim to the British, was accurate, and that the British stand by their claim. Among other things, your phraseology implies, without any real basis, that Bush knowingly and systematically "fabricated" intelligence for purposes of deception.

The Administration stands by its claim that Iraq had nuclear designs, a claim for which there is ample evidence. If you examined the Meet the Press transcripts, had actually been watching the interview, or had considered the larger context within which the particular "nuclear weapons" quote emerged, and if you were capable of approaching the issue without your own bias, you would see how silly this particular controversy is.

The idea that Cheney or anyone had actually been trying to press the case that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons" is simply absurd. Your inability to recognize what the ramifications of such a statement would have been, if it was actually intended and accepted at face value, casts doubt on the credibilty of all of your many unsupported opinions and assertions.

Bush's "real intentions" are not the issue. The issue is what case was made and accepted. You have repeatedly claimed that Bush's case depended on "imminent threats." The major policy statement demonstrates the exact opposite. It shows a conscious and direct rejection of the need to demonstrate an imminent threat, and explicitly concedes that none had been demonstrated. Indeed, the policy is based on the idea of preventing, if possible, any truly imminent threat from arising.

You have no basis for your charges regarding Bush's main case for war other than your unsupported assumptions.

For the umpteenth time, the evidence for the case for war was plentiful and diverse, and was in no way dependent on any particular item relating to WMD threats in the narrow manner that you (usually) insist on portraying them (the exceptions being when it suits your purposes to shift the debate into some other context).

 

We were right about uranium, Straw tells CIA
By Colin Brown, Political Editor
(Filed: 13/07/2003)

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, last night clashed with US intelligence chiefs as he defended the Government's controversial September dossier which was used to justify the war in Iraq.

Mr Straw said that Britain's claims that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger were based on solid intelligence even though the American administration has now distanced itself from the allegation.

The Foreign Secretary intervened after George Tenet, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, disowned the uranium claim, saying that it was based on "fragmentary" information. He apologised for allowing the assertion to be used by President George W Bush in his State of the Union address earlier this year.

However, Mr Straw yesterday released a letter which he had sent on Friday to Donald Anderson, the Labour chairman of the Commons select committee on foreign affairs, standing by the allegation and insisting that it came from dependable sources.

Mr Straw said: "The US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US."

***
The CIA secretly dispatched a US envoy, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate the British claim. He reported to the CIA there was no evidence to support the British intelligence, but Mr Straw said that the report - which had not been shared with London by Washington - in fact had confirmed that a delegation from Iraq did go to Niger in 1999.

One Foreign Office official said: "Niger has two main exports - uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens."

The British claim was also challenged by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) which found that documents on which it was based were forged. However, a senior Downing Street official said: "We are sticking by our claim. We received intelligence from another country and we cannot share that with the US."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/13/wirq13.xml

 

Rewriting History To Attack Bush On Iraq
By John Hawkins

If you picked up a paper in the last week or so, you probably got the impression that George Bush spent a year demanding an Iraqi invasion based on claims that Saddam had reconstituted nuclear weapons with uranium bought in Niger. But now that the war is over, we've found out that it was all a lie & there were never any weapons of mass destruction to begin with. So far, nobody has suggested putting Saddam back in power, apologizing, and sending him a fruit basket, but just give them time.

Of course, that wasn't how it actually happened. While the Bush administration certainly talked extensively about weapons of mass destruction, they also continuously discussed Iraq's breaking of UN Resolutions, freedom for the Iraqi people, and Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda & terrorism. But I'm sure many of Bush's critics were too busy screaming about a "war for oil" & "US imperialism" to pay attention to what the Bush administration was actually saying; so we'll have to forgive them.

However, I want to address these claims that Bush lied in the build-up to the Iraq war. So let's take on the big issues, one by one. First off, Bush certainly said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Here's just one of Bush's quotes on the subject,

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow."

Whoops, I'm sorry! That was actually Bill Clinton in 1998. Gosh, it just sounds so much like what President Bush was saying during the build-up to the Iraqi war that it must have just slipped in. So let's try this again. Here's just one of Bush's quotes on the subject of WMD & Iraq,

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security."

Shoot, I did it again. That's actually Hillary Clinton in October of 2002. How did that get in there?

OK, OK...that's enough shenanigans for one editorial. The point is that there was very little dispute between the GOP & Democrats over whether Hussein had WMD or not.

***

So where are the weapons? They may still be buried in Iraq, or perhaps they were destroyed before the war, given to Syria or terrorists, looted, or some combination thereof. I still believe we will find WMD in Iraq, but we're just going to have to be patient & see what turns up.

Next up on the agenda is a throwaway line from Bush's state of the Union speech that is now getting a lot of attention. Here's what Bush had to say about Uranium coming out of Africa / Niger during his 2003 SOTU address,

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

At first glance, that would seem to be relatively uncontroversial given that to this day, the British government stands by its reports that Saddam tried to buy uranium in Africa. However, the US based its intelligence assessment not only on what the Brits said, but on other data including a document that turned out to be forged . Without that document, the Bush administration didn't feel sure of the claim that Hussein bought uranium in Africa, so they withdrew it.

Well this has sparked ceaseless caterwauling on the left. Democrats are claiming Bush lied and are falling all over themselves to call for an inquiries and investigations. I'm sure they're working on a flashy name for the whole thing too. There are probably focus groups out there right now trying to decide whether "Nigergate" or "Uraniumgate" would make a better name for a scandal.

But like the other "scandals" the Dems have tried to cook up since Bush came into office, this one has very little to it. In short, the CIA gave Bush a piece of intelligence info and told him it was genuine, Bush shared it with the American people, then the administration was told it was bogus, and they later told the American people about it. Had the CIA done a better job of keeping the President informed of what they knew, it would have never made the SOTU speech in the first place.

***

Democrats should understand that the CIA sometimes makes mistakes, especially since Bill Clinton once bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan based on bogus intelligence info he received. In any case, this is a lot of hot air over one relatively unimportant sentence in a 5000 word speech. The fact that the anti-war left is trying to make a huge stink over it lets you know how desperate they are to distract the American voters from how many of them were on the wrong side of history when we went into Iraq.

But there's one more subject we've got to cover and that's Dick Cheney's claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons. From Eason Jordan's CNN, here’s Wolf Blitzer with all the dastardly details,

"Two months after the President's address to Congress, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and went further than the president in alleging Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.

"He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," Cheney said."

Wow, so the vice president said Saddam had nukes two months before the war? Isn't it funny that we didn't hear more about that at the time? I mean after all, you'd think that would have been a hot story. So where were the articles at the New York Times that began, "Iraq has been confirmed to be a nuclear power! If a nuclear war erupts, women and minorities are expected to be the hardest hit"?

That can be answered by actually going to the March 16th, 2003 transcript of "Meet the Press". First off, Blitzer's quote above is correct. However, Cheney also said,

"...I think that would be the fear here, that even if he were tomorrow to give everything up, if he stays in power, we have to assume that as soon as the world is looking the other way and preoccupied with other issues, he will be back again rebuilding his BW and CW capabilities, and once again reconstituting his nuclear program."

So as we can see, earlier in the same interview Cheney said Saddam was "reconstituting" his program, not that he had "reconstituted nuclear weapons". Later in the interview, Cheney says,

"We know (Saddam)'s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization."

Again, notice that Cheney says Saddam is "trying...to produce nuclear weapons", not that he has them.

So at best (from the anti-war left’s perspective), what we have here is Cheney misspeaking. At worst, the transcript is simply wrong. You almost have to wonder if that's the case given that it's hard to imagine Tim Russert blithely ignoring the VP of the United States revealing for the first time that Iraq had nukes. But Blitzer and the other people who are using this quote are so desperate to nail the Bush administration that they're willing to deliberately mislead their audiences by leaving out the context of the situation. I would say "for shame", but anyone who'd try to trick their audience the way Blitzer & his ilk are doing probably isn't capable of being shamed.

Unfortunately, Americans are fighting two wars right now. Conservatives are focused on fighting a war against terrorists who want to murder Americans. While on the other hand, the anti-war left is spending much of its time and energy trying to rewrite history and find minutiae it can distort in its never ending quest to smear the President. If they spent all that energy coming up with ways to fight against America's real enemies instead of nipping at the ankles of the President, all Americans would be better off.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/john/bushiraq.php

 

July 11, 2003, 11:00 a.m.
Scandal!
Bush’s enemies aren't telling the truth about what he said.

By Clifford May

The president's critics are lying. Mr. Bush never claimed that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. It is not true — as USA Today reported on page one Friday morning — that "tainted evidence made it into the President's State of the Union address." For the record, here's what President Bush actually said in his SOTU: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Precisely which part of that statement isn't true? The British government did say that it believed Saddam had sought African uranium. Is it possible that the British government was mistaken? Sure. Is it possible that Her Majesty's government came by that belief based on an erroneous American intelligence report about a transaction between Iraq and Niger? Yes — but British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet say that's not what happened.

They say, according to Britain's liberal Guardian newspaper, that their claim was based on "extra material, separate and independent from that of the US."

I suppose you can make the case that a British-government claim should not have made its way into the president's SOTU without further verification. But why is that the top of the TV news day after day? Why would even the most dyspeptic Bush-basher see in those 16 accurate words of President's Bush's 5,492-word SOTU an opportunity to persuade Americans that there's a scandal in the White House, another Watergate, grounds for impeachment?

Surely, everyone does know by now that Saddam Hussein did have a nuclear-weapons-development program. That program was set back twice: Once by Israeli bombers in 1981, and then a decade later, at the end of the Gulf War when we learned that Saddam's nuclear program was much further along than our intelligence analysts had believed.

As President Bush also said in the SOTU:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

Since Saddam never demonstrated — to the U.S., the U.N., or even to Jacques Chirac — that he had abandoned his nuclear ambitions, one has to conclude that he was still in the market for nuclear materials. And, indeed, many intelligence analysts long believed that he was trying to acquire such material from wherever he could — not just from Niger but also from Gabon, Namibia, Russia, Serbia, and other sources.

Maybe there was no reliable evidence to support the particular intelligence report saying that Saddam had acquired yellowcake (lightly processed uranium ore) from Niger. But the British claim was only that Saddam had sought yellowcake — not that he succeeded in getting a five-pound box Fedexed to his palace on the Tigris.

And is there even one member of the U.S. Congress who would say that it was on the basis of this claim alone that he voted to authorize the president to use military force against Saddam? Is there one such individual anywhere in America?

A big part of the reason this has grown into such a brouhaha is that Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote an op-ed about it in last Sunday's New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Actually, Wilson has plenty of choices — but no basis for his slanderous allegation. A little background: Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake — because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.

Wilson says he spent eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" — hardly what a competent spy, detective, or even reporter would call an in-depth investigation. Nevertheless, let's give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that he was correct when he reported back to the CIA that he believed it was "highly doubtful that any such transaction ever took place. "

But, again, because it was "doubtful" that Saddam actually acquired yellowcake from Niger, it does not follow that he never sought it there or elsewhere in Africa, which is all the president suggested based on what the British said — and still say.

And how does Wilson leap from there to the conclusion that Vice President Cheney and his boss "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat"? Wilson hasn't the foggiest idea what other intelligence the president and vice president had access to.

It also would have been useful for the New York Times and others seeking Wilson's words of wisdom to have provided a little background on him. For example:

He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

He's an "adjunct scholar" at the Middle East Institute — which advocates for Saudi interests. The March 1, 2002 issue of the Saudi government-weekly Ain-Al Yaqeen lists the MEI as an "Islamic research institutes supported by the Kingdom."

He's a vehement opponent of the Bush administration which, he wrote in the March 3, 2003 edition of the left-wing Nation magazine, has "imperial ambitions." Under President Bush, he added, the world worries that "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

He also wrote that "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party." He said that "the new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."

He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions — and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.

And consider this: Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat." He added that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."

In other words, Wilson is no disinterested career diplomat — he's a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind. And too many in the media are helping him and allies grind it.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may071103.asp