by Clifford May July 11, 2003, 11:00 a.m. Scandal! Bush’s enemies aren't telling the truth about what he said. 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.
Too many people thinking alike, following the idealogically pure line. Too many arrogant hacks, not enough thinkers. Too many people dismissing what others who are a bit different were saying. This confirms what many who were opposed to the war were worried about... no realistic plan for post-war Iraq. Were these projections about the post-war anything but wishful thinking? Usually I'm a bit gleeful when I'm proved to be right, but not this time. This whole thing just sucks and we're going to be paying for it in blood, treasure, and prestige for years. _____________ Pentagon had no detailed plans for postwar Iraq: report Sat Jul 12, 4:33 PM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo! WASHINGTON (AFP) - Pentagon (news - web sites) planners failed to develop detailed plans for postwar Iraq (news - web sites) because they were convinced Iraqis would welcome US troops and that a hand-picked exile leader would replace Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and impose order. The exclusive report in Knight Ridder Newspapers quoted more than a dozen current and former senior government officials, many of whom linked a lack of US planning to the current chaos in Iraq. "There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said one former senior official. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity. Civilian planners at the Pentagon's secretive Office of Special Plans hoped to transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the oil trade in the region and encircle Iran with US friends and allies, the report said. It also quoted officials describing efforts by that office to sideline and disregard other US government departments' planning for a postwar Iraq. Putting Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi in power in Baghdad was a key part of this vision, according to the officials. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the head of the Pentagon planning group, denied the plan to install Chalabi, but Pentagon advisor Richard Perle confirmed it. "The Department of Defense (news - web sites) proposed a plan that would have resulted in a substantial number of Iraqis available to assist in the immediate postwar period," Perle, a close counsellor of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was quoted as saying. Had it been accepted "we'd be in much better shape today," he said. Even after the White House curbed its support for the Iraqi exiles, the Pentagon assisted Chalabi's 700-strong paramilitary force and flew him to to an air base near Nasiriyah in anticipation of his taking power. Soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell it became clear that Chalabi lacked public support in Iraq, and anti-American anger grew as Iraq descended into chaos. But the Pentagon planners had made no alternate plan, the report charged. They had also ignored experts from other departments who disagreed with their vision, it said. Postwar planning documents from the State Department and the CIA (news - web sites) were "disappearing down the black hole" at the Pentagon, a former US official was quoted as saying. For example, the Pentagon ignored the "Future of Iraq" project, an eight-month effort by the State Department involving 17 agencies and dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals. Officials in the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau, which houses the Office of Special Plans, were told to ignore State Department views, according to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired from the bureau July 1. "We almost disemboweled State," she was quoted as saying. Feith said the planning involved "a robust interagency process" and denied his staff was instructed to ignore other agencies and departments. Pentagon plans avoided treating problems such as the possible destruction of oil fields, food shortages and large-scale refugee flows, he said. "Instead, we are facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war," he said.
Make it 20. 20 Lies About the War Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker 13 July 2003 1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none. 2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added. Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces. 3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review". 4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges. 5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago. 6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously. 7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it. 8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons programme" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not." 9 Previous weapons inspections had failed Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection. 10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming." 11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes. 12 The "dodgy dossier" Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created. 13 War would be easy Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained. 14 Umm Qasr The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely. 15 Basra rebellion Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth. 16 The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed. 17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong. "It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen." 18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD "I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin. 19 Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people". Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. 20 WMD were found After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008
Tenet leaks back. CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct. Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, July 13, 2003; Page A01 CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials. Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged. The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech. It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in Friday's statement. As Bush left Africa yesterday to return to Washington from a five-day trip overshadowed by the intelligence blunder, he was asked whether he considered the matter over. "I do," he replied. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday that "the president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well." But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention last October that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge a different picture is being presented than the administration has given to date. Details about the alleged attempt by Iraq to buy as much as 500 tons of uranium oxide were contained in a national intelligence estimate (NIE) that was concluded in late September 2002. It was that same reference that the White House wanted to use in Bush's Oct. 7 speech that Tenet blocked, the sources said. That same intelligence report was the basis for the 16-word sentence about Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Africa that was contained in the January State of the Union address that has drawn recent attention. Administration sources said White House officials, particularly those in the office of Vice President Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq. Cheney had made the potential threat of Hussein having a nuclear weapon a central theme of his August 2002 speeches that began the public buildup toward war with Baghdad. In the Oct. 7 Cincinnati speech, the president for the first time outlined in detail the threat Hussein posed to the United States on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing war. Bush talked in part about "evidence" indicating that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. The president listed Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists," satellite photographs showing former nuclear facilities were being rebuilt, and Iraq's attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for use in enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. There was, however, no mention of Niger or even attempts to purchase uranium from other African countries, which was contained in the NIE and also included in a British intelligence dossier that had been published a month earlier. By January, when conversations took place with CIA personnel over what could be in the president's State of the Union speech, White House officials again sought to use the Niger reference since it still was in the NIE. "We followed the NIE and hoped there was more intelligence to support it," a senior administration official said yesterday. When told there was nothing new, White House officials backed off, and as a result "seeking uranium from Niger was never in drafts," he said. Tenet raised no personal objection to the ultimate inclusion of the sentence, attributed to Britain, about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. His statement on Friday said he should have. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," the CIA director said. Bush said in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday that he continues to have faith in Tenet. "I do, absolutely," he said. "I've got confidence in George Tenet; I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA." There is still much that remains unclear about who specifically wanted the information inserted in the State of the Union speech, or why repeated concerns about the allegations were ignored. "The information was available within the system that should have caught this kind of big mistake," a former Bush administration official said. "The question is how the management of the system, and the process that supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and embarrass the president." Senior Bush aides said they do not believe they have a communication problem within the White House that prevented them from acting on any of the misgivings about the information that were being expressed at lower levels of the government. "I'm sure there will have to be some retracing of steps, and that's what's happening," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. "The mechanical process, we think is fine. Will more people now give more, tighter scrutiny going forward? Of course." A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael J. Gerson, does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up causing the White House so much grief. Officials said three speechwriters were at the core of the State of the Union team, and that they worked from evidence against Iraq provided by the National Security Council. NSC officials dealt with the CIA both in gathering material for the speech and later in vetting the drafts. Officials involved in preparing the speech said there was much more internal debate over the next line of the speech, when Bush said in reference to Hussein, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, noted a disagreement about Iraq's intentions for the tubes, which can be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had raised those questions two weeks before the State of the Union address, saying Hussein claimed nonnuclear intentions for the tubes. In March, the IAEA said it found Hussein's claim credible, and could all but rule out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program.
Ah, the fingerpointing. I love it! Fortunately, it'll get worse before it gets better. That lock Bush supposedly has on the coming election might not be so tight as some would have you believe. As far as justification for the war goes, I believe that the government just didn't think we'd give a flip, not that they cared whether or not we did anyway. However, had there been a draft public opinion would have been everything and you could bet that many current supporters of the war with Iraq would have been against it.
From next week's Time Magazine, which hits stands several days after Bush declared the matter closed. The cover is a photo of the SOU address with a headline of "Untruth and Consequences." Anybody seen treeman or t4/BobRainey/heathy? I miss hearing how all this news is trumped up American-hating, Saddam-loving lies. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030721-464405,00.html A Question Of Trust The CIA's Tenet takes the fall for a flawed claim in the State of the Union, but has Bush's credibility taken an even greater hit? By MICHAEL DUFFY AND JAMES CARNEY Sunday, Jul. 13, 2003 The State of the Union message is one of America's greatest inventions, conceived by the Founders to force a powerful Chief Executive to report to a public suspicious of kings. Delivered to a joint session of Congress in democracy's biggest cathedral, it is the most important speech a President gives each year, written and rewritten and then polished again. Yet the address George W. Bush gave on Jan. 28 was more consequential than most because he was making a revolutionary case: why a nation that traditionally didn't start fights should wage a pre-emptive war. As Bush noted that night, "Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead." Just how aware was Bush of the accuracy of what he was about to say? Deep in his 5,400-word speech was a single sentence that had already been the subject of considerable internal debate for nearly a year. It was a line that had launched a dozen memos, several diplomatic tugs of war and some mysterious, last-minute pencil editing. The line—"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"—wasn't the Bush team's strongest evidence for the case that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons. It was just the most controversial, since most government experts familiar with the statement believed it to be unsupportable. Last week the White House finally admitted that Bush should have jettisoned the claim. Designed to end a long-simmering controversy, the admission instead sparked a bewildering four days of changing explanations and unusually nasty finger pointing by the normally disciplined Bush team. That performance raised its own questions, which went to the core of the Administration's credibility: Where else did the U.S. stretch evidence to generate public support for the war? If so many doubted the uranium allegations, who inside the government kept putting those allegations on the table? And did the CIA go far enough to keep the bad intelligence out? To that last question, at least, the answer was: apparently not. In what looked like a command performance of political sacrifice, the head of the agency that expressed some of the strongest doubts about the charge took responsibility for the President's unsubstantiated claim. "The CIA approved the President's State of the Union address before it was delivered," said CIA Director George Tenet in a statement. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And ... the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." Yet the controversy over those 16 words would not have erupted with such force were they not emblematic of larger concerns about Bush's reasoning for going to war in the first place. Making the case against Saddam last year, Bush claimed that Iraq's links to al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) made the country an imminent threat to the region and, eventually, the U.S. He wrapped the evidence in the even more controversial doctrine of pre-emption, saying America could no longer wait for proof of its enemies' intentions before defending itself overseas—it must sometimes strike first, even without all the evidence in hand. Much of the world was appalled by this logic, but Congress and the American public went along. Four months after the war started, at least one piece of key evidence has turned out to be false, the U.S. has yet to find weapons of mass destruction, and American soldiers keep dying in a country that has not greeted its liberators the way the Administration predicted it would. Now the false assertion and the rising casualties are combining to take a toll on Bush's standing with the public. FOLLOW THE YELLOWCAKE ROAD How did a story that much of the national-security apparatus regarded as bogus wind up in the most important speech of Bush's term? The evidence suggests that many in the Bush Administration simply wanted to believe it. The tale begins in the early 1980s, when Iraq made two purchases of uranium oxide from Niger totaling more than 300 tons. Known as "yellowcake," uranium oxide is a partially refined ore that, when combined with fluorine and then converted into a gas, can eventually be used to create weapons-grade uranium. No one disputes that Iraq had a nuclear-weapons program in the 1980s, but it was dismantled after the first Gulf War. Then, in the mid-1990s, defectors provided evidence that Saddam was trying to restart the program. Finally, late in 2001, the Italian government came into possession of evidence suggesting that Iraq was again trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger. Rome's source provided half a dozen letters and other documents alleged to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale. The Italians' evidence was shared with both Britain and the U.S. When it got to Washington, the Iraq-Niger uranium report caught the eye of someone important: Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, told TIME that during one of his regular CIA briefings, "the Vice President asked a question about the implication of the report." Cheney's interest hardly came as a surprise: he has long been known to harbor some of the most hard-line views of Saddam's nuclear ambitions. It was not long before the agency quietly dispatched a veteran U.S. envoy named Joseph Wilson to investigate. Wilson seemed like a wise choice for the mission. He had been a U.S. ambassador to Gabon and had actually been the last American to speak with Saddam before the first Gulf War. Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue. Wilson never had access to the Italian documents and never filed a written report, he told TIME. When he returned to Washington in early March, Wilson gave an oral report about his trip to both CIA and State Department officials. On March 9 of last year, the CIA circulated a memo on the yellowcake story that was sent to the White House, summarizing Wilson's assessment. Wilson was not the only official looking into the matter. Nine days earlier, the State Department's intelligence arm had sent a memo directly to Secretary of State Colin Powell that also disputed the Italian intelligence. Greg Thielmann, then a high-ranking official at State's research unit, told TIME that it was not in Niger's self-interest to sell the Iraqis the destabilizing ore. "A whole lot of things told us that the report was bogus," Thielmann said later. "This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down." Except that it wasn't. By late summer, at the very moment that the Administration was gearing up to make its case for military mobilization, the yellowcake story took on new life. In September, Tony Blair's government issued a 50-page dossier detailing the case against Saddam, and while much of the evidence in the paper was old, it made the first public claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. At the White House, Ari Fleischer endorsed the British dossier, saying "We agree with their findings." THE DOUBTS THAT DIDN'T GO AWAY By now, a gap was opening behind the scenes between what U.S. officials were alleging in public about Iraq's nuclear ambitions and what they were saying in private. After Tenet left a closed hearing on Capitol Hill in September, the nuclear question arose, and a lower-ranking official admitted to the lawmakers that the agency had doubts about the veracity of the evidence. Also in September, the CIA tried to persuade the British government to drop the allegation completely. To this day, London stands by the claim. In October, Tenet personally intervened with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to remove a line about the African ore in a speech that Bush was giving in Cincinnati, Ohio. Also that month, CIA officials included the Brits' yellowcake story in their classified 90-page National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs. The CIA said it could neither verify the Niger story nor "confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake" from two other African nations. The agency also included the State Department's concerns that the allegations of Iraq's seeking yellowcake were "highly dubious"—though that assessment was printed only as a footnote. At a time when it was trying to build public support for the war, the Bush Administration did not share these internal doubts about the evidence with the public. In December, for example, the State Department included the Niger claim in its public eight-point rebuttal to the 12,200-page arms declaration that Iraq made to the U.N. two weeks earlier. And a month later, in an op-ed column in the New York Times titled "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying," top Bush aide Rice appeared to repeat the yellowcake claim, saying, "The declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad." Nor did the U.S. pass on what it knew to international monitors. When the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. group, asked the U.S. for data to back up its claim in December, Washington sat tight and said little for six weeks. The battle between believers and doubters finally came to a head over the State of the Union speech. Weeks of work had gone into the address; speechwriters had produced two dozen drafts. But as the final form was taking shape, the wording of the yellowcake passage went down to the wire. When the time came to decide whether Bush was going to cite the allegation, the CIA objected—and then relented. Two senior Administration officials tell TIME that in a January conversation with a key National Security Council (nsc) official just a few days before the speech, a top cia analyst named Alan Foley objected to including the allegation in the speech. The nsc official in charge of vetting the sections on WMD, Special Assistant to the President Robert Joseph, denied through a spokesman that he said it was O.K. to use the line as long as it was sourced to British intelligence. But another official told TIME, "There was a debate about whether to cite it on our own intelligence. But once the U.K. made it public, we felt comfortable citing what they had learned." And so the line went in. While some argued last week that the fight should have been kicked upstairs to Rice for adjudication, White House officials claim that it never was. NUCLEAR FALLOUT But if it was good enough for bush, it wasn't good enough for others. Colin Powell omitted any reference to the uranium when he briefed the U.N. Security Council just eight days later; last week he told reporters that the allegation had not stood "the test of time." Nor did Tenet mention the allegation when he testified before the Senate panel on Feb. 11. "If we were trying to peddle that theory, it would have been in our white paper," an intelligence official told TIME. "It would have been in lots of places where it wasn't. A sentence made it into the President's speech, and it shouldn't have." Did Bush really need to push the WMD case so hard to convince Americans that Saddam should be ousted? In a TIME poll taken four weeks before coalition forces invaded, 83% of Americans thought war was justified on the grounds that "Saddam Hussein is a dictator who has killed many citizens of his Iraq." That's one claim that has never been contested. In the same TIME poll, however, 72% of Americans thought war was also justified because it "will help eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." The unseen threat of a Saddam with WMD was an argument that played to Bush's strengths. As a politician, Bush has always been better at asserting his case than at making it. After 9/11, his sheer certitude—and the faith Americans had in his essential trustworthiness—led Americans to overwhelmingly support him. The yellowcake affair may have already changed that relationship, for as the casualties mount in Iraq, polls suggest that some of that faith is eroding. Which means the next time Bush tells the nation where he wants to go, it may not be so quick to follow. —With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper and Adam Zagorin/Washington, John F. Dickerson with Bush in Africa, J.F.O. McAllister/London and Andrew Purvis/Vienna
Thanks rimrocker. Great article. Very enlightening. My only question is that why are we still talking about it? Didn't Bush say the case was closed? I mean if he declares it closed then anyone else's efforts to get at the truth are meaningless.
In the Tenet thread I posted an audio link. Dick Cheney's office received word that the Africa/Uranium evidence was no good, just one week before the state of the union. Not only did it still go in the speech, but Dick Cheney went on talk shows being more emphatic about Saddam and trying to buy Uranium than Bush was in that speech. This white house certainly has/had an agenda, and they followed through with it. They may not have been honest in doing it. It's kind of scary what can be done with power.
"The evidence suggests that many in the Bush Administration simply wanted to believe it. " In a nutshell, that's what's wrong with Foreign Policy in the Bush Administration.
Here's my take on all this so-called Bush "lying" mularkey. For starters, Clinton even said that "Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons." See that link here: http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/#1 It has already been established that Saddam has A.) used WMD on his own people B.) was continuing to build them. If he wasn't trying to build them, why did we need inspectors in the first place? Why would Saddam's people constantly harass and stonewall the inspectors if there was nothing to hide? If you need a refresher on his programs of WMD, read this: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/nuke/Post.htm Where were the howls of outrage and indignation when Clinton launched an aerial assault against Iraq for throwing out the inspectors? All of the grimy, drug-addled, idealistic, human debris that trudged out to protest this "War for Oil" were nowhere to be found when even Clinton indicated that Iraq with WMD was a major threat to the region and our access to Mideast oil, which is a vital interest to our national security and economy. I may not like Bush at all, but I doubt he lied about any of the reasons we went to war. And if some of the intel was not perfect, when is it ever? Saddam is out of power and we have a great opportunity to build a functioning republic in Iraq, if we have the internal fortitude to stay the course and finish what we started. Rome wasn't built in a day and what we need to do over there won't be either. And on all these howls of "why haven't we found any WMDs?" all I can say, damnit, Iraq is as big as Texas!!!! If we can build a man-portable nuke (the term suitcase nuke is a BIG misnomer) what makes you think it wouldn't be hard to hide pieces or entire WMD within Iraq? The Iraqis are now experts in supterfuge from their years of dealing with inspectors, so hiding these weapons wouldn't have been too hard for these pros. Lastly, this Christopher Scheer character is no more a journalist than say, everyone's favorite radio guy Rush Limbaugh. This is in no way a news piece, but an opinion piece masquerading as news. I read the bios of all the staffers of this numbnuts outfit known as AlterNet.org and all of these folks are big-time, far-left whackoes. Mother Jones magazine was known as being one of the major publications of the far-looney left. His bias leaks through like the aroma of body odor and cheap cigarettes through the clothes of a Frenchman.
Iraq for throwing out the inspectors Not factual. The US told the inspectors to leave or run the risk of having bombs fall on their heads. Carry on.
It was actually the UN who told the inspectors to leave. But they might as well have been kicked out. The Iraqis continued to stonewall and harass them to prevent them from accomplishing their work and force them to leave. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_2519000/2519117.stm
"All of the grimy, drug-addled, idealistic, human debris that trudged out to protest this "War for Oil" You lost me on this sentence bamma. I guess all the teachers, doctors, lawyers, old women, veterans that I marched with were "grimy, drug-addled, idealistic, human debris" nice to see that compassionate conservatism
Did you really look at those crowds, the idiots doing "die-ins" in the streets? They looked like a time machine had gone back to the so-called "swinging sixties" and scooped up smelly hippies by the dozen and planted them in NYC, DC and SF. I think you were watching the major networks, who went out of their way to find these teachers, doctors, lawyers, old women, veterans who didn't look so grimy so it would appear that it was "diverse" group of protestors. Classic example of a left-leaning media (I'm part of that media and trust me, it habitually leans left) painting a different picture than reality so they can make it seem that all of America was opposed to the war. If you had seen what I've seen of these protests, you would realize they looked more like a Grateful Dead concert minus the music than a intellectual gathering of normal folks. And lastly, I'm not a conservative and my compassion for these fools died when they provided aid and comfort to our enemies.
May a thousand constipated elephants fly over your house with an uncontrollable urge. I didn't just "look" at those crowds. I was in them! I was in them when I saw New York Police officers macing and clubbing people trying to get to a "peaceful" gathering. Sorry, I live in New York! Not on some military base in Alabama being force-fed what I was supposed to think.
Shame, shame, shame. No, I don't live on a military base and I only graduated from the U of A (Roll Tide roll!!! or in the words of Mike Price, "It's Rollin' baby!!!"). As an ex-Marine who saw duty in the fun places of Somalia and Bosnia, I was insulted when I saw some college kids protesting in front of the veterans memorial in my town in Georgia. I'm not saying that those people should've been denied their rights of peaceable assembly, but as the Seattle riots showed during the WTO conference, the police must prevent mobs from paralyzing the city and interfering with the rights of those at work. Just because you disagree with a war doesn't mean you have the right to ensnare traffic and tie up businesses. Your rights end where mine begin. And lastly, some of the protestors were talking about interfering with the military in its preparations for war. Frankly, if I was still in the Corps, I would've enjoyed introducing those useful idiot traitors to my size 13 EE boondockers.
"Frankly, if I was still in the Corps, I would've enjoyed introducing those useful idiot traitors to my size 13 EE boondockers." So I'm a traitor for exercising my 1st amendment right? It's been a beautiful day in New York! Went to Jones Beach with the wife, having a martini and grilling some excellent stripper bass that I caught today. So you're not going to spoil my mood! Have a nice evening Bamma. BTW my parents are in Dothan. Are you anywhere close to that?
Oh, I'm not trying to spoil your mood and if it sounded that way, my apologies. I didn't call you a traitor, I called those who would interfere with our military (by blocking convoys and such) traitors. My family is from Mobile, which is to the west and south of Dothan. I live in Georgia now. Got any fillets of that bass left?
