"...On Oct. 7, President Bush framed it this way: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." National security adviser Condoleezza Rice had used similar language Sept. 8, saying, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."..."

Bush

"...The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbid, he uses one. We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming..."

BG: "...Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that the administration knew Hussein ''has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.''..."

John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman (The New Republic):
"...CIA analysts also generally endorsed the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which concluded that, while serious questions remained about Iraq's nuclear program--many having to do with discrepancies in documentation--its present capabilities were virtually nil. The IAEA possessed no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program and, it seems, neither did U.S. intelligence. In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea. The review said only, "We believe that Iraq has probably continued at least low-level theoretical R&D [research and development] associated with its nuclear program." This vague determination didn't reflect any new evidence but merely the intelligence community's assumption that the Iraqi dictator remained interested in building nuclear weapons. Greg Thielmann, the former director for strategic proliferation and military affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), tells The New Republic, "During the time that I was office director, 2000 to 2002, we never assessed that there was good evidence that Iraq was reconstituting or getting really serious about its nuclear weapons program."..."

Also see: Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus (Washington Post)

"...MR. RUSSERT: And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree.
       VICE PRES. CHENEY: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community, disagree.
       And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong...."

Compassiongate:
(Even being unnecessarily charitable enough to allow that you were simply talking about a nuclear weapons program) you sir, frankly, were wrong compassionate.

(1 for falsely maligning compassion towards El Baradei and 1 for freely lying compassion about what we actually knew)

"...And since we got in there, we found—we had a gentleman come forward, for example, with full designs for a process centrifuge system to enrich uranium and the key parts that you’d need to build such a system. And we know Saddam had worked on that kind of system before. That’s physical evidence that we’ve got in hand today..."

Cheney for Bush

"...[Kay's report found] Documents and equipment hidden in scientists' homes that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation..."

Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...Kay had said that despite interviews with scientists involved, "the evidence does not tie any activity directly to centrifuge research or development." ..."

"...to suggest that there is no evidence there that he had aspirations to acquire nuclear weapon, I don’t think is valid..."

Compassiongate:
Can anyone deny that most countries in the world have "aspirations" to acquire nuclear weapons? Is this crud compassion the best that Mr. Cheney could come up with? 

Bush

"..."Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program …. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past..."

Fleischer for Bush

"..."I'm hard pressed to understand how the discovery of this nuclear equipment, which was to be a template to reconstituting a program that was buried in a scientist's backyard, undermines the case the administration was making," Fleischer said. "It seemed to me rather the opposite."..."

Alan Gilbert (Priority Peace):
"..."Drawing from satellite imagery and other information available to it, the IAEA identified a number of sites, some of which had been associated with Iraq's past nuclear activities, where modifications of possible relevance to the IAEA's mandate had been made, or new buildings constructed, between 1998 and 2002. Eight of these sites were identified by States as being locations where nuclear activities were suspected of being conducted. All of these sites were inspected to ascertain whether there had been developments in technical capabilities, organization, structure, facility boundaries or personnel. In general, the IAEA has observed that, while a few sites have improved their facilities and taken on new personnel over the past four years, at the majority of these sites (which had been involved in research, development and manufacturing) the equipment and laboratories have deteriorated to such a degree that the resumption of nuclear activities would require substantial renovation. The IAEA has found no signs of nuclear activity at any of these sites." IAEA Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei Inspection report to the U.N. Security Council 01-27-03..."

Fox News:
"...Mahdi Shukur Obeidi (search), who headed a uranium-enrichment unit vital to Iraq's pre-1991 bomb plans, "also said that since '91 they hadn't resurrected a nuclear weapon program," [CG emphasis] according to ex-Iraq inspector David Albright, an American physicist who acted as go-between for Obeidi to talk to U.S. authorities a few weeks ago.
The assertion that Baghdad had revived its nuclear project was central to the Bush administration's call for war early this year. [CG emphasis]
On March 16, three days before the U.S.-British invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney (search) said Iraq was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons" and even that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."..."

CNN:
"...U.S. officials emphasized that this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking...The gas centrifuge equipment dates to Iraq's pre-1991 efforts to build nuclear weapons...
David Albright, who was a U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, said inspectors "understood that Iraq probably hid centrifuge documents, may have had components, and so it is very important that those items be found." "What it is that Obeidi was ordered to keep was all the information and some centrifuge components, so that if he was given the order, he could restart the centrifuge program," said Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "In a sense, the program was in hibernation. He was the key to the restart of this centrifuge program, and he never got the order. So in that sense it doesn't show at all that Iraq had a nuclear program. And Obeidi told me that he never worked on a nuclear program after 1991 [CG emphasis]."..."

VOANews:
"...A senior official in Iraq's new science ministry says the country never revived its nuclear program after U.N. inspectors dismantled it in the 1990's.
Abbas Balasem, an official of the new U.S.-backed administration in Baghdad, said Tuesday Iraqi scientists had no way to re-start the program because the inspectors took away all the necessary resources.
The former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix echoed those sentiments, telling Australian radio he believes Iraq destroyed almost all of the weapons of mass destruction it had in the summer of 1991 - a position Iraq constantly maintained.
That year, the International Atomic Energy Agency found what it called a secret Iraqi program to develop nuclear weapons. The agency spent next several years dismantling Iraq's capability..."

John J. Lumpkin (Salon.com):
"...Obeidi told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge. Assembled, the components would not be useful in making much uranium. Hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to make enough to construct a nuclear weapon in such programs..."

Also see: Glen Rangwala, Bob Drogin and Greg Miller (Los Angeles Times), Kim Sengupta (The Independent); John J. Lumpkin (The Hartford Courant)

"...What's notable in that this case [the hiding of some centrifuge parts] illustrates the extreme challenge that the world community faces in Iraq as we search for evidence of WMD programs that were designed to elude detection by international inspectors," Fleischer said..."

Bush administration

"...By last year, the latest [CIA] reporting period, the section on Iraq...warning that "all intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons" and that the country could produce a bomb "within a year" if it got its hands on weapons-grade material..."

Cheney for Bush

"...Shouldn’t be any pressure. I can’t think of a single instance. Maybe somebody can produce one. I’m unaware of any where the community changed a judgment that they made because I asked questions...
I say I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did.
       That’s crazy. That makes no sense. It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever..."

CBS News:
"...Correspondent Scott Pelley has an interview with Greg Thielmann, a former expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction...Thielmann's last job at the State Department was director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, which was responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Secretary Powell. He and his staff had the highest security clearances, and everything – whether it came into the CIA or the Defense Department – came through his office...
Thielmann believes the decision to go to war was made -- and the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion.
“There’s plenty of blame to go around. The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show,” says Thielmann.
“They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community, and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.”..."

Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker):
"...How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong?
Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence...
In theory, no request for action should be taken directly to higher authorities—a process known as “stovepiping”—without the information on which it is based having been subjected to rigorous scrutiny...
Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.
“They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.”...
Senior C.I.A. analysts dealing with Iraq were constantly being urged by the Vice-President’s office to provide worst-case assessments on Iraqi weapons issues. “They got pounded on, day after day,” one senior Bush Administration official told me [CG emphasis], and received no consistent backup from Tenet and his senior staff. “Pretty soon you say ‘Fuck it.’” And they began to provide the intelligence that was wanted..."

(being extraordinarily compassionate here)

"..."[W]hat INR did not take a footnote to is the consensus view that the Iraqis were actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, reconstituting and so forth," she said on July 11, referring to the National Intelligence Estimate. Speaking broadly about the nuclear allegations in the NIE, she said: "Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me."..."

"What the president has said ... has been the long-standing view of numerous people, not only in this country, not only in this administration, but around the world, including at the United Nations."

Peter Beinart (The New Republic):
"...But that's not exactly true. Yes, everyone agreed Saddam Hussein had not accounted for his chemical and biological stockpiles. But those stockpiles weren't, by themselves, the basis for war. The administration's case rested on linking them to the far more frightening prospect of an Iraqi nuclear weapon, which Vice President Dick Cheney claimed Saddam would acquire "fairly soon." And, on that score, there was heated debate. During the Clinton administration, as John Prados wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, intelligence assessments of Iraq's nuclear program were far more cautious than they became in 2002. And, on March 7, the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei reported that, "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." To which Cheney responded, "I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong."
The other key element in the White House's case for war was Iraq's supposed links to Al Qaeda, which both explained how Saddam could deliver his unconventional weapons to the United States and connected Iraq in the public mind to September 11, 2001. And that was even more controversial. In October 2002, French President Jacques Chirac said, "To my knowledge, no proof has been found, or in any case officially made public, of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." John Edwards made the same point this January: "I've certainly not seen any compelling evidence of an Al Qaeda connection as a member of the Intelligence Committee."..."

said "...Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his 'nuclear mujahideen' -- his nuclear holy warriors..."

Bush

"...And Iraq's state-controlled media has reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons..."

Bush

"..."Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program …. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past..."

"..."I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."-- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, May 14..."

Compassiongate: As I said earlier, enough is enough with this game of Cheney or Bush or others going publicly to big crowds and talking about weapons and then aides clarifying they were referring to programs, or vice versa. There is no excuse for playing loose with the facts and misleading the public a lot of compassion here. 

Rice for Bush

"...It was a case that said he is trying [CG emphasis] to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year..."

Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"..."We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney, March 16 (aides later said Cheney was referring to Saddam Hussein's nuclear programs, not weapons)..."

Bush

"...If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year..."

Bush

"...We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence..."

Dana Priest and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...On Thursday, after briefing House and Senate intelligence committee members, Kay had said that the team had discovered no chemical or biological weapons and that the nuclear program was only rudimentary. "It had a long way to go," he said.
Yesterday, Kay estimated it would have taken Iraq five to seven years to reconstitute its nuclear program..."

Claiming Saddam's Aluminum tubes purchase was for uranium enrichment

Repeated claim even after accuracy was challenged

e.g., 

Bush

"...Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons..."

Bush

"...Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production..."

Rice for Bush

"...[said that] Hussein was "actively pursuing a nuclear weapon" and that the tubes...were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." ..."

  James Risen, David E. Sanger, and Thom Shanker (New York Times):
"...Curiously, as he prepared for his presentation, Mr. Powell rejected advice that he hold up such a tube during his speech. Asked about that decision in a recent interview, he joked that the tube would block his face, and then said, "Why hold up the most controversial thing in the pitch?"..."

Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...At issue was Iraq's efforts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The U.S. government said those tubes were for centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. But the IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, had uncovered strong evidence that Iraq was using them for conventional rockets.
Joe [from the CIA] described the rocket story as a transparent Iraqi lie. According to people familiar with his presentation, which circulated before and afterward among government and outside specialists, Joe said the specialized aluminum in the tubes was "overspecified," "inappropriate" and "excessively strong." No one, he told the inspectors, would waste the costly alloy on a rocket. 
In fact, there was just such a rocket. According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the Italian-made Medusa 81. Not only the Medusa's alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes. ..
Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment. By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government's assertion. The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible. ..Powell and others continued to describe the use of such tubes for rockets as an implausible hypothesis, even after U.S. analysts collected and photographed in Iraq a virtually identical tube marked with the logo of the Medusa's Italian manufacturer and the words, in English, "81mm rocket."..."

Glen Rangwala (The Independent):
"...David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told congressional committees in Washington that no official orders or plans could be found to back up the allegation that a nuclear programme remained active after 1991. Aluminium tubes have not been used for the enrichment of uranium, in contrast to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's lengthy exposition to the UN Security Council in February..."

Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...[Kay] also confirmed that some of the high-quality aluminum tubes that CIA and Pentagon analysts said most likely were to be used for centrifuges were used to make rockets, as State and Energy Department analysts said. He cautioned, however, that he could not say what the largest tube shipment was for because it was intercepted by the United States before the war began. .."

Barton Gellman (Washington Post):
"...Thirty miles to the north and west, Army troops were rolling through the precincts of the Nasr munitions plant. Inside, stacked in oblong wooden crates, were thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.
That equipment, and Iraq's effort to buy more of it overseas, were central to the Bush administration's charge that President Saddam Hussein had resumed long-dormant efforts to build a nuclear weapon. The lead combat units had more urgent priorities that day, but they were not alone in passing the stockpiles by. Participants in the subsequent hunt for illegal arms said months elapsed without a visit to Nasr and many other sites of activity that President Bush had called "a grave and gathering danger."
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue. Although Hussein did not relinquish his nuclear ambitions or technical records, investigators said, it is now clear he had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either...
Most notably, investigators have judged the aluminum tubes to be "innocuous," according to Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay. That finding is pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead. ..
"They were rockets," said Meekin, 48, director general of scientific and technical assessment for Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, speaking by satellite telephone from Baghdad. "The tubes were used for rockets." ...
Participants in the Pentagon-directed special weapons teams, interviewed repeatedly since late last spring, noted that Kay's operation has taken no steps to collect the estimated 20,000 tubes in Iraq's inventory -- some badly corroded, but others of higher quality than the ones the U.S. government intercepted in Jordan three years ago and described as dangerous technology.
"If you told me they had access to these tubes and have chosen not to seize and destroy them, it undermines the judgment that these tubes are usable for, if not intended for, centrifuge development," said Robert Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service...
Meekin said he no longer knows the whereabouts of the tubes once stacked at Nasr. "They weren't our highest priority," he said. "The thing's innocuous." Unguarded, the tubes "could be in arms plants, scattered around, being grabbed by looters, perhaps in scrap metal yards." Scavengers, he said, most likely have "sold them as drain pipe." ...
Fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of the search personnel had nuclear assignments, about a dozen out of 1,500 at the peak strength of the Iraq Survey Group..."

Bush Administration National Intelligence Estimate (portion released in July 03):
"State/INR Alternative View...In INR's view Iraq's attempts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program..."

Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo):
"...Remember Mahdi Obeidi? He's the Iraqi nuclear scientist who made headlines back in June when he turned over parts of a gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment and blueprints related to Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program. The parts of course were buried under a rosebush in his backyard. 
More recently, Obeidi made more embarrassing headlines when the Associated Press revealed that he has consistently told CIA investigators that those much-discussed aluminum tubes had nothing to do with nuclear weapons development.
The AP reported that Obeidi was in Kuwait. But it turns out there's a bit more to the story. Given that Obeidi was so quick to come clean about the history of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and Saddam's plans to reconstitute the program once sanctions were lifted, you might think that we were helping him restart his life in the US, Iraq or perhaps some other Arab country.
Well, not exactly.
It turns out he's being held against his will in Kuwait apparently because he won't 'come clean' about the aluminum tubes, an on-going Iraqi nuclear weapons program and significant chemical and biological weapons stocks.
Obeidi is not in prison. He's in a residential setting...
This all sounds rather similar to the story David Ingatius told in the Washington Post on July 18th about Saddam Hussein's science adviser, Amir Saadi..."

Walter Pincus and Kevin Sullivan (Washington Post):
"...Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject...
The White House, for instance, has cited the case of nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who recently dug up plans and components for a gas centrifuge that he said he buried in 1991 at the end of the Persian Gulf War. The White House has pointed to the discovery as a sign of Hussein's continuing nuclear ambitions, but Obeidi told his interrogators that Iraq's nuclear program was dormant in the years before war began in March.
The sources said Obeidi also disputed evidence cited by the administration -- namely Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes that various officials said were for a new centrifuge program to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Obeidi said the tubes were for rockets, as Iraq had said before the war..."

Paul Sperry (WorldNetDaily):
"...A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September...
Energy headquarters signed on to the hawkish position on Iraq nukes even though Energy's labs debunked the centerpiece of its evidence – that the thick-walled aluminum tubes it sought were more likely intended for artillery rockets than gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs..."

Also see: John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman (The New Republic); Michael Hirsh (Newsweek)

(for hiding the INR view and continuing the compassion on this important subject - and of course I'm being ultra-
compassionate by assigning just 1 credit )

"..."Why is Iraq still trying to procure [...] the special equipment needed to transform [uranium] into material for nuclear weapons?"...Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. [...] there is no doubt in my mind. These illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program"..."

Powell for Bush

"...Powell said "intelligence from multiple sources" reported Iraq was trying to buy magnets and a production line for magnets of "the same weight" as those used in uranium centrifuges..."

(for hiding the INR view by showing them compassion as well)

State Dept. for Bush (Dec 2002)

"...said [Iraq's] declaration "ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger."..."

Rep. Waxman's letter to Bush:
"...the Administration took over six weeks to respond to the IAEA's December 2002 request for documentation regarding the claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. The delay in responding to the IAEA request came during a critical time in the Administration's efforts to build a case against Iraq. Moreover, it came during a time in which top Administration officials repeatedly cited the forged evidence in public statements...
...In a July 1, 2003, letter to me that forwarded the IAEA's June 20, 2003, letter, the State Department claimed:
...the talking points prepared for the presentation [to the U.N. of the evidence claimed by the U.S. backing its allegation re: Niger and Iraq]...included the following qualification: "We cannot confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims." Mission discussions with Mr. Baute [of the UN] and INVO staff on at least two other occasions included similar caveats... "

Compassiongate: When one cannot "confirm these reports" and has "questions regarding some specific claims", one does commit fraud have much compassion in flatly alleging that Iraq's declaration "ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger."

(it's not just that the IAEA debunked this, but our own internal agencies - and that was hidden)

"...On April 29, 2003, Paul V. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, stated in a letter to [Waxman] that the State Department's December 19 Fact Sheet - including the claim referring to Niger - "was a product developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department..."

"...told reporters that the White House learned only after the speech that documents that were the basis for his claim had been forged. "After the speech, information was learned about the forged documents," he said. "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech." ..."

&c. (The New Republic):
"...Taking into account Saddam Hussein's past procurement patterns, the sub rosa nature of the alleged transaction occurring despite the numerous eyes--both in Niger and internationally--that would have noticed such a large uranium purchase, and the kinds of risks the Iraqi dictator had previously run, INR concluded that the transactions did not in fact take place. And so, in March 2002, the bureau--whose sole reason for existence is to provide the secretary of state with intelligence analysis--sent Powell a memo explaining exactly that...
So Powell's office received a definitive intelligence assessment about the validity of the Niger-procurement claim from his own department in March 2002--ten months before the State of the Union address. Yet as late as December of that year, the State Department was still publicly treating the Niger-procurement claim as credible. A fact sheet on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction declarations that month asked, "The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?"..."

Compassiongate:
If the Niger documents were discovered to be a hoax only after the SOTU, then why was the SOTU wording written as an attribution to British intelligence? Why not cite strong evidence coming also from a non-British source? After all, didn't the forged documents come originally from an Italian journalist? Not to mention, Paul Kelly (State Dept.) said they came from a foreign country that was not the U.K.

"...at his briefing yesterday, Fleischer described a displeased Bush. "I assure you, the president is not pleased," he said. "The president, of course, would not be pleased if he said something in the State of the Union that may or may not have been true and should not have risen to his level."..."

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen (Washington Post) - 7/10/03:
"...Bush's aides said the president was not angry to learn that the allegation about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium in Niger turned out to be based on flawed information. They said he has accepted their account of how the line had come to be included in his speech. "He understands intelligence and that as new information becomes available, we're going to continually update," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "He wanted an explanation and we told him how the process works and he accepted it. He just asked, 'Why?' "..."

"...national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said there was "discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought." Rice said "some specifics about amount and place were taken out." Tenet said Friday that CIA officials objected, and "the language was changed."..."

"...on Friday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said there was "discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought." Rice said "some specifics about amount and place were taken out."...Fleischer said yesterday Rice was not referring to the State of the Union reference but to Bush's October speech given in Cincinnati..."

"...Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," said Rice when asked about the uranium hoax on NBC's "Meet the Press," "but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."..."

Rice for Bush

"...George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I will tell you that when this issue was raised, uh, with the intelligence community, because, uh, we actually do go through the process of asking, uh, the intelligence community, can you say this? Can you say that? Can you say this? The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report..."

Rice for Bush

"...Had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in...it would have been gone..."

Bartlett for Bush

"...said the passage was included in drafts of the speech for at least 10 days before Bush delivered it. Bartlett said he knew of no objections to including the charge or debate over the wording. 
"We wouldn't lead with something that we thought could be refuted," Bartlett said. "There was no debate or questions with regard to that line when it was signed off on. This was not a last-minute addition." ..."

Stephen Hadley (Rice's Deputy):
"...George Tenet had a brief telephone conversation with me during the clearance process for the October 7 Cincinnati speech. This was the one -- he asked that any reference to Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from sources from Africa to be deleted from the speech. [CG emphasis] The language he was referring to when he made that call was language that said the following -- and I'll just quote it -- "And the regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa, and a central ingredient in the enrichment process."
Based on DCI Tenet's request, the sentence was deleted from the Cincinnati speech, when he said he did not want the President to be a fact witness for that statement...
There are several phone calls. George and I both remember only one on the subject, and it's either October 5 or 6 or 7...
Yesterday morning I learned of the memorandum that is dated October 5, 2002. Dan said it was from DCI...
On page three of that memorandum, there's a reference to a sentence that appears in draft six of the Cincinnati speech. And that sentence read as follows: "And the regime" -- and here they're talking about the Iraqi regime -- "And the regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from sources in Africa, and the central ingredient for the enrichment process."
Now, with respect to that sentence, the October 5 CIA memorandum asked that we remove the sentence because the amount, 500 tons, is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source...
At this point in time, they're talking about Niger and the 500 tons. And I think what it is doing was raising question about whether the uranium could be obtained from the Niger source...
I will also tell you that I'm confident I received the memorandum, that I would have read it carefully and in its entirety shortly after receipt...
Today I learned of a second memorandum sent by the CIA on October 6. This is commenting on draft eight of the Cincinnati speech. And by this time, by draft eight, the reference to Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium has already been deleted from the speech, as DCI Tenet asked me to do in his telephone request. And what the memorandum does is provide some additional rationale for the removal of the uranium reference.
The memorandum describes some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence.
This memorandum was received by the Situation Room here in the White House, and it was sent to both Dr. Rice and myself...
What we know is, again, a copy of the memo comes to the Situation Room, it's sent to Dr. Rice, it's sent -- and that's it. You know, I can't tell you she read it. I can't even tell you she received it. But in some sense, it doesn't matter. Memo sent, we're on notice..."

Dana Priest and Dana Milbank (Washington Post):
"...But senior administration officials acknowledged over the weekend that Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used in the October speech, four months before the State of the Union address. CIA officials raised doubts about the Niger claims, as Tenet outlined Friday. The last time was when "CIA officials reviewing the draft remarks" of the State of the Union "raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues," Tenet's statement said. "Some of the language was changed." The change included using British intelligence as the source of the information. The CIA, however, continued to doubt the reliability of the British claim..."

George Tenet (Statement Transcript from the New York Times):
"...In the fall of 2002, my deputy and I briefed hundreds of members of Congress on Iraq. We did not brief the uranium acquisition story.
Also in the fall of 2002, our British colleagues told us they were planning to publish an unclassified dossier that mentioned reports of Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. Because we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive, we expressed reservations about its inclusion, but our colleagues said they were confident in their reports and left it in their document.
In September and October 2002 before Senate Committees, senior intelligence officials in response to questions told members of Congress that we differed with the British dossier on the reliability of the uranium reporting.
In October, the intelligence community produced a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate (N.I.E.) on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. There is a lengthy section in which most agencies of the intelligence community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Let me emphasize, the N.I.E.'s key judgments cited six reasons for this assessment; the African uranium issue was not one of them.
But in the interest of completeness, the report contained three paragraphs that discuss Iraq's significant 550-metric-ton uranium stockpile and how it could be diverted while under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguard. These paragraphs also cited reports that Iraq began "vigorously trying to procure" more uranium from Niger and two other African countries, which would shorten the time Baghdad needed to produce nuclear weapons...
Much later in the N.I.E. text, in presenting an alternate view on another matter, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research included a sentence that states: "Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in I.N.R.'s assessment, highly dubious."...
An unclassified C.I.A. White Paper in October made no mention of the issue, again because it was not fundamental to the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, and because we had questions about some of the reporting. For the same reasons, the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and the secretary of state's United Nations presentation in early 2003.
The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words eventually made it into the State of the Union speech..."

The Daily Howler:
"...IFILL: One more on that point from Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe who asks: “You have admitted responsibility for not having read the CIA memo warning that the information that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa was not solid. If you had read the memo, how would that have changed your position on weapons of mass destruction?”
RICE: First of all, the memo that people are referring to is a set of clearance comments on a speech the president gave in October. So let’s be very clear on what this memo was. And it was a clearance memo that cleared some 20 or more items. I don’t remember reading the memo and probably in the normal course of things I would not, because when George Tenet said, “Take it out,” we simply take it out. We don’t need a rationale from George Tenet as to why to take it out.
I did read everything that the CIA produced for the president on weapons of mass destruction. I read the National Intelligence Estimate cover to cover a couple of times. I read the reports; I was briefed on the reports. This is—after 20 years, as somebody who has read a lot of intelligence reports—this is one of the strongest cases about weapons of mass destruction that I had ever read.

Needless to say, Ifill made no attempt to follow up on Rice’s statement. More specifically, Ifill didn’t ask about the change in the official White House account. After all, if Rice did read the NIE, then she must have known that the State Department objected to the uranium story. Any real journalist would have asked her about it..."

Walter Pincus and Dana Priest (Washington Post):
"...The State Department received copies of what would turn out to be forged documents suggesting that Iraq tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger three months before the president's State of the Union address, administration officials said.
The documents, which officials said appeared to be of "dubious authenticity," were distributed to the CIA and other agencies within days. But the U.S. government waited four months to turn them over to United Nations weapons inspectors who had been demanding to see evidence of U.S. and British claims that Iraq's attempted purchase of uranium oxide violated U.N. resolutions and was among the reasons to go to war. State Department officials could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents when the inspectors asked for them in December...
Even before these documents arrived, both the State Department and the CIA had questions about the reliability of intelligence reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger and other African countries..."

Also see:
Walter Pincus (Washington Post): "Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation";
Dana Priest and Karen DeYoung (Washington Post).

"...Bob Schieffer, CBS News: We now know, according to government officials, that [CIA director George] Tenet actually went to people and got the statement saying that [Saddam Hussein had recently sought large quantities of uranium from Africa] removed from a speech the president made in October. You're going to say it's different [from the State of the Union speech], that [the wording in the October speech] was more specific.
"National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice:  Bob, it is different. It is different, and it's on a different basis.
...in fact the Cincinnati speech was based on a single report and a single incident."..."

White House spokesman for Bush

"...said that the only statement CIA Director George J. Tenet had successfully persuaded deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley to take out of the president's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati was a reference to "over 500 tons of uranium." He said that was removed because it was "single-sourced" intelligence. .."

Dana Priest (Washington Post):
"...But yesterday, a senior administration official with knowledge of the Tenet-Hadley conversation disputed the White House version. "The line he asked to take out wasn't about 500 tons of uranium or a single source. It was about Africa and uranium," the official said. Even the broader assertion about Africa "wasn't firm enough. It was shaky." ..."

"...In his State of the Union address, on Jan. 28, Mr. Bush...said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."...
The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials, the [senior administration] official said...The official said that on the day before the speech, the White House team drafting it "decided that it would be much more credible if we could explain to the public how we knew it — not just assert it, but to fully disclose as much as possible how we knew this information." As a result, the official said, the speech was changed to attribute each statement to a specific source. The official said that Bob Joseph, the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council, then asked the C.I.A. to approve that portion of the speech. "It was cleared to use the British as a citation," the official said..."

Mike Allen (Washington Post) - 7/18/03:
"...McClellan, facing a firestorm during his first days on the job, has repeatedly dodged questions about the details of how the State of the Union address came to include sketchy allegations about Iraq shopping for uranium in Africa.
During McClellan's televised briefing yesterday, he said nine times that all the issues he was being asked about had been fully "addressed" by the White House. At his off-camera morning briefing, McClellan said the same thing eight times.
McClellan was asked three days in a row whether Bush knew that the CIA had talked the White House out of including a similar line in an October speech Bush gave about the Iraqi threat. He did not answer, and yesterday he finally said he did not know. "I'm telling you what I know," he said..."

An aside
Robert Parry (Consortium News):
"...Last January, for instance, the White House portrayed Bush as the man in charge of the State of the Union address. He edited the drafts, the White House said. He wrote notes in the margins. He gave his speech writers pointers..."

Al Kamen (Washington Post):
"...All this hubbub over CIA Director George J. Tenet's mea culpa for not taking out a teensy sentence in President Bush's last State of the Union speech might reignite that discredited campaign smear that Bush just reads the stuff handed to him.
Nothing, as the White House is at pains to point out, could be further from the truth. Bush pores over and checks these speeches carefully, the White House says on its Web site, making sure every word is exactly right, just the way he wants it.
For example, a photo released for this year's speech shows him working on the address.
The caption reads: "Sketching notes in the margin of speech drafts, President Bush rewrites portions of the address in the Oval Office Jan. 23, 2003."
The president's meticulous devotion to detail was also highlighted in the photo display from the 2002 State of the Union. The White House wouldn't give permission to use the photo focusing on two cufflinked forearms editing a speech draft. But here's the relevant portion..."

"...All I can tell you is that if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence in the NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the President. The only thing that was there in the NIE was a kind of a standard footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE...And you have footnotes all the time...in NIEs. So if there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the President was unaware of that concern and as was I...
[w]hat INR did not take a footnote to is the consensus view that Iraqis were actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program, reconstituting and so forth..."

"...A senior administration official who briefed reporters yesterday said neither Bush nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice read the NIE in its entirety. "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document," said the official...The official conducting the briefing rejected reporters' entreaties to allow his name to be used, arguing that it was his standard procedure for such sessions to be conducted anonymously..."

Needless to say, Ifill made no attempt to follow up on Rice’s statement. More specifically, Ifill didn’t ask about the change in the official White House account. After all, if Rice did read the NIE, then she must have known that the State Department objected to the uranium story. Any real journalist would have asked her about it..."

"...The NIE was delivered to Congress on October 1 2002, about a week before Congress voted on the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq. The classified document included the following statement adder the heading "uranium acquisition": "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake." The only items offered to support this claim were foreign government reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger and a single line regarding "reports" about Congo and Somalia..."

"...noted yesterday that the British government continues to believe in the information it produced. "I would not dispute them or disagree with them or say they're wrong and we're right, because intelligence is of that nature," Powell said. "Some people have more sources . . . on a particular issue. Some people have greater confidence in their analysis." ..."

Tony Karon (Time):
"...Secretary of State Colin Powell has attempted to ride out the yellowcake crisis by defending Bush and at the same time clearing his own name by making clear that he never repeated that particular untruth. Combining those two objectives can be tough. "At the time of the president's State of the Union, a judgment was made that was an appropriate statement for the president to make," he told reporters in South Africa last week, referring to the Niger allegation. "When I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore. It was not standing the test of time. And so I didn't use it, and we haven't used it since." The test of time?! Exactly eight days passed between the president's speech and the secretary's UN presentation..."

Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...Only eight days after the State of the Union speech, however, Powell himself did not repeat the uranium allegation when he presented the administration's case against Iraq to the U.N. Security Council. "After further analysis, looking at other estimates we had and other information that was coming in, it turned out that the basis upon which that statement was made didn't hold up, and we said so, and we've acknowledged it, and we've moved on," Powell told reporters in explaining his decision..."

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

Fleischer for Bush - 7/14/03

"...The State of the Union address had different language, and it was that Iraq is pursuing uranium, seeking uranium from Africa. That's because there was additional reporting from the CIA, separate and apart from Niger, naming other countries where they believed it was possible that Saddam was seeking uranium...the broader statement about seeking uranium from Africa was vetted through the CIA..."

NOTE:
Various other administration officials have gone on the record saying the SOTU statement was about Africa not Niger. For example...

Rice for Bush 7/11/03

"...There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger..."

Compassiongate (bold text is CG emphasis):
Later in the same Press Conference on 7/14, here is what Mr. Fleischer said: "...But in Director Tenet's statement, it also reads that the former official who the ambassador met with, the former Prime Minister of Niger, interpreted an Iraqi overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. So there still is reporting that they attempted to discuss -- that Iraqis attempted to discuss uranium sales in Niger..." 
An interpretation is now the basis of a fact?? Regardless, if the Bush administration believed this, then why did they earlier state that the SOTU claim should not have been made? Why say that there are reports "separate and apart" from Niger?   
Additionally, Fleischer goes on to say this: 
"...And the sentence immediately before it, Jeanne -- do you remember what the sentence was immediately before the statement about Niger?...It was that Iraq is seeking five different ways to enrich its uranium. It was a broad statement and then the President made the specific reference to Niger. And he made it because that's what the intelligence showed at that time, and we've been very up front in saying since then that it should not have risen to the President's level..." !! 
Even while Ari is characterizing the SOTU statement as an "Africa" statement, out pops out two sentences saying that the SOTU statement was about "Niger"! Talk about moral clarity.

Dana Priest and Dana Milbank (Washington Post) - 7/15/03:
"...But Fleischer's words yesterday contradicted his assertion a week earlier that the State of the Union charge was "based and predicated on the yellowcake from Niger."...."

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen (Washington Post) - 7/10/03:
"...Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, told reporters that the White House learned only after the speech that documents that were the basis for his claim had been forged. "After the speech, information was learned about the forged documents," he said. "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech." ..."
CG note: the purpose of this quote is to show that Fleischer was referring solely to the bogus Niger documents when he was discussing the SOTU. 

Paul Sperry (WorldNetDaily):
"...In further defending its uranium charge, the White House now says there may have been other African countries contacted by Iraq. It points to the select parts of the NIE it declassified last week citing Somalia and Congo. [CG emphasis] But there are problems with this explanation, as well... two things are missing from the alleged Somalia and Congo connections: the amounts of uranium and the dates they were sought. The Niger claim, on the other hand, cites both amount and date. [CG emphasis] Discussed earlier on the same page of the NIE, it says that Iraq was "working out arrangements for ... up to 500 tons of yellowcake" as of early 2001. So it's unlikely the president was referring to Somalia or Congo when he asserted Hussein "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." [CG emphasis] He most likely meant Niger. Indeed, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said earlier this month that "the president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellowcake from Niger."...
Further, Somalia and Congo aren't even among the top African nations that produce uranium. Besides Niger, they are Gabon, South Africa and Namibia, notes Joseph C. Wilson, ambassador to Gabon under former President Bush..."

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

Fleischer for Bush - 7/14/03

"...The State of the Union address had different language, and it was that Iraq is pursuing uranium, seeking uranium from Africa. That's because there was additional reporting from the CIA, separate and apart from Niger, naming other countries where they believed it was possible that Saddam was seeking uranium...the broader statement about seeking uranium from Africa was vetted through the CIA..."

McCormack for Bush - 6/13/03

"...Those documents were only one piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "The issue of Iraq's pursuit of uranium in Africa is supported by multiple sources of intelligence. The other sources of evidence did and do [CG emphasis] support the president's statement."..."

NOTE:
Various other administration officials have gone on the record saying the SOTU statement was about Africa not Niger. For example...

Rice for Bush 7/11/03

"...There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger..."

Compassiongate:
Let's go back to the Tim Russert - Condi Rice exchange in Meet the Press on June 8 (bold text is my emphasis):
"..MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you a specific comment the president made in his State of the Union message on January 28, 2003, when he talked about uranium from Africa. Let’s watch:
       (Videotape, January 28):
       PRES. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
       (End videotape)
       MR. RUSSERT: Now, five weeks later, this is what appeared in The Washington Post: “A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector said in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq’s secret nuclear ambitions. Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed ‘not authentic’ after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts... ‘We fell for it,’ said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.”
       In light of that, should the president retract those comments? And should there be a full, open government investigation into our intelligence agencies?
       DR. RICE: The president quoted a British paper. We did not know at the time—no one knew at the time, in our circles—maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken. But the—it was a relatively small part of the case about nuclear weapons and nuclear reconstitution. It is also the case that the broad picture about Iraq’s programs was a picture that went very far back in time. Let me take for a minute that DIA report that you just talked about because there’s a lot of selective quotation going on here..."

Here is my point. Tim Russert made no mention whatsoever of Niger (at least per the above MSNBC web transcript). He mentioned Africa no less than three times, and not once did he say Niger. He phrased the Niger hoax in such a way that the word "Africa" was used instead of "Niger" - both when referring to the President's speech and when referring to the Niger flap. And how did Condi respond? Not A WORD from her about the remarkable need to separate Niger and Africa! 
If Ms. Rice, and the Bush administration for that matter, was so clear that the SOTU case was built around "Africa" and not "Niger", how come she said NOTHING, ZILCH, NADA about that distinction in this interview? 

Dennis Hans (Scoop):
"...A close reading of the latest report by the British government’s Intelligence and Security Committee and two classified memos made public by the Hutton Inquiry, coupled with material that’s been in the public domain for several months, leads to the following damning conclusions:
* The controversial statement in the British government’s September 24, 2002 dossier “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” — “But there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — was in reference to only one country: Niger.
* The wording of that sentence was not the work of the Brits alone. Rather, it was the result of difficult negotiations between British intelligence and their Italian counterparts who, as the “originators and owners of the reporting” of that particular intelligence, had final say on how the Brits could use it or publicly describe it.
* That “intelligence” consisted of summaries written by the Italians of documents later shown to be crude, laughable forgeries of purported correspondence between Iraqi and Nigerien officials and a “memorandum of agreement” for the sale of as much as 500 tons of yellowcake uranium.
* That bogus intelligence supplied by the Italians was the Brits’ only source that supported the specific wording of the dossier assertion. Thus, by extension, it was the only source to support George W. Bush’s 16-word assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address (SOTU) based on the dossier.
...
The British government’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is chaired by Labour parliamentarian Ann Taylor, a supporter of Tony Blair; its members are appointed by the prime minister in consultation with the leaders of the two main opposition parties. The ISC’s September 2003 report...section is titled “Uranium from Africa.” It covers Paragraphs 87 to 93, which I quote in their entirety...
The executive summary states that:
“As a result of the intelligence, we judge that Iraq has . . . sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear programme that could require it.”
while the main body of the text stated that:
“. . . there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
89. The Committee questioned the Chief of the SIS about the reporting behind these statements. We were told that it came from two independent sources, one of which was based on documentary evidence. One had reported in June 2002 and the other in September that the Iraqis had expressed interest in purchasing, as it had done before, uranium from Niger. GCHQ also had some sigint concerning a visit by an Iraqi official to Niger.
90. The SIS’s two sources reported that Iraq had expressed an interest in buying uranium from Niger, but the sources were uncertain whether contracts had been signed or if uranium had actually been shipped to Iraq. In order to protect the intelligence sources and to be factually correct, the phrase, “Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was used. At the time of producing the dossier, nothing had challenged the accuracy of the SIS reports..."

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

Rumsfeld for Bush

"...[Saddam Hussein's] regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa..."

McCormack for Bush - 6/13/03

"...Those documents were only one piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "The issue of Iraq's pursuit of uranium in Africa is supported by multiple sources of intelligence. The other sources of evidence did and do [CG emphasis] support the president's statement."..."

Rep. Waxman's letter to Bush on 3/17/03:
"...In the last ten days,... it has become incontrovertibly clear that a key piece of evidence that you and other Administration officials have cited regarding Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons is a hoax...The evidence in question is correspondence that indicates that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear material from an African country, Niger. For several months, this evidence has been a central part of the U.S. case against Iraq. On December 19, the State Department filed a response to Iraq's disarmament declaration to the U.N. Security Council..."The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger." A month later, in your State of the Union address, you stated: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."...It has now been conceded that this evidence was a forgery...
There have been suggestions by some Administration officials that there may be other evidence besides the forged documents that shows Iraq tried to obtain uranium from an African country. For instance, CIA officials recently stated that "U.S. concerns regarding a possible uranium agreement between Niger and Iraq were not based solely on the documents which are now known to be fraudulent." The CIA provided this other information to the IAEA along with the forged documents. After reviewing this complete body of evidence, the IAEA stated: "we have found to date no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."¹³ Ultimately, the IAEA concluded that "these specific allegations are unfounded."¹⁴...
 These facts raise troubling questions. It appears that at the same time that you, Secretary Rumsfeld, and State Department officials were citing Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa as a crucial part of the case against Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials regarded this very same evidence as unreliable. If true, this is deeply disturbing: it would mean that your Administration asked the U.N. Security Council, the Congress, and the American people to rely on information that your own experts knew was not credible..."

State Dept. response by Paul Kelly to Rep. Waxman:
"..This is in response to your March 17 letter to the President outlining your concerns about the reliability of evidence purporting that Iraq attempted to procure uranium from Africa. [CG emphasis] The White House has asked the Department of State to respond on behalf of the President.
Beginning in late 2001 the United States obtained information through several channels, including U.S. intelligence sources and overt sources, reporting that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Africa. In addition, two Western European allies in formed us of similar reporting from their own intelligence services. As you know, the UK made this information public in its September 2002 dossier on "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction." The other Western European ally relayed the information to us privately and said, while it did not believe any uranium had been shipped to Iraq, it believed Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. We sought several times to determine the basis for the latter assessment, and whether it was based on independent evidence not otherwise available to the U.S. Not until March 4 did we learn that in fact the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited. 
Based on what appeared at the time to be multiple sources for the information in question, we acted in good faith in providing the information earlier this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors responsible for verifying Iraq's claims regarding its nuclear program. [CG emphasis] 1n similar good faith, the December 19 State Department fact sheet that illustrated omissions from the December 7 Iraqi declaration to the UN Security Council included a summary reference to the reported uranium procurement attempt..."

The New Republic:
"...Are we expected to believe that the administration has been sitting on a mountain of evidence suggesting Saddam had tried to purchase uranium from multiple African countries, but that the only piece of evidence it actually ended up citing in public was the one that happened to be bogus? Are we expected to believe that, once Niger story was publicly revealed to be bogus, the administration decided it'd be better to keep sitting on the legitimate evidence that Saddam had been trying to purchase uranium from Africa and, instead, to just let the bogus evidence speak for itself? Well, Dick, I guess we could share this incredibly incriminating, incredibly damning pile of evidence with the rest of the world. But then that would probably prove the merits of the war beyond a reasonable doubt, and getting help from all those second-rate European armies would be much more trouble than it's worth. Good point, Don. Why don't we just keep that stuff quiet and rest our case with the forged Niger documents...
Are you kidding us? THERE ARE NO OTHER SOURCES. It's about time the administration owned up to it..."

McCormack for Bush - 6/13/03

"...Those documents were only one piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "The issue of Iraq's pursuit of uranium in Africa is supported by multiple sources of intelligence. The other sources of evidence did and do [CG emphasis] support the president's statement."..."

NOTE:
Various other administration officials have gone on the record saying the SOTU statement was about Africa not Niger. For example...

Rice for Bush 7/11/03

"...There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger..."

David E. Sanger (New York Times via Common Dreams) - 7/7/03
"..."There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa," the statement [from the Bush administration] said. "However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made."
In other words, said one senior official, "we couldn't prove it, and it might in fact be wrong."..."

David E. Sanger and Carl Hulse (New York Times via Truthout):
"...Michael N. Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said today, "The documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger were not the sole basis for the line in the president's State of the Union speech that referred to recent Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa." 
He said that at the time a "national intelligence estimate" cited "attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from several countries in Africa," adding, "We now know that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged."...
Mr. Anton noted today that "other reporting that suggested that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Africa is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that such attempts were in fact made.
"Because of this lack of specificity," he continued, "this reporting alone did not rise to the level of inclusion in a presidential speech. That said, the issue of Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from abroad was not an element underpinning the judgment reached by most intelligence agencies that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."..."

Rice for Bush 7/11/03

"...There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger..."

Ari Fleischer (White House Press Briefing) - 7/14/03:
"...I think this remains an issue about did Iraq seek uranium in Africa, an issue that very well may be true. We don't know if it's true..."

David Corn (The Nation):
"...[Iraq Survey Group lead David] Kay says his team has found "no conclusive proof" Hussein tried to acquire uranium in Niger. In fact, he reported that one cooperating Iraqi scientist revealed to the ISG that another African nation had made an unsolicited offer to sell Iraq uranium but there is no indication Iraq accepted the offer..."

David E. Sanger and Carl Hulse (New York Times via Truthout):
"...Michael N. Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said today, "The documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger were not the sole basis for the line in the president's State of the Union speech that referred to recent Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa." 
He said that at the time a "national intelligence estimate" cited "attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from several countries in Africa," adding, "We now know that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged."...
Mr. Anton noted today that "other reporting that suggested that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Africa is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that such attempts were in fact made.
"Because of this lack of specificity," he continued, "this reporting alone did not rise to the level of inclusion in a presidential speech. That said, the issue of Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from abroad was not an element underpinning the judgment reached by most intelligence agencies that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."..."

Rep. Waxman's letter to Condi Rice:
"...Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address?...
...contrary to your assertion, there does not appear to be any other specific and credible evidence that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. The Administration has not provided any such evidence to me or my staff despite our repeated requests. To the contrary, the State Department wrote me that the "other source" of this claim was another Western European ally. But as the State Department acknowledged in its letter, "the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited."..."

Tony Karon (Time):
"...Secretary of State Colin Powell has attempted to ride out the yellowcake crisis by defending Bush and at the same time clearing his own name by making clear that he never repeated that particular untruth. Combining those two objectives can be tough. "At the time of the president's State of the Union, a judgement was made that was an appropriate statement for the president to make," he told reporters in South Africa last week, referring to the Niger allegation. "When I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore. It was not standing the test of time. And so I didn't use it, and we haven't used it since." The test of time?! Exactly eight days passed between the president's speech and the secretary's UN presentation..."

"..."It turns out that it's technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does — did say that — and still says that. They haven't changed their mind, the United Kingdom intelligence people." ...
"It didn't rise to the standard of a presidential speech, but it's not known, for example, that it was inaccurate. In fact, people think it was technically accurate."..."

Rice for Bush - 7/13/03

"...The statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that..."

Rumsfeld for Bush -7/10/03

"..."Q: Secretary Rumsfeld, when did you know that the reports about [Iraq seeking] uranium coming out of Africa were bogus?
"A: Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available."
—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, answering a question posed by Sen. Mark Pryor, D.-Ark., at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee, July 10..."

Tenet for Bush

"...From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct — i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa..."

The New Republic:
"...But, even allowing for the most Clintonian parsing, what the president said in the State of the Union was not accurate. Bush, after all, did not state that the British "believed" Saddam had tried to buy uranium or even that the British "claimed" he had done so. Rather, he said the British "had learned" that this was the case, a phrasing clearly implying that the president believed the Brits to be correct--a position his own intelligence agencies had explicitly disavowed..."

Paul Sperry (WorldNetDaily):
"...that argument assumes the administration didn't know the British government's allegation was faulty, when in fact the CIA warned the British government to drop the uranium charge in September, after it published it in its Iraq dossier.
Also, other top administration officials, including the president's security adviser and defense secretary, have made the accusation on their own – without any attribution to Britain.
Rice's charge, which she made in the New York Times just five days before Bush's, was naked: Iraq has failed to explain its "efforts to get uranium from abroad." So was Rumsfeld's. The day after Bush's speech, he charged that Hussein's regime "recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."..."

Dennis Hans (Scoop):
"...A close reading of the latest report by the British government’s Intelligence and Security Committee and two classified memos made public by the Hutton Inquiry, coupled with material that’s been in the public domain for several months, leads to the following damning conclusions:
* The controversial statement in the British government’s September 24, 2002 dossier “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” — “But there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — was in reference to only one country: Niger.
...
* That bogus intelligence supplied by the Italians was the Brits’ only source that supported the specific wording of the dossier assertion. Thus, by extension, it was the only source to support George W. Bush’s 16-word assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address (SOTU) based on the dossier.
...
The British government’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is chaired by Labour parliamentarian Ann Taylor, a supporter of Tony Blair; its members are appointed by the prime minister in consultation with the leaders of the two main opposition parties. The ISC’s September 2003 report...section is titled “Uranium from Africa.” It covers Paragraphs 87 to 93, which I quote in their entirety...
The executive summary states that:
“As a result of the intelligence, we judge that Iraq has . . . sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear programme that could require it.”
while the main body of the text stated that:
“. . . there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
89. The Committee questioned the Chief of the SIS about the reporting behind these statements. We were told that it came from two independent sources, one of which was based on documentary evidence. One had reported in June 2002 and the other in September that the Iraqis had expressed interest in purchasing, as it had done before, uranium from Niger. GCHQ also had some sigint concerning a visit by an Iraqi official to Niger.
90. The SIS’s two sources reported that Iraq had expressed an interest in buying uranium from Niger, but the sources were uncertain whether contracts had been signed or if uranium had actually been shipped to Iraq. In order to protect the intelligence sources and to be factually correct, the phrase, “Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was used..."

Tony Karon (Time):
"...Secretary of State Colin Powell has attempted to ride out the yellowcake crisis by defending Bush and at the same time clearing his own name by making clear that he never repeated that particular untruth. Combining those two objectives can be tough. "At the time of the president's State of the Union, a judgement was made that was an appropriate statement for the president to make," he told reporters in South Africa last week, referring to the Niger allegation. "When I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore. It was not standing the test of time. And so I didn't use it, and we haven't used it since." The test of time?! Exactly eight days passed between the president's speech and the secretary's UN presentation..."

Walter Pincus (Washington Post):
"...Only eight days after the State of the Union speech, however, Powell himself did not repeat the uranium allegation when he presented the administration's case against Iraq to the U.N. Security Council. "After further analysis, looking at other estimates we had and other information that was coming in, it turned out that the basis upon which that statement was made didn't hold up, and we said so, and we've acknowledged it, and we've moved on," Powell told reporters in explaining his decision..."

Josh Marshall (Talking Points memo):
"...RICE: At the time that the State of the Union address was prepared, there were also other sources that said that they were, the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake, uranium oxide from Africa. And that was taken out of a British report. Clearly, that particular report, we learned subsequently, subsequently, was not credible [CG emphasis]. But it was also a very small part, George, of a larger picture of a program aimed at developing nuclear weapons..."

Timothy Noah (MSN/Slate):
"...
"The [International Atomic Energy Agency] has made progress in its investigation into reports that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger in recent years. … The IAEA was … able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the Government of Niger, and to compare the form, format, contents and signatures of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation.
"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents—which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger—are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded." 
—Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a March 7 statement to the United Nations Security Council. ElBaradei's statement was reported March 8 on the front page of the Washington Post, Rumsfeld's hometown newspaper, and was also widely reported in other TV and print outlets around the world..."

Walter Pincus (Washington Post) - 7/8/03:
"...The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
The statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report, which raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program were a threat to U.S. security. ..
The British panel said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a "bald claim" that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa. It noted that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence, and questioned why an official British government intelligence dossier published four months before Bush's speech included the allegation as part of an effort to make the case for going to war against Iraq...
Asked about the British report, the administration released a statement that, after weeks of questions about the president's uranium-purchase assertion, effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's statement was wrong.
"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House [CG emphasis]. .."

"...it's not uncommon in the intelligence community for different intelligence services to have their sources. And they, in order to obtain information from those sources say, your information, your name or who you are, will not be discussed with anybody. That's often how people keep their sources -- as reporters well know...given the fact that the Iraqi regime is no more and they are not going to be seeking uranium from anybody, no, it's not a high priority to find out who the source of the British government is, because the threat no longer exists..."

To which Ari had no real answer.

The Guardian (?) via Atrios:
"...The White House has now admitted that Mr Bush's information (which he sourced directly to the British)...should not have been used.
The British response, reiterated yesterday by Downing Street, is to insist that their evidence is based not on the forged documents but on entirely separate material from a foreign intelligence agency. If so, why has Britain been unable to convince Washington that the claim is genuine? Whitehall's answer that it cannot reveal the identity of its source - even to its US intelligence "cousins" - is simply unbelievable.
The whole business is, in the words of the foreign affairs committee, "very odd indeed"..."

[Regarding the "16 words" in the SOTU]
"...What I knew at the time is that no one had told us that there were concerns about the British reporting. Apparently, there were. They were apparently communicated to the British..."

"...said that an investigation by the British had "revalidated the British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa -- what was in the State of the Union speech."..."

Compassiongate: There is a difference between saying that the claim was "reasonable" because there was some document to back up the claim, and saying that it was valid based on evidence that Saddam actually sought Uranium from Africa as alleged.

"...Bush defended the charge as he fielded questions after a meeting in the Oval Office with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. "I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence," he said. "And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision."..."

Bush

"...we needed to enforce U.N. resolution for the security of the world. And we did. We took action based upon good, solid intelligence..."

Walter Pincus and Dana Priest (Washington Post):
"...The State Department received copies of what would turn out to be forged documents suggesting that Iraq tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger three months before the president's State of the Union address, administration officials said.
The documents, which officials said appeared to be of "dubious authenticity," were distributed to the CIA and other agencies within days. But the U.S. government waited four months to turn them over to United Nations weapons inspectors who had been demanding to see evidence of U.S. and British claims that Iraq's attempted purchase of uranium oxide violated U.N. resolutions and was among the reasons to go to war. State Department officials could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents when the inspectors asked for them in December...
Even before these documents arrived, both the State Department and the CIA had questions about the reliability of intelligence reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger and other African countries..."

Ron Hutcheson (Knight-Ridder) - bold text is my emphasis:
"...But that finding in the classified National Intelligence Estimate, prepared for the White House last October, came loaded with reservations that reflected deep divisions in the intelligence community over Iraq's weapons programs and were at odds with the certainty expressed by Bush and his top aides.
The report even quoted intelligence experts at the State Department as describing claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa as "highly dubious." Bush nevertheless repeated the assertion in his State of the Union speech in January while arguing the need for war.
Although the report concluded that Iraq was seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, it acknowledged the scarcity of solid information. If the excerpts accurately reflect the full report, Bush reached the decision to go to war by assuming the worst about Iraq's capabilities and Saddam's intentions.
"We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs. ... We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD," the intelligence experts reported...
CIA director George Tenet has acknowledged that the intelligence agency should have deleted the assertion from Bush's speech...While the various agencies agreed that Iraq had "a large-scale" biological weapons program and a more limited chemical weapons program, they were split on nuclear weapons..."

David Corn (The Nation):
"...* In interviews with reporters in July, Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director conducting a review of the CIA's prewar intelligence, said that intelligence had been somewhat ambiguous. He noted that US intelligence analysts had been forced to rely upon information from the early and mid 1990s and had possessed little hard evidence to evaluate after 1998 (when UN inspectors left Iraq). The material that did come in following that, he said, was mostly "circumstantial or "inferential." It was "less specific and detailed" than in previous years...
* In late September, Representative Porter Goss, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the panel, sent a letter to CIA chief George Tenet that criticized the prewar intelligence for relying on outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information, noting that the intelligence contained "too many uncertainties." This conclusion was based on the committee's review of 19 volumes of classified prewar intelligence. Goss, a former CIA case officer, and Harman maintained the committee's review had found "significant deficiencies" in the intelligence community's collection of intelligence after 1998. They cited a "lack of specific intelligence" on Iraq's WMDs and the alleged tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda...
* When David Kay, the chief WMD-hunter in Iraq, testified before Congress on October 2, he said that the intelligence community from 1991 to 2003 had a tough time gathering accurate information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "The result," he said, "was that our understanding of the status of Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties and had to be heavily caveated."
* In late October, Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said that the prewar intelligence had sometimes been "sloppy" and inconclusive..."

(neither good, nor solid)

"...The official said Bush was "briefed" on the NIE's contents, but "I don't think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it." Asked whether Bush was aware the State Department called the Africa-uranium claim "highly dubious," the official, who coordinated Bush's State of the Union address, said: "He did not know that."
"The president was comfortable at the time, based on the information that was provided in his speech," the official said of the decision to use it in the address to Congress. "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."..."

"...The administration's most audacious defense, however, is that, even if Bush's Niger assertion was inaccurate and the White House had reason to believe it was inaccurate, it's not that big a deal. Describing the significance of the Niger claim as "enormously overblown," Rice explained on July 13, "It is unfortunate that this one sentence, this sixteen words, remained in the State of the Union. But this in no way has any effect on the president's larger case about Iraqi efforts to reconstitute the nuclear program and, most importantly, the bigger picture of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program."..."

The New Republic:
"...This is simply not the case. Although at different times the administration made different arguments for war with Iraq, its central rationale was Saddam's alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. And no weapons inspire greater fear than nuclear bombs. This is why, despite the fact that evidence of Iraq's nuclear capability was far less compelling than evidence of its chemical or biological capabilities, administration officials took pains to cite Saddam's nuclear ambitions in virtually every presentation leading up to the war. As Rice explained to the American public on September 8, 2002, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." According to Time, more than 180 members of Congress explicitly cited the threat of Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons as a reason for their support of the resolution granting Bush authority to use force against Iraq.
In the months before and after the war, the administration has presented to the public five pieces of evidence that Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. One of those, the claim that magnets purchased by Saddam would be appropriate for use in enriching uranium, was first raised publicly after the State of the Union address, in Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation to the United Nations. It has since been debunked by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Another, Bush's claim in the October 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech that Saddam "has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists," is so vague that the administration rarely cited it in subsequent arguments. And a third, that "satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past," as Bush put it in Cincinnati, was dismissed by weapons inspectors on the ground.
The only two pieces of evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program cited in the State of the Union were the Niger claim [CG note: Bush did not say Niger - he said Africa, but we know he meant Niger from the above evidence] and Saddam's attempted acquisition of aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons production." Of these, the Niger allegation was the more significant, for two reasons. First, intelligence concerns that the aluminum tubes in question might not, in fact, be suitable for nuclear weapons production had already been raised in the press. (Since then, the iaea and British intelligence have concluded they were not suitable.) Second, Iraq's acquisition of uranium would suggest a far more immediate threat than its acquisition of aluminum tubes to be used for uranium enrichment. According to the NIE, Iraq's acquisition of weapons-grade fissile material would likely determine when Saddam would be capable of producing his first nuclear weapon. "If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad," the unclassified version of the NIE states, "it could make a nuclear weapon within a year." Bush himself made this case in Cincinnati, noting, "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
The Niger allegation, then, was the most compelling evidence in the administration's most compelling national security case for war with Iraq. But its significance goes still deeper. Those 16 words were merely the most egregious example of a clear pattern: Convinced of the rightness of its Iraq policy, the Bush administration repeatedly--and deliberately--misrepresented intelligence to paint Saddam as a greater threat to the United States than he actually was. That is the reality the administration is trying to conceal with its welter of contradictory explanations..."

Michael Kinsley (Washington Post):
"...The final argument: It was only 16 words! What's the big deal? The bulk of the case for war remains intact. Logically, of course, this argument will work for any single thread of the pro-war argument. Perhaps the president will tell us which particular points among those he and his administration have made are the ones we are supposed to take seriously. Or how many gimmes he feels entitled to take in the course of this game. Is it a matter of word count? When he hits 100 words, say, are we entitled to assume that he cares whether the words are true?..."

Tenet for Bush

"...CIA Director George Tenet claimed on July 11 that Wilson was sent to Niger by junior nonproliferation experts at the CIA acting "on their own initiative" and that senior administration officials were unaware of his mission..."

The New Republic:
"...in February 2002, the CIA had dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the claim about uranium purchases. When the CIA debriefed him in March, his findings were emphatic: As Wilson explained in a New York Times op-ed on July 6, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." CIA Director George Tenet claimed on July 11 that Wilson was sent to Niger by junior nonproliferation experts at the CIA acting "on their own initiative" and that senior administration officials were unaware of his mission. But this is not true. Wilson was told by CIA officials that the mission had been specifically requested by the office of the vice president...And, as Wilson tells The New Republic, "When an executive agency is tasked to find something out and it gets an answer, it goes back to the person who requested it." [CG emphasis] For the White House to suggest that Cheney's office was unaware of the results of Wilson's inquiry strains credulity.
Nor was Wilson the only official to raise doubts about the Niger story. Around the same time, his account was supplemented by a skeptical report from the American ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, and by General Carlton Fulford Jr., who visited Niger and communicated his doubts about the uranium allegation to the military's Joint Staff at the Pentagon. These misgivings were known and widely shared in the intelligence community..."

"...Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson raised the Administration's ire with an op-ed piece in The New York Times on July 6 charging that the Administration had "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the Iraqi threat. Since then Administration officials have taken public and private whacks at Wilson, charging that his 2002 report, made at the behest of U.S. intelligence, was faulty and that his mission was a scheme cooked up by mid-level operatives. Some government officials, noting that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, intimate that she was involved in his being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake..."

"...Administration officials also charge that Wilson took at face value the claims of Nigerien officials that they had not sold uranium ore to Iraq..."

Fleischer for Bush

"...He [Wilson] spent eight days in Niger and concluded that Niger denied the allegation. Well, typically nations don't admit to going around nuclear nonproliferation..."

Joe Conason (Salon):
"...casually denigrating a man who has spent three decades serving the United States. Had Fleischer read Wilson's report -- or were he capable of comprehending it -- he would know that isn't what the former diplomat did at all..."

"...The accusation that turned out to be based on fraudulent evidence is that Niger sold uranium to Iraq. Okay? The idea that Iraq was seeking to purchase is not -- is one that's still out there. And that you have, I think, in Ambassador Wilson's report and I think Director Tenet made a reference to this, some information that, indeed, Iraqis had shown up in Niger interested in something that the Nigerians believed to be purchasing uranium. So there were reports out there that Iraq was sending agents out to purchase uranium..."

Fleischer for Bush

"...Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it...reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales..."

Joseph Wilson interview at Talking Points Memo:
"...The people that I talked to in the government at that time, said that uranium had not yet come up in discussions, although they acknowledged that perhaps uranium would have been one of the things that would have interested Iraq in a future relationship--all of which is reasonable, none of which constitutes the explicit attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium at that time...
The fact that there was a meeting or a visit in which uranium was not discussed does not translate into purchased a significant quantities of uranium. The fact that there was a meeting that was not taken, that was not held, but had it been held, one of the participants opines that perhaps uranium might have been one of the things that this guy might have wanted to discuss, does not suggest uranium sales or significant quantities of uranium from Niger to Iraq. So, those were both--I thought those were both really red herrings..."

"...We believed, the community believed, that he had a workable design for a bomb. And we know he had 500 tons of uranium. It is there today at Tuwaitha, under seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency. All those are facts that are basically not in dispute..."

(See cell on the right)

Compassiongate: Not to mention, when you don't know where the hell Saddam is, how the hell can we be sure that he is not trying to "buy anything right now"?

(O the compassion! O the moral clarity!)