U.S. Had Uranium Papers Earlier

Officials Say Forgeries on Iraqi Efforts Reached State Dept. Before Speech

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Friday, July 18, 2003; Page A01

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.

The administration, facing increased criticism over the claims it made about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium, had said until now that it did not have the documents before the State of the Union speech.

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.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8777-2003Jul17.html

....the CIA hotline :D

Oh what a tangled web we weave.....

LIARS

Up...down...sky is green, no! blue...I have a sawbuck with your name on it friend...made you look!...help us!!...save the oil...WMD went bye, bye...oooooo,ahhhhhhh,gooooggggg...Donald Rumsfeld is high in fiber...goodnight

What a great analysis.

Could this have something to do with Skull & Bones' training to use chaos as a force for achievement?

chaos being, i think, the prefered state in which a Repud pres. can thrive

... it'd take a platoon of shooters with a platoon of loaders to drop more than half of them. :eyes:

....why isn't this thread attracting more notice?

They lied. Or they are in meltdown.

They said they didn't get the documents until after SOTU. Now they admit they got them several months before SOTU.

We have a government in deep, deep crisis.

we have lost our democracy.

Man, that lie lasted what, 1 day? Here I was getting ready to pillory them for not checking their facts and willingly accepting dubious, but unchecked docs. Then they come out and say they didn't have the docs until after the speech. Then, less than 24 hours later, it comes out that they had the docs 3 months beforehand.

They are toast. The GOP did a full court press today, but they can't keep it up.

It's so simple. A "mistake" as big as a false nuclear weapons accusation in a speech as big as the State of the Union just doesn't happen. That's not allowed. And to try to lay the blame on others ... well that's Bush I guess.

Didn't Bush himself make the statement that they didn't have the documents until after the speech? Seems like he did that day he was answering questions with Kofi Anan.

it's really important

That'll help keep it visible.

(I save things but my file system is a mess), but I had already heard that the docs had gone first to State (that now makes sense if it came to an embassy first) in the fall of '02, but everything was fuzzy about the path after that. And I'm *almost* certain that CIA (or someone therein) also claimed not to have seen the forgeries until Feb. But here it says that even when the docs were still in Rome, the CIA station chief was informed (and presumably saw them?). And also Pincus says that State sent them around to everyone (CIA, NSA, Cheney's office surely, but where else? DIA? OSP?).

So now no one's off the hook. Apparently, that's why the comments from CIA peeps at the end of the article--I assume they are responses to the question: why didn't you debunk these docs earlier? (personally, I think the reply is fairly credible--that the docs were junk, and so obviously so, that they didn't think it was important to say much about them. I suppose they didn't think the docs would be snatched up with glee by the WH and DoD hawks--could the CIA have been so oblivious to the danger of the hawks overreaching?) I hope all this doesn't bring the focus back to the CIA again. I want the trail to end at the door of the OSP, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Cheney, et al.

I wonder who the journalist was--the one who handed over the forgeries to the embassy in Rome? And now I'm wondering about all the rumors about Italian and British intelligence--disinfo from where?

Anyway--if there are drips like this every day, I think we're in business! BTW, if you haven't already, go to LBN and check out the Klayman thread about Cheney's energy papers. Busy night tonight.

EDIT--typos and (blush) grammar.

What an incredibly stupid thing to do.

The drips have turned into a steady stream, and the "leaks" are getting worse each day.

This is been one of the most phenomenal news days I've seen in a long while.

Bush certainly knew they were building a case that Iraq was attempting to create a nuclear bomb. Wouldn't he be told all of the information, just as a matter of national security? How can he say he didn't know any of this, it isn't just a matter of some staff making a mistake. It's a matter of him knowing what is going on with nuclear weapons around the world. That's what he's supposed to be doing up there, isn't it?

...I want them to tell us why they waited four months to hand this information over to the UN weapons inspectors.

All members were supposed to hand over intel to UN

the lies are being revealed daily now! I might start watching the tv "news" again!

:bounce:

right now. However, as usual, they're taking call-in's about Blair's speech, dealing with it like "People magazine." Fluff instead of substance.

Not me that's for sure. The best though was Bush's little denial of responsibility at the "press conference", a denial of responsibility by his refusal to accept responsibility when directly asked. He's not capable of taking responsibility. It's incredible and it totally destroys his "image" as a straight shooter. That image is now completely history and he's therefore in a lot of trouble because once gone, something like that can never be regained.