Libby Trial and Uranium from Africa Part 1: Bush to Blair I’ll Scratch Your Back Since You Scratched

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/01/29/the-scooter-libby-trial-and-uranium-from-africa-part-1-bush-to-blair-ill-scratch-your-back-since-you-scratched-mine/

......

One of the declassified documents (DX63) released last week by Libby's legal team is a March 11, 2003 SPWR ("Senior Publish When Ready") prepared by WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center - a White House friendly division within the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence). I noticed a short sentence in this SPWR which is a great example to illustrate a very important and under-reported aspect of the uranium from Africa scandal. In fact, this is an issue that is a natural outcome of our general emphasis on U.S.-centric news consumption and analysis - something that carries a risk that we will miss important cues about how we are being manipulated globally by the current Government and its "allies". (NOTE: All emphasis in quoted portions in this post is mine, unless otherwise stated.)


......


In other words, in July 2003, Tenet stated unequivocally that the CIA had expressed reservations to the U.K. in September 2002 about including any claim in their dossier that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, let alone Iraq having purchased uranium from Africa. Yet, in July 2004, the Butler report flat out lied about this fact.

Now, this is where it gets very interesting.

As you may recall, in the aftermath of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's NYT op-ed the Bush administration was forced to withdraw Bush's SOTU uranium claim. However, that turned out to be a temporary PR disaster for the White House (leading, among other things, to the Bush White House outing the identity of an undercover CIA operative named Valerie Plame). One of the ways in which the Bush administration recovered from the firestorm was by relying on the British Government for cover. Indeed, Blair and MI6 continued to falsely insist (pretend) that the "sought uranium" claim in their White Paper was credible and that it was based on evidence that they could not reveal. As I said in October 2005:

more

pity

to intimidate others from coming forward." Joseph Wilson.