The Financial Times has more information on the sources of the British intelligence estimate that Iraq was pursuing uranium from Africa.
Two foreign governments, thought to be France and Italy, supplied Britain with the intelligence for its claim that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
The Financial Times has learnt from senior Whitehall sources that the information came from two west European countries, and not from now discredited documents that proved to be forgeries.
This information, which does not appear to have been passed on to the US, would suggest why the government felt confident enough to put it in a dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction last September.
However, for it’s part, the Italian government is denying that it passed intelligence onto the British. The French government is one possible source, although it is also believed that the Germans were actively pursuing these leads as well.
This information only lends credence to the President’s case. If this has just been an issue of a few crude forgeries, why would there be such a rush by Western European intelligence agencies to follow up on the information? It begs the question that there must be something more to this information than is being publically stated.
The article continues:
The foreign secretary also disclosed that the US did not share with London details of a visit to Niger in 2002 by Joseph Wilson, an American envoy, who reported that no contract to buy uranium had been concluded with Iraq. Britain only learnt about this in recent press reports.
But he pointed to a part of the envoy’s report that cited a visit by an Iraqi delegation in 1999 to Niger. This supported the UK claim that Iraq had sought African uranium.
This seems like a gross breech in proceedure, however in the defense of the Administration it seems clear that Wilson’s investigation was shoddy at best. By his own admission he spent only a few days in Niger without any significant staff and interviewed only a few dozen officials. Even so, he only confirmed that Iraq had not recieved any uranium, not that they had never tried.
It appears that its the critics case, not the President’s, that unravels under scrutiny. It appears that the President’s statement was based on the best possible information at the time, and was not known to be false, and may be true after all. Of course, don’t expect such small matters as the truth to stand in the way of the Democrat’s efforts at a partisan witchhunt.
If all else fails, try to blame it all on France and Germany.
I have another suggestion. I think you should make a copy of your frequently used line “however, in defense of the administration….” so you can cut and paste it whenever necessary, and it’ll most likely be necessary multiple times a day until January 2005 when Howard Dean takes his oath of office. I’d hate to see you put all that energy into typing “however, in defense of the administration” over and over again with the copy and paste options so readily available with today’s prime Calcutta technology.
If Howard Dean takes the oath of office in January 2005 it will only be attributable to some genetically-engineered virus that kills every native-born American Republican over the age of 35, leaving only Democrats available to run.
Oh, and for the record (and because it’s such a rare occassion) I’m making the argument that France and Germany were right and there was a connection between African uranium and Saddam Hussein. It would seem that if the two European countries mentioned by the UK were looking into the same issue that there must have been something behind it other than a handful of forged documents.
The Dean oath of office remark was meant to be a joke. The rest was accurate commentary for what I expect to be months of relentless apologizing for the Bush administration that would even make Clinton’s staunchest 1998 defenders blush.
“Of course, don’t expect such small matters as the truth to stand in the way of the Democrat’s efforts at a partisan witchhunt.”
Payback’s a bitch ain’t it Jay?
Except in the case of the past administration, he did make a bald-faced lie while under oath. Had anyone else committed such acts, they would be in jail.
NOBODY would be in jail for lying about sex in a civil lawsuit. “Anyone else” wouldn’t have been put on the stand and entrapped by a predatory bloodthirsty special prosecutor eager to take down a sitting President with whatever means necessary. For Zippergate to even be in the same sentence as Bush’s role in the murders of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans is a scenario only justifiable in the mind of a Republican.
Well, you try having oral sex with a subordinate, then lie about it under oath, and if you don’t end up in jail, I’ll eat my words.
And if you want to equate the war in Iraq to murder, feel free, but I don’t think you’ll get much support from either US soldiers or the Iraqi people that no longer live under the bootheel of Ba’athist oppression.
If I had consensual oral sex with a subordinate, it would never end up in a courtroom where I would have to lie. And unless John Ashcroft has rewritten the laws on this matter as well, I would trust that entrapment laws would forbid predatory third parties from pulling off a Linda Tripp and getting away with it. No real-world scenario would the Clinton-Lewinsky matter have snowballed into what it did had Clinton not had a bloodthirsty special prosecutor desperate to produce a scandal after failing to produce one for his GOP benefactors in the five years prior
to that.
And the casualties that result from a war that was engineered through lies and fraudulent intelligent can only be described as mass murder, not to mention an unpardonable war crime for which all parties involved should face a firing squad if the evidence supports the theory. As for discussing that with US troops or “liberated” Iraqis, the troops are too busy getting blown to smitherines by the jubilant liberated peasants to have time to answer any question I may pose to them.
And if you want to equate the war in Iraq to murder, feel free, but I don’t think you’ll get much support from either US soldiers or the Iraqi people that no longer live under the bootheel of Ba’athist oppression.
You’re seriously trying to say that a war in Iraq isn’t worse than oral sex in the Oval Office? Ludicrous!
I think the Iraqi people have demonstrated their feelings – they want us the hell out of Iraq, as soon as possible.
…bythe jubilant liberated peasants…
Mark, are those the people who are shooting at our troops? The peasants?
… think the Iraqi people have demonstrated their feelings – they want us the hell out of Iraq…
Chet, they do? Was there a vote? How many soldiers have died since we took Baghdad?
ROFL look what I started! It was just a joke guys! Simma down now!
How could there be a vote? There isn’t a democracy there, yet.
Do you even realize that you are contradicting yourself:
Convinient for you. of course, as it allows you to ignore the will of the people for now.
How can you be so sure of what the will of people is when there was no vote???
Personally Anti-American demonstrations in the street are enough of a message for me.
??? Hundreds demonstrate, millions stay home. What’s the message here?
few days ago, a bunch of missiles hit a car in Irak. Saddam was supposed to be in this car. After expertise, it wasn’t saddam.(dawn we missed it again!!).My question is: who was it then?
The US army doesn’t care killing someone that hasn’t been judged yet(eventhough saddam is likely to be sentenced to death if he was caught), but they also don’t care about killing an innocent, that just happened to drive when the US are looking for Saddam.
If I was part of the millions irakis, I would stay home as well. the Boyz have proven to be somehow nervous (ask the britts!)
My question is: who was it then?
I give up. Who?
The US army doesn’t care killing someone that hasn’t been judged yetyet(eventhough saddam is likely to be sentenced to death if he was caught), but they also don’t care about killing an innocent
Who’s innocent? You don’t even know who was in the car. And give me a break about “innocent”. France, etc. who pretend to care about innocent lives, etc. care nothing about people who suffer in Iran, North Korea, etc. Where are the demonstrations against those regimes? Why are there no human shields in Iran protecting the students from mullahs? Give me a break, this is pure anti americanism disquised as caring.
Why didn’t France go to UN before invading the Ivory Coast?
President Bush launched a pre-emptive attack on Iraq in violation of the United Nations Treaty which makes “an imminent threat of attack” or the consent of the Security Council the only legal basis for such an attack (Article II, Section 4). The Security Council did not authorize the attack on Iraq. Thus, only if there was an imminent threat of attack on the US was the attack on Iraq legally justified under the UN Treaty. Article VI of the Constitution makes all treaties part of the “supreme law of the land.” Thus, if the Bush Administration selectively used intelligence to sell the war to Congress when it knew from all of the intelligence that there was no imminent threat to the United States, President Bush and members of his administration have violated the laws of the United States. This is clearly an impeachable offense, which is far more serious than lying under oath about a sexual liason.