Italy had told the US the Niger Documents were fake

[the Talking Can]

Italy Warned U.S. About Uranium Documents By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer
23 minutes ago



ROME - Italian secret services warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that a dossier about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa was fake, a lawmaker said Thursday after a briefing by the nation's intelligence chief.


"At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy's SISMI secret services) said that the dossier doesn't correspond to the truth," Sen. Massimo Brutti told journalists after the parliamentary commission was briefed.

Brutti said the warning was given in January 2003, but he did not know whether it was made before or after President Bush's speech. Brutti, a leading opposition senator, said SISMI analyzed the documents between October 2002 and January 2003.

The United States and Britain used the claim that Saddam was seeking to buy uranium in Niger to bolster their case for the invasion, which started in March 2003. The intelligence supporting the claim later was deemed unreliable.

Italian lawmakers questioned Premier Silvio Berlusconi's top aide and SISMI director Nicolo Pollari about allegations that Italy knowingly gave forged documents to Washington and London detailing a purported Iraqi deal to buy 500 tons of uranium concentrate from Niger. The uranium ore, known as yellowcake, can be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Pollari requested the hearing after the allegations were reported last week by the daily newspaper La Repubblica. Pollari and Cabinet Undersecretary Gianni Letta were questioned by members of a parliamentary commission overseeing secret services.

The closed-door session lasted about four hours, and commission members spoke with reporters after it ended.

La Repubblica, a strong Berlusconi opponent, alleged that after the Sept. 11 attacks Pollari was being pressured by Berlusconi to make a strong contribution to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Italian leader is a staunch U.S. ally.

Berlusconi's government has denied any wrongdoing, and the premier has personally defended Pollari amid calls for his resignation.

Berlusconi, in an interview with the conservative daily newspaper Libero published Thursday, said Italy had not passed any documents on the Niger affair to the United States. He added that La Repubblica's allegations were dangerous for Italy because "if they were believed, we would be considered the instigator" of the Iraq war.

Brutti said the commission was told that the documents were forged by Rocco Martino, whom he described as a former SISMI informant. Both Brutti and commission chairman Enzo Bianco quoted Pollari and Letta as saying no SISMI officials were involved in forging the dossier or in distributing it.

The Niger claim also is at the center of a CIA leak scandal that has shaken the Bush administration, leading to last week's indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby....


link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051103/ap_on_re_eu/italy_iraq_uranium;_ylt=AtCBzDzJd8m3JQIiGvnkSkqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b3JuZGZhBHNlYwM3MjE-)

[Area 51]

Ask yourself this question:

If I were in the intelligence agencies involved and I was told of a person/country attempting to access the material needed for nukes and my sources were reliable in the past would I disregard those reports from another person/group?

You are supporting the non-fact that our intelligence was wrong and this one source of information was right. I do not believe that anyone would want to take a chance that there were possibilities that Saddam had the items needed to build a nuke, regardless of what the Italians said.

[jiveturkey]

Someone needs to find out what these Italian bastards wives do for a living and teach them a lesson. :)

[Area 51]

Some needs to find out what these Italian bastards wives do for a living and teach them a leason. :)

Be careful, my wife is Italian, I could have her cousin Guido visit you.

[jiveturkey]

Be careful, my wife is Italian, I could have her cousin Guido visit you.Half of my family is Italian so she's probably a relative. That half of the family is quite large.

[Area 51]

Half of my family is Italian so she's probably a relative. That half of the family is quite large.


Numbers or pounds?

[jiveturkey]

Numbers or pounds?
Both.

[patteeu]

If this were the only basis for the British claim then it might matter.

[Area 51]

Both.

Guido is pretty thin, but the uzi seems to keep him balanced with the others.

[the Talking Can]

footnotes from the Robb-Silberman report...can't wait till the Phase II investigation happens:


214 CIA, Analyses on an Alleged Iraq-Niger Uranium Agreement (undated but prepared
sometime after March 7, 2003). See also Senior Publish When Ready, Iraq’s Reported Interest in Buying Uranium from Niger and Whether Associated Documents are Authentic (March 11,
2003) (concluding the documents were forgeries). The errors in the original documents, which
indicated they were forgeries, also occur in the February 2002 report that provided a “verbatim”
text of the agreement, indicating that the original reporting was based on the forged documents.

[patteeu]

footnotes from the Robb-Silberman report...can't wait till the Phase II investigation happens:


214 CIA, Analyses on an Alleged Iraq-Niger Uranium Agreement (undated but prepared
sometime after March 7, 2003). See also Senior Publish When Ready, Iraq’s Reported Interest in Buying Uranium from Niger and Whether Associated Documents are Authentic (March 11,
2003) (concluding the documents were forgeries). The errors in the original documents, which
indicated they were forgeries, also occur in the February 2002 report that provided a “verbatim”
text of the agreement, indicating that the original reporting was based on the forged documents.

You shouldn't have to wait too long, Senator Roberts says Phase II should be wrapped up next week.

[the Talking Can]

wait....it keeps getting better: after admitting they had the forgeries Italy is know claiming they didn't....I love how investigations cause people to "misremember" things...he and Libby have the same disease:


Italy's spy chief denies role in fake Iraq dossier
Thu Nov 3, 2005 4:51 PM ET163
By Phil Stewart

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's spy chief Nicolo Pollari firmly denied on Thursday passing bogus documents to the United States before the Iraq invasion that purported to show Baghdad had sought uranium from Niger.

But it was not clear whether his Sismi military intelligence agency had warned allies about the forgeries.

Lawmakers emerging from the closed-door parliamentary session with Pollari said that the so-called Niger dossier was being peddled by an ex-Sismi collaborator, who has been investigated by Italian magistrates.

Sen. Massimo Brutti initially told reporters that Sismi had warned the United States about the bogus documents around the same time as U.S. President George W. Bush gave his 2003 State of the Union address, making the case for war.

"At around that time, they (Sismi) said that the dossier did not correspond to the truth," Brutti said. He later backtracked, telling Reuters that since Sismi never had the documents, it could not comment on their merit.

Bush had mentioned in his speech that Iraq had sought African uranium, but he cited British intelligence -- not Italian -- as the source of his information.

Brutti said he believed that Britain had another source for its intelligence, beyond the Niger documents.

The head of the parliamentary oversight committee, Enzo Bianco, declined to comment on the issue. An assistant said he would need to first review a transcript of the 5-hour-long testimony to see whether Sismi had warned allies....

reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-03T215101Z_01_FOR378639_RTRUKOC_0_US-ITALY-USA-IRAQ.xml&archived=False)

[the Talking Can]

You shouldn't have to wait too long, Senator Roberts says Phase II should be wrapped up next week.

uh, no....they agreed to report a schedule next week....Phase II hasn't even started in any meaningful way...

The standoff was ended when the two leaders agreed to have a group of three senators from each party look into how the Intelligence Committee investigation was proceeding, and to report back to the Senate leaders by Nov. 14.

msnbc (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9887457/)

but I could see how you might have missed it, it was only reported in every newspaper in the country and on every media website in North America....

[Saggysack]

Guido is pretty thin, but the uzi seems to keep him balanced with the others.


Uzi?

Bah... kids toys.

Tell me when he becomes a big boy and learns how to headspace and time a Ma Deuce.

[the Talking Can]

This is as close as the main stream corporate media has come to understanding what happened. God bless the light of investigation.

There never were any documents but the forged documents. the "transcription" Italy sent to the US was based on the forged documents. The british sourced their claims on the forged documents. This is one of the great big lies at the hgeart of the Administrations scheme to justify the invasion.

Bush could stand up and lie about the Niger documents (which he did) and claim that other countries had the info (which he did because the CIA wouldn't play ball); meanwhile everyone involved knew the documents were fake but also knew they retained enough plausaible deniability. And they knew that no one would figure it out before the invasion started, and that when they did Republicans would provide the final cover up by refusing to investigate (Boy, were they right...I mean, wow).

The more we find out, the more breathtaking Bush's lie in the SOTU becomes.

knight ridder (http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13085306.htm)


Posted on Fri, Nov. 04, 2005

Italy provided U.S. with faulty uranium intelligence, officials insist

By Jonathan S. Landay

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Contrary to Italian government denials, a powerful Italian military intelligence agency passed bogus allegations to the United States of an Iraqi effort to buy uranium ore from the African nation of Niger for a nuclear bomb program, U.S. officials said Friday.

The purported deal, which President Bush cited in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, was a key argument that Bush and his senior aides advanced for invading Iraq and toppling dictator Saddam Hussein. It remains unclear, however, who forged the documents, why and how information from such crude forgeries got into a major presidential speech.

No nuclear weapons program was found after the March 2003 invasion.

Four U.S. officials said the Italian military intelligence agency known as SISMI passed three reports to the CIA station in Rome between October 2001 and March 2002 outlining an alleged deal for Iraq to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger. Yellowcake is refined into the uranium fuel that powers nuclear weapons.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because portions of the matter remain classified.

One of the reports passed by SISMI contained language that turned out to have been lifted verbatim from crudely forged documents that outlined the purported uranium-ore deal, the U.S. officials said.

"SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt," said a U.S. intelligence official who's closely followed the matter.

The United States obtained complete copies of the forgeries in October 2003; the International Atomic Energy Agency had determined that the documents were fakes in March 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, and the White House later conceded that Bush shouldn't have made the allegation.

The Italian government has denied that SISMI was involved in concocting or passing the forged documents.

A July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report said three reports on the alleged deal were passed to the CIA during that period, but it didn't disclose the name of the foreign intelligence service that provided them.

Two of the U.S. officials said SISMI passed similar reports about the alleged deal, based on the forgeries, to the intelligence services in Britain, France and Germany.

Britain has continued to stand by a 2002 white paper that charged that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake in Africa.

Bush cited the British assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address rather than the U.S. intelligence reports, which had been disputed by some CIA experts and by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

The U.S. officials were reacting to the reported testimony by SISMI Director Nicolo Pollari on Thursday in a closed-door Italian parliamentary committee hearing.

After the hearing, Italian lawmakers said Pollari had pinned the passing of the forgeries on a former SISMI informer named Rocco Martino and had denied that any Italian intelligence agency was involved in concocting the fakes or disseminating them.

News reports have quoted Martino as saying he'd obtained the documents from a contact at the Niger Embassy in Rome, but this was the first time that he'd been officially identified.

In a related development, the FBI on Friday confirmed Pollari's assertion that FBI Director Robert Mueller wrote a letter to Italian officials in July in which he said an investigation into the forgeries had determined that they weren't part "of an effort to influence U.S. foreign policy."

"The investigation discounted that motive, confirmed the documents to be fraudulent, and concluded they were more likely part of a criminal scheme for financial gain," an FBI statement said.

Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who'd asked the FBI to investigate the forgeries in March 2003, said he wasn't ready to declare himself satisfied.

"While I greatly appreciate all of the FBI's efforts into completing the investigation of the Niger documents, some questions remain," Rockefeller said in a statement. "Until I receive additional information about the thoroughness of the investigation, I cannot make a judgment on the accuracy of the conclusions."

Key questions remain about how the Niger claim made it into the Bush administration's case for war, including who concocted the forged documents and why the claim was in Bush's State of the Union address after being knocked out of a draft of a nationally televised presidential speech some two months earlier.

The issue is receiving new attention because of last week's indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of lying to a grand jury that investigated who leaked the identity of a CIA officer after her husband, a former U.S. diplomat, accused Bush of twisting the intelligence on the alleged uranium deal.

[patteeu]

The british sourced their claims on the forged documents. This is one of the great big lies at the hgeart of the Administrations scheme to justify the invasion.

Link?

------------------------------------------------------------

From the article you posted:

Four U.S. officials said the Italian military intelligence agency known as SISMI passed three reports to the CIA station in Rome between October 2001 and March 2002 outlining an alleged deal for Iraq to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger. Yellowcake is refined into the uranium fuel that powers nuclear weapons.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because portions of the matter remain classified.

I'm sure it was just an oversight when you failed to be concerned with national security over these leaks. Either that or you don't really care about national security in the first place and your indignation over the Plame leak was fake.

In a related development, the FBI on Friday confirmed Pollari's assertion that FBI Director Robert Mueller wrote a letter to Italian officials in July in which he said an investigation into the forgeries had determined that they weren't part "of an effort to influence U.S. foreign policy."

"The investigation discounted that motive, confirmed the documents to be fraudulent, and concluded they were more likely part of a criminal scheme for financial gain," an FBI statement said.

Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who'd asked the FBI to investigate the forgeries in March 2003, said he wasn't ready to declare himself satisfied.

"While I greatly appreciate all of the FBI's efforts into completing the investigation of the Niger documents, some questions remain," Rockefeller said in a statement. "Until I receive additional information about the thoroughness of the investigation, I cannot make a judgment on the accuracy of the conclusions."

I guess in your conspiracy theory, the coverup is so vast that even the FBI is in on it? LOL

Maybe they should have just asked you what's going on and you could have saved them a lot of legwork.

[DanT]

Here's a link to a recent www.antiwar.com column from Paul Sperry on the pre-war intelligence claims. The first section, quoted below, deals with the British, Italian and American governments' claims regarding Iraq's alleged attempt to get uranium from Niger.

http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=7826

October 29, 2005

The Nucleus of the Scandal


by Paul Sperry



The White House still maintains there was evidence other than crude forgeries to back its prewar charge Saddam Hussein was trying to procure uranium from Niger, giving a reed of hope to loyal defenders that the whole Iraq nuke scare wasn't an orchestrated fraud begging for cover-up.


But when pressed, the White House defers to the British government, which insists the charge was based on sources other than the fake Niger documents. The purported "other sources" remain unnamed.


But in a revealing, albeit little-reported, letter to the House Government Reform Committee, a senior State Department official suggests the other source of the uranium hoax was Italy – an all-too-eager ally in the Iraq war which provided the forged document information to both the Bush and Blair administrations. (Now, ironically enough, Italy wants to pull out of the Iraq mess it helped create.)


Paul V. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, says the administration received information about the uranium allegation from two foreign sources – the "intelligence services" of the British government and a second "Western European ally," which can only be Italy. The Italian press is now reporting that Italian intelligence officials met with top Bush and Blair officials before the war to share the rotten intelligence. They all bit greedily, in spite of the CIA warning them off it.


"Not until March 4 [2003, on the eve of war] did we learn that in fact the second Western European government [Rome] had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited," Kelly claims in his April 29, 2003, letter responding to a request from Democrats on the panel for more information. In fact, central intelligence knew long before that date.


But listen to the subtler confession about "discredited" evidence. Kelly is saying, in so many words, that all three countries – the U.S., U.K. and Italy, in a cabal of the willing to deceive – picked from the same garbage to make the alarmist case Hussein was actively seeking fuel for his fictional nukes.


And each provided the other with plausible deniability, however weak, should they be caught in their scam. Sure enough, now that the forgeries have been exposed, each has claimed they did not base their uranium charge exclusively on them, but had other sources – namely government intelligence services from abroad. For the U.S., it was the MI6. For the U.K., it was SISMI, whose source, in turn, is said to be a neocon agent of the Pentagon. Never mind that the circle starts and ends with the forgeries.


"Based on what appeared at the time to be multiple sources for the information in question, we acted in good faith," blushes Kelly, a Bush appointee, in an after-the-fact effort to absolve him and his boss Colin Powell for their part in a fraudulent war that has stained their hands, as well, with the blood of thousands of brave young U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children.


British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintains he has intelligence "independent" of the Niger documents to back the claim Hussein recently sought uranium from the African nation, though he says he has not shared it with U.S. intelligence, or his own legislature. Oh? Pray tell, what could it be? During a postwar visit here, Blair dropped a hint: "In the 1980s, we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger." That is, Iraq and Niger have a history of this stuff, so ... .


The White House has also offered past deals as additional evidence to buttress the uranium claim. NSC adviser Steve Hadley has argued the Niger allegation rang true because "we also knew that [Hussein] had uranium oxide ... and that he had obtained about 200 tons of that, roughly, from Niger."


Of course, an ancient commercial relationship is no proof any new deals were negotiated as claimed before Congress and the world.


Besides, UNSCOM and IAEA have known for years that Iraq had uranium concentrate, or "yellowcake" – about 550 metric tons, in fact – and had monitored its inventory in Tuwaitha through regular inspections. Iraq acquired it before the first Gulf war.


That's nothing new. What's new was the claim that Hussein recently sought an additional 500 tons – a huge amount – from Niger.


The alleged attempted acquisition (couched in final presidential speech drafts as "significant quantities from Africa") was critical to the administration's case that Iraq "has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," as Vice President Dick Cheney claimed just three days before the war.


It takes hundreds of tons of unrefined uranium to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make a single nuclear bomb. In addition, the refining process requires thousands of gas centrifuges to separate the isotopes. These centrifuges, in turn, require tubing to make the casings for the rotors that spin inside them.


Source and remainder of the column (http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=7826)

[the Talking Can]

But listen to the subtler confession about "discredited" evidence. Kelly is saying, in so many words, that all three countries – the U.S., U.K. and Italy, in a cabal of the willing to deceive – picked from the same garbage to make the alarmist case Hussein was actively seeking fuel for his fictional nukes.


And each provided the other with plausible deniability, however weak, should they be caught in their scam. Sure enough, now that the forgeries have been exposed, each has claimed they did not base their uranium charge exclusively on them, but had other sources – namely government intelligence services from abroad. For the U.S., it was the MI6. For the U.K., it was SISMI, whose source, in turn, is said to be a neocon agent of the Pentagon. Never mind that the circle starts and ends with the forgeries.





That is exactly what happened. I have a micro-measure of faith we may even investigate this in Phase II...but with Republicans in control the truth is that we probably won't.

Thanks for the article, it made my point much more clearly.

[the Talking Can]

Link?

------------------------------------------------------------

From the article you posted:



I'm sure it was just an oversight when you failed to be concerned with national security over these leaks. Either that or you don't really care about national security in the first place and your indignation over the Plame leak was fake.



I guess in your conspiracy theory, the coverup is so vast that even the FBI is in on it? LOL

Maybe they should have just asked you what's going on and you could have saved them a lot of legwork.

hey, Kotter, what's up?

you could answer your own question with some basic research...but we know why you won't do that....have a nice day

[patteeu]

I respect Paul Sperry, but frankly, his article doesn't go any farther than the article posted by the Talking Can in establishing that the British relied only on intelligence based originally on the forgeries. That issue remains unresolved as far as I can tell.

And the Niger forgeries don't explain Joe Wilson's report that former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki told him that there had been discussions with Iraq about "expanding commercial relations" which Mayaki understood to mean that Iraq wanted uranium.

Furthermore, even if we stipulate that the British are relying on intel tainted by the forged documents, that doesn't make the 16 words any less truthful. Until someone produces actual evidence (as opposed to conspiratorial speculation) that the Bush administration was aware of fatal shortcomings in the British assessment the allegations that the 16 words are lies will continue to ring hollow.

[patteeu]

hey, Kotter, what's up?

you could answer your own question with some basic research...but we know why you won't do that....have a nice day

Your kung fu has grown very weak TC. It's sad to see you reduced to calling everyone who disagrees with you, Mr. Kotter. You've practically become a seagull poster with your inability to stand up to even minimal criticism.

[DanT]

I respect Paul Sperry, but frankly, his article doesn't go any farther than the article posted by the Talking Can in establishing that the British relied only on intelligence based originally on the forgeries. That issue remains unresolved as far as I can tell.

And the Niger forgeries don't explain Joe Wilson's report that former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki told him that there had been discussions with Iraq about "expanding commercial relations" which Mayaki understood to mean that Iraq wanted uranium.

Furthermore, even if we stipulate that the British are relying on intel tainted by the forged documents, that doesn't make the 16 words any less truthful. Until someone produces actual evidence (as opposed to conspiratorial speculation) that the Bush administration was aware of fatal shortcomings in the British assessment the allegations that the 16 words are lies will continue to ring hollow.

All good points.

[Mr. Kotter]

Your kung fu has grown very weak TC. It's sad to see you reduced to calling everyone who disagrees with you, Mr. Kotter. You've practically become a seagull poster with your inability to stand up to even minimal criticism.

Bingo. Cynicism and disillusionment have driven him into a real funk, and converted him from a contributing poster (even if you disagreed with him) to a demagogue. He's now nothing more than a sidekick for jAZ and Duhnise.

[go bowe]

* * *
I do not believe that anyone would want to take a chance that. . . Saddam had the items needed to build a nuke. . .well the north koreans had the items needed to build a nuke...

by your logic, we should have invaded north korea before iraq...

how 'bout iran, should we invade them too?

it seems like most of the things reported in the media would lead to a conclusion that there was not in fact any imminent threat from saddam and there was no reason to invade iraq (that had anything to do with nuclear weapons)...

poor condi, that two things that i remember the most about her is when she said no one could imagine that people would fly airplanes into buildings and her reference to mushroom clouds when she was talking about the iraqi threat...

saddam never had the capability to produce nuclear weapons and there is no credible evidence that i've seen that even suggests that he did...

it seems like every time saddam's lack of any nuclear program is brought up, people start talking about how everybody knew he had wmd, even the clinton administration...

the trouble with that is, while we know that at one time saddam had chemical weapons and there was evidence to suggest that he either had or was working on biological weapons (both of which are true, it seems), there never has been any real evidence of a functional nuclear program in iraq, just not-so-oblique references to mushroom clouds by condi and cheney...

the nuclear "threat" is what sold the war to a lot of people, including me...

now it turns out that the "evidence" of such a threat wasn't really evidence at all and that there were people within the administration who knew that at the time...

the musings of some nigerian who thought that some iraqis might have been interested in obtaining yellowcake, even though the iraqi business delegation never actually inquired about it? (state department apparently knew this)

a forgery that even the italians didn't buy? (the italians told us that)

aluminum tubes that weren't suitable for use in a nuclear program accoring to our own energy department? (our energy department)

iraqi expatriates? (the cia knew they weren't reliable sources)

i'm sorry, but it looks like there never was any real evidence that saddam even had a nuclear program at all, let alone being anywhere close to producing nuclear weapons...

so the wmd that the administration was talking about as justification for the war never really included nuclear capabilities at all... :shake: :shake: :shake:

[patteeu]

...
the trouble with that is, while we know that at one time saddam had chemical weapons and there was evidence to suggest that he either had or was working on biological weapons (both of which are true, it seems), there never has been any real evidence of a functional nuclear program in iraq, just not-so-oblique references to mushroom clouds by condi and cheney...



I guess it depends on what you mean by "functional," but when Gulf War I ended, inspectors found that Saddam not only had a nuclear program, but that it was much farther along than the west had suspected.

Here is a blurb from the PBS Frontline website describing the findings of UNSCOM and IEAE as of 1998:

According to former U.N. inspector David Kay, Iraq spent over $10 billion during the 1980s in an attempt to enrich uranium and build a nuclear weapon. However, the Agency concludes that as of December, 1998, "There were no indications to suggest that Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons," or "that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." However, the IAEA did find that "Iraq was at, or close to, the threshold of success in such areas as the production of [highly enriched uranium] ... and the fabrication of the explosive package for a nuclear weapon." Despite the fact that the facilities and nuclear material had been destroyed or removed, as early as 1996 the IAEA concluded that "the know-how and expertise acquired by Iraqi scientists and engineers could provide an adequate base for reconstituting a nuclear-weapons-oriented program."

[jettio]

This whole thing is a farce.

Everybody in the world knew that Iraq could not refine uranium, so there was no reason to believe that any acquisition of yellow cake required an immediate invasion.

The whole story of acquiring uranium was intended to exploit the ignorance of the American people, who were decided ignorant of nuclear proliferation that it would think that uranium possession would mean nuclear capability.

Another farcical thing is the supposed impact of Colin Powell's presentation at the UN.

That presentation laid a huge egg at the UN and had very little sway in convincing any other country of any imminent threat.

But supposedly the UN was not the intended dupe as much as the ignorant american public who could be exploited to believe that a presentation that other countries thought was a joke was powerful evidence.

The B*sh adminstration played the press, congress, and half the american public into going along with them as they went headlong into unnecessary folly.

This Niger episode just shows how far they would go to act as if evidence of an easy thing to deal with was instead evidence of a dire emergency.

Intentionally pretending that something is more dangerous than it is, is lying.

Doing devious crap to preserve the lie is just plain dishonorable and that is what they did.

[patteeu]

This whole thing is a farce.

Everybody in the world knew that Iraq could not refine uranium, so there was no reason to believe that any acquisition of yellow cake required an immediate invasion.

Which makes the claims by some Bush critics that the Bush administration deceived us into thinking an American city could go up in a mushroom cloud at any minute all the more ludicrous. Anyone with any sense understood that other threats were more pressing and that regime change in Iraq was something other than a desperate attempt to stop an imminent threat. But that doesn't mean that Saddam's Iraq wasn't a threat and an obstacle to success in the GWoT.

The whole story of acquiring uranium was intended to exploit the ignorance of the American people, who were decided ignorant of nuclear proliferation that it would think that uranium possession would mean nuclear capability.

Another farcical thing is the supposed impact of Colin Powell's presentation at the UN.

That presentation laid a huge egg at the UN and had very little sway in convincing any other country of any imminent threat.

But supposedly the UN was not the intended dupe as much as the ignorant american public who could be exploited to believe that a presentation that other countries thought was a joke was powerful evidence.

The B*sh adminstration played the press, congress, and half the american public into going along with them as they went headlong into unnecessary folly.

This Niger episode just shows how far they would go to act as if evidence of an easy thing to deal with was instead evidence of a dire emergency.

Intentionally pretending that something is more dangerous than it is, is lying.

Doing devious crap to preserve the lie is just plain dishonorable and that is what they did.

It's always interesting to hear you guys complain about how dumb the American people were but how your intellect prevented you from being taken in by the so-called lies of the adminstration. If you were smart enough to understand what the administration was really saying, maybe they weren't lies afterall. Maybe it's your side that's trying to make the administration statements out to be something other than they were.

[jettio]

Which makes the claims by some Bush critics that the Bush administration deceived us into thinking an American city could go up in a mushroom cloud at any minute all the more ludicrous. Anyone with any sense understood that other threats were more pressing and that regime change in Iraq was something other than a desperate attempt to stop an imminent threat. But that doesn't mean that Saddam's Iraq wasn't a threat and an obstacle to success in the GWoT.



It's always interesting to hear you guys complain about how dumb the American people were but how your intellect prevented you from being taken in by the so-called lies of the adminstration. If you were smart enough to understand what the administration was really saying, maybe they weren't lies afterall. Maybe it's your side that's trying to make the administration statements out to be something other than they were.

What other threats were more pressing and why not be honest about it?

It is not okay to give fake justifications for a war, no matter how smart you gutless never served in the military neocons think you are.

Those are real people who have died, you smug know-it-all POS.

[Boyceofsummer]

Patteeu must be the French name for Republican sap.

GIVE IT UP!

The clowns at the White House duped the majority of the voting public. They were called liars before the election and now, SUPRISE! They have been exposed as liars after the election.

[Saggysack]

It's always interesting to hear you guys complain about how dumb the American people

You wanna see dumb americans. Check this.

http://media.putfile.com/On-The-Streets-Of-America-3

[the Talking Can]

this is old news...but it's being reported again because people were too stupid to catch it the first time...:

The forged documents are a backdrop to the CIA leak case involving the wife of ex-diplomat Joe Wilson. The CIA sent Wilson in February 2002 to look into the Niger uranium issue after Italy's military-intelligence agency, SISMI, got copies of the forged papers and sent reports about them to the CIA and other Western intel agencies. But a senior bureau official, requesting anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, told NEWSWEEK the FBI never interviewed Rocco Martino, the Italian businessman who provided the documents to SISMI. Because there was no apparent violation of U.S. law, the bureau couldn't compel him to talk—even though he twice visited the United States last year to be interviewed by CBS's "60 Minutes." (The story never aired.) Last week Martino talked again, telling an Italian newspaper he played "a double, triple game"—working as a freelance agent for SISMI and French intelligence. Martino said he was instructed by a SISMI agent to pick up the docs from a woman at the Niger Embassy in Rome. "I was simply the deliveryman," he said, adding he had no idea the papers were fraudulent.


half-hearted doesn't begin to explain our "investigation"...meanwhile the Republicans are hell bent on proceeding with the cover-up:

Critics say Roberts has also stymied an inquiry into whether Pentagon units "cherry-picked" intel reports on Saddam. Roberts turned that probe over to the Pentagon's inspector general; a spokesman for the Pentagon IG declined to comment.


brilliant..why don't we just let Bush conduct the investigation....

newsweek (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9938998/site/newsweek/)

[patteeu]

What other threats were more pressing and why not be honest about it?

Just to name the most obvious example, chemical weapons. There was obviously some question about the state of Iraq's nuclear weapons program during the lead up to the war, but it is also obvious that it was a foregone conclusion (whether it was correct or not) held by American leaders from both parties, the UN, and almost every foreign leader with a public position on the subject that Saddam had stores of chemical weapons which had not been adequately accounted for.

It is not okay to give fake justifications for a war, no matter how smart you gutless never served in the military neocons think you are.

Those are real people who have died, you smug know-it-all POS.

ROFL

But there weren't fake justifications. That's my point. BTW, is it that much more gutsy to serve in the Navy either between wars or during a land war with a foe that doesn't have the capability to reach you than it is for some to have not served at all? I don't have anything against those who serve in the Navy, but I'm not overly impressed by it either. It's certainly a respectable choice to make, but don't try to hold yourself out as better than those who didn't make the same choice. More than likely, a coal miner or a police officer has a more dangerous job than you did.

[patteeu]

brilliant..why don't we just let Bush conduct the investigation....

Yep, if the investigation doesn't go your way, it must be flawed. Soon, when it becomes apparent that Fitzgeralds investigation is at an end, you'll be criticizing him too.

------------------------------------------------------

FBI: Financial gain drove uranium forgery (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-05-fbi-documents_x.htm)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has determined that financial gain, not an effort to influence U.S. policy, was behind the forged documents that the Bush administration used to bolster its prewar claim that Iraq sought uranium ore in Niger.

The FBI's investigation began after questions were raised about a brief portion of President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union speech when he said that Iraq was pursuing the uranium ore, part of his argument to justify the coming invasion of Iraq.

Some U.S. and foreign officials disputed the authenticity of documents, supporting Bush's contention, that showed Saddam Hussein was seeking the uranium ore for a nuclear weapons program.

The FBI had refused comment on the matter until Italian news sources reported this week that FBI Director Robert Mueller sent the Italian government a letter in July with the results of the bureau's two-year investigation.

The investigation "confirmed the documents to be fraudulent and concluded they were more likely part of a criminal scheme for financial gain," FBI spokesman John Miller said Friday, describing the contents of the letter.

Miller did not say what led the FBI to its conclusion or identify the perpetrators of the hoax.

Italian officials earlier this week identified Rocco Martino, described as a one-time informant for the Italian secret service, as the source of the forged documents, according to Italian Sen. Massimo Brutti.

Martino had previously given media interviews acknowledging his role.

But Italy's spy chief, Nicolo Pollari, denied that Italian intelligence had any hand distributing the phony dossier, Brutti and other lawmakers who attended a closed-door briefing said.

The session occurred following a newspaper report alleging Italy had passed the documents to Britain and the United States knowing that they were fake.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said he still has unanswered questions, despite the committee's recent closed-door briefing by the FBI.

"Until I receive additional information about the thoroughness of the investigation, I cannot make a judgment on the accuracy of the conclusions," Rockefeller said.

The Niger claim also is at the center of the CIA leak investigation that led to the indictment last week of Vice President Richard Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby pleaded innocent to charges he obstructed the investigation and lied to investigators and the grand jury that has been looking into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

Wilson traveled to Niger in 2002 on behalf of the CIA to check out the Iraq uranium story. Plame's CIA status was exposed after Wilson accused the administration of twisting intelligence in the run-up to the war to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.