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Bush Lied About Lying
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Well I'll be damned! Bush has apparently made another lie to the American Public. The CIA removed the uranium from Niger remark in October. The State
of the Union address was in January!
ADD IT TO THE LIST OF LIES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct.
Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.
The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.
It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in Friday's statement.
As Bush left Africa yesterday to return to Washington from a five-day trip overshadowed by the intelligence blunder, he was asked whether he considered the matter over. "I do," he replied. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday that "the president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well."
But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention last October that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge a different picture is being presented than the administration has given to date.
Details about the alleged attempt by Iraq to buy as much as 500 tons of uranium oxide were contained in a national intelligence estimate (NIE) that was concluded in late September 2002. It was that same reference that the White House wanted to use in Bush's Oct. 7 speech that Tenet blocked, the sources said. That same intelligence report was the basis for the 16-word sentence about Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Africa that was contained in the January State of the Union address that has drawn recent attention.
Administration sources said White House officials, particularly those in the office of Vice President Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq. Cheney had made the potential threat of Hussein having a nuclear weapon a central theme of his August 2002 speeches that began the public buildup toward war with Baghdad.
In the Oct. 7 Cincinnati speech, the president for the first time outlined in detail the threat Hussein posed to the United States on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing war. Bush talked in part about "evidence" indicating that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. The president listed Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists," satellite photographs showing former nuclear facilities were being rebuilt, and Iraq's attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for use in enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.
There was, however, no mention of Niger or even attempts to purchase uranium from other African countries, which was contained in the NIE and also included in a British intelligence dossier that had been published a month earlier.
By January, when conversations took place with CIA personnel over what could be in the president's State of the Union speech, White House officials again sought to use the Niger reference since it still was in the NIE.
"We followed the NIE and hoped there was more intelligence to support it," a senior administration official said yesterday. When told there was nothing new, White House officials backed off, and as a result "seeking uranium from Niger was never in drafts," he said.
Tenet raised no personal objection to the ultimate inclusion of the sentence, attributed to Britain, about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. His statement on Friday said he should have. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," the CIA director said.
Bush said in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday that he continues to have faith in Tenet. "I do, absolutely," he said. "I've got confidence in George Tenet; I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA."
There is still much that remains unclear about who specifically wanted the information inserted in the State of the Union speech, or why repeated concerns about the allegations were ignored.
"The information was available within the system that should have caught this kind of big mistake," a former Bush administration official said. "The question is how the management of the system, and the process that supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and embarrass the president."
Senior Bush aides said they do not believe they have a communication problem within the White House that prevented them from acting on any of the misgivings about the information that were being expressed at lower levels of the government.
"I'm sure there will have to be some retracing of steps, and that's what's happening," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. "The mechanical process, we think is fine. Will more people now give more, tighter scrutiny going forward? Of course."
A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael J. Gerson, does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up causing the White House so much grief.
Officials said three speechwriters were at the core of the State of the Union team, and that they worked from evidence against Iraq provided by the National Security Council. NSC officials dealt with the CIA both in gathering material for the speech and later in vetting the drafts.
Officials involved in preparing the speech said there was much more internal debate over the next line of the speech, when Bush said in reference to Hussein, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, noted a disagreement about Iraq's intentions for the tubes, which can be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had raised those questions two weeks before the State of the Union address, saying Hussein claimed nonnuclear intentions for the tubes. In March, the IAEA said it found Hussein's claim credible, and could all but rule out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program.
www.washingtonpost.com...
ADD IT TO THE LIST OF LIES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct.
Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.
The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.
It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in Friday's statement.
As Bush left Africa yesterday to return to Washington from a five-day trip overshadowed by the intelligence blunder, he was asked whether he considered the matter over. "I do," he replied. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters yesterday that "the president has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well."
But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention last October that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge a different picture is being presented than the administration has given to date.
Details about the alleged attempt by Iraq to buy as much as 500 tons of uranium oxide were contained in a national intelligence estimate (NIE) that was concluded in late September 2002. It was that same reference that the White House wanted to use in Bush's Oct. 7 speech that Tenet blocked, the sources said. That same intelligence report was the basis for the 16-word sentence about Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Africa that was contained in the January State of the Union address that has drawn recent attention.
Administration sources said White House officials, particularly those in the office of Vice President Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq. Cheney had made the potential threat of Hussein having a nuclear weapon a central theme of his August 2002 speeches that began the public buildup toward war with Baghdad.
In the Oct. 7 Cincinnati speech, the president for the first time outlined in detail the threat Hussein posed to the United States on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing war. Bush talked in part about "evidence" indicating that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. The president listed Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists," satellite photographs showing former nuclear facilities were being rebuilt, and Iraq's attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for use in enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.
There was, however, no mention of Niger or even attempts to purchase uranium from other African countries, which was contained in the NIE and also included in a British intelligence dossier that had been published a month earlier.
By January, when conversations took place with CIA personnel over what could be in the president's State of the Union speech, White House officials again sought to use the Niger reference since it still was in the NIE.
"We followed the NIE and hoped there was more intelligence to support it," a senior administration official said yesterday. When told there was nothing new, White House officials backed off, and as a result "seeking uranium from Niger was never in drafts," he said.
Tenet raised no personal objection to the ultimate inclusion of the sentence, attributed to Britain, about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. His statement on Friday said he should have. "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," the CIA director said.
Bush said in Abuja, Nigeria, yesterday that he continues to have faith in Tenet. "I do, absolutely," he said. "I've got confidence in George Tenet; I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA."
There is still much that remains unclear about who specifically wanted the information inserted in the State of the Union speech, or why repeated concerns about the allegations were ignored.
"The information was available within the system that should have caught this kind of big mistake," a former Bush administration official said. "The question is how the management of the system, and the process that supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and embarrass the president."
Senior Bush aides said they do not believe they have a communication problem within the White House that prevented them from acting on any of the misgivings about the information that were being expressed at lower levels of the government.
"I'm sure there will have to be some retracing of steps, and that's what's happening," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. "The mechanical process, we think is fine. Will more people now give more, tighter scrutiny going forward? Of course."
A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael J. Gerson, does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up causing the White House so much grief.
Officials said three speechwriters were at the core of the State of the Union team, and that they worked from evidence against Iraq provided by the National Security Council. NSC officials dealt with the CIA both in gathering material for the speech and later in vetting the drafts.
Officials involved in preparing the speech said there was much more internal debate over the next line of the speech, when Bush said in reference to Hussein, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations, noted a disagreement about Iraq's intentions for the tubes, which can be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had raised those questions two weeks before the State of the Union address, saying Hussein claimed nonnuclear intentions for the tubes. In March, the IAEA said it found Hussein's claim credible, and could all but rule out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program.
www.washingtonpost.com...
Transcript: Condoleezza Rice on Fox News Sunday
Sunday, July 13, 2003
The following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, July 13, 2003.
TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: There's been a furious battle in Washington this week over a single sentence in the president's State of the Union address.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: The White House since has disclaimed the statement, and CIA Director George Tenet has accepted responsibility for failing to strike the sentence from the text. But was the sentence, in fact, untrue?
Joining us to discuss this and other matters, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Good morning, Tony.
SNOW: Good morning.
Let's talk about the president's statement. Is it not true that the British, in fact, had an intelligence estimate that Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa?
RICE: Absolutely. And there are two things about this, Tony. First of all, it is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa. This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.
But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate. And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day, saying that they had sources other than sources that have now been called into question to back up that claim. We have no reason not to believe them.
What we have said is that we have a higher standard for presidential speeches than just, "Was this accurate?" And we don't put everything into presidential speeches that's in intelligence documents like the NIE. We send them out to clearance, to the relevant agencies, and to the NSC principles, and we ask the question, "Will you stand behind this statement?"
SNOW: All right, so the statement is true, and if the president said it today, it would still be true.
RICE: If the president said that statement, it would still be true today. But the problem is that we have a higher standard, as George Tenet said in his statement, than just the accuracy of a statement. We want it to be based for the president on the firmest possible intelligence, and that's why we go through the clearance process.
SNOW: Do you believe Iraqi businessmen in Niger were trying, maybe not successfully, but were trying to cut deals to get uranium?
RICE: Tony, given Saddam Hussein's history of trying to get nuclear weapons, of being close when the IAEA got there in 1991, I think it's entirely possible that he was doing that.
However, we can't base a claim like that on speculation. We cannot place it even on the fact that there was some reporting, if we're going to put it in a presidential speech.
SNOW: All right, just to follow up, was Iraq trying to procure uranium elsewhere in Africa?
RICE: We have reporting that the Iraqis were trying to procure uranium in countries other than Niger, which has been called into question. And again, what is cited in the president's speech is the British report.
The British stand by their statement. They have told us that despite the fact that we had apparently some concerns about that report, that they had other sources, and that they stand by the statement.
SNOW: Have you been privy to those sources and that information?
RICE: The British have reasons, because of the arrangements that they made, apparently, in receiving those sources, that they cannot share them with us.
Sunday, July 13, 2003
The following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, July 13, 2003.
TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: There's been a furious battle in Washington this week over a single sentence in the president's State of the Union address.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SNOW: The White House since has disclaimed the statement, and CIA Director George Tenet has accepted responsibility for failing to strike the sentence from the text. But was the sentence, in fact, untrue?
Joining us to discuss this and other matters, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Good morning, Tony.
SNOW: Good morning.
Let's talk about the president's statement. Is it not true that the British, in fact, had an intelligence estimate that Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa?
RICE: Absolutely. And there are two things about this, Tony. First of all, it is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa. This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.
But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate. And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day, saying that they had sources other than sources that have now been called into question to back up that claim. We have no reason not to believe them.
What we have said is that we have a higher standard for presidential speeches than just, "Was this accurate?" And we don't put everything into presidential speeches that's in intelligence documents like the NIE. We send them out to clearance, to the relevant agencies, and to the NSC principles, and we ask the question, "Will you stand behind this statement?"
SNOW: All right, so the statement is true, and if the president said it today, it would still be true.
RICE: If the president said that statement, it would still be true today. But the problem is that we have a higher standard, as George Tenet said in his statement, than just the accuracy of a statement. We want it to be based for the president on the firmest possible intelligence, and that's why we go through the clearance process.
SNOW: Do you believe Iraqi businessmen in Niger were trying, maybe not successfully, but were trying to cut deals to get uranium?
RICE: Tony, given Saddam Hussein's history of trying to get nuclear weapons, of being close when the IAEA got there in 1991, I think it's entirely possible that he was doing that.
However, we can't base a claim like that on speculation. We cannot place it even on the fact that there was some reporting, if we're going to put it in a presidential speech.
SNOW: All right, just to follow up, was Iraq trying to procure uranium elsewhere in Africa?
RICE: We have reporting that the Iraqis were trying to procure uranium in countries other than Niger, which has been called into question. And again, what is cited in the president's speech is the British report.
The British stand by their statement. They have told us that despite the fact that we had apparently some concerns about that report, that they had other sources, and that they stand by the statement.
SNOW: Have you been privy to those sources and that information?
RICE: The British have reasons, because of the arrangements that they made, apparently, in receiving those sources, that they cannot share them with us.
RICE: If the president said that statement, it would still be true today. But the problem is that we have a higher standard, as George Tenet said in his statement, than just the accuracy of a statement. We want it to be based for the president on the firmest possible intelligence, and that's why we go through the clearance process.
SNOW: Do you believe Iraqi businessmen in Niger were trying, maybe not successfully, but were trying to cut deals to get uranium?
RICE: Tony, given Saddam Hussein's history of trying to get nuclear weapons, of being close when the IAEA got there in 1991, I think it's entirely possible that he was doing that.
LOL The girl with the little aluminium tubes (remember, another lie from the administration) is contradicting herself in two adjacent sentences. Thanks TC
Seems the idea of taking things out of context goes without saying for a democrat. Moku, finish the conversation. You intentionally stopped at that
point as the next couple of sentences would have clarified what she is saying.
Twisting the truth in such a manner makes you a liar as well, or a lawyer. Both are the same though.
Twisting the truth in such a manner makes you a liar as well, or a lawyer. Both are the same though.
We had a conversation just last night on this topic. When things like this come up I try to remain open to all information before drawing a
conclusion, and I'm still intaking here. BUT, a comment was made last night that the democrats are acting in such a desparate mode, and are so void
of any candidate of substance, that it wouldn't surprise some people if a Watergate type circumstance doesn't arise in the near future...only this
time, the Demi's will be the ones caught in the ill-intentioned acts.
While the Dems would try to discredit anything about the Reps anyway, it will be especially bad this time around as they don't have a viable
candidate for the office. You can look for any number of false statements, qoutes out of context, and outright lies to be flowing around this time
out.
Oh, and just for the record, I am neither a Dem or Rep, have always been Independent. Vote the man and his past record, regardless of party.
Oh, and just for the record, I am neither a Dem or Rep, have always been Independent. Vote the man and his past record, regardless of party.
are you ... are you seriously defending this usurpator bush .. this guy who's been lying to you everyday ? this guy who's bankrupting YOUR country
with defence expenditures ???
I think it's the good that the Democrat's are making the Bush administration answer for things. Would you rather have it where no one questions
what your government is doing? And yes, they are maybe being nit picky about things that could possibly be irrelevant.
However ...
I still don't see any justifiable reason for the 'Iraq Attack', as I like to call it. I'm still waiting for them to find the WMD. I'm still sick of hearing people die over there and hearing about a country that is in much worse shape than it was before the Americans got there. I'm sick of the US not wanting the UN to help (which is what would be required if they intend to find any WMD, assuming they exist). And I'm especially tired of reading how American soldiers are treating people over there including the children. I only hope its not true.
If Bush's fight is on terrorism and he believes that Saddam Hussien is a terrorist, then he better find the man ... because attacking the mans country is NOT going to stop him from being a terrorist, in fact it will only give him excuses to get even.
And as a final note, I also find it rather interesting that the US under Bush is going through the middle east one country at a time and attacking with very little justification. It was wrong when Hitler did it, it is wrong now. And remember ... when Hitler did it, a lot of people back then agreed with what he was doing too.
However ...
I still don't see any justifiable reason for the 'Iraq Attack', as I like to call it. I'm still waiting for them to find the WMD. I'm still sick of hearing people die over there and hearing about a country that is in much worse shape than it was before the Americans got there. I'm sick of the US not wanting the UN to help (which is what would be required if they intend to find any WMD, assuming they exist). And I'm especially tired of reading how American soldiers are treating people over there including the children. I only hope its not true.
If Bush's fight is on terrorism and he believes that Saddam Hussien is a terrorist, then he better find the man ... because attacking the mans country is NOT going to stop him from being a terrorist, in fact it will only give him excuses to get even.
And as a final note, I also find it rather interesting that the US under Bush is going through the middle east one country at a time and attacking with very little justification. It was wrong when Hitler did it, it is wrong now. And remember ... when Hitler did it, a lot of people back then agreed with what he was doing too.
I hope the pressure for an independent inquiry in the UK moves up a gear this week.
"Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator.
In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister.
The letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the case for war against Iraq, reveals that Britain ignored a request from the CIA to remove claims that Saddam was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger, despite concerns that the allegations were bogus. It also details a government decision to block information going to the CIA because it was too sensitive.
As diplomatic relations between America and Britain become increasingly strained over Iraq's WMD, Straw said that the Government had separate evidence of the Niger link, which it has not shared with the US.
The revelations come just four days before Tony Blair travels to America for his toughest visit there since he came to power in 1997. As well as WMD, the Prime Minister will also raise Britain's 'serious concerns' over the treatment of British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay.
Straw's letter reveals:
� That evidence given to the CIA by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson - that Niger officials had denied any link - was never shared with the British.
� That Foreign Office officials were left to read reports of Wilson's findings in the press only days before they were raised as part of the committee's inquiry into the war.
� That when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq's WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with 'any explanation'.
Although publicly the two governments are trying to maintain a united front, the admission two days ago by the head of the CIA, George Tenet, that President Bush should never have made the claim about the Niger connection to Iraq, has left British officials exposed.
Last night, Downing Street and Foreign Office sources said that 'they would not blink' over the Niger claims. One Downing Street figure said that they were based on intelligence from a third country that was reliable. 'We are not backing down,' he said.
Another official said that the claim was based on the 'intelligence assessment' made at the time, leaving the door open to a climbdown if the intelligence is found to be wrong.
'I want to make it clear that neither I nor, to the best of my knowledge, any UK officials were aware of Ambassador Wilson's visit until reference first appeared in the press,' Straw said in the letter.
'The media has reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about this element [the Niger connection] of the September dossier. This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which had not been shared with the US. A judgment was therefore made to retain it.'
Straw said that the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment of the Iraqi nuclear threat did not just rest on attempts to procure uranium. There was also other evidence of links between the two countries and attempts to sign export deals.
Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary who has become a trenchant critic of the Government's case for war against Iraq, said that it 'stretched credibility' to say that the Americans and the British had failed to share such basic information.
'From all I know of the intimate relationship between the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Services, I find it hard to credit that there was such a breakdown of communication between them,' Cook said.
'It is time the Government came clean and published the evidence. The longer it delays, the greater the suspicion will become that it didn't really believe it itself.
'There is one simple question it must answer. Why did its evidence of the uranium deal not convince the CIA? If it was not good enough to be in the President's address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister's dossier.'
Yesterday, in another damaging broadside, Richard Butler, who was executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission to Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said that anyone who had claimed that there was a link between Niger and Iraq should resign.
Referring to Australian politicians who had made similar claims, only to withdraw them and apologise later, Butler said: 'In the justification for the war, these claims were false and known to be false.
'A Minister who misleads Parliament must accept responsibility for it and resign. Ministers must be held responsible, not public servants.'"
observer.guardian.co.uk...
.......................................................................................
"How did a poor African nation become crucial to justifying war in Iraq? Now doubts over intelligence claims that Saddam sought uranium from Niger threaten a damaging split between the US and Britain write Peter Beaumont and Edward Helmore in New York
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
In the tunnels of Akouta in Niger, the miners dig for a dark and heavy ore, tar-like in lustre. In economic terms it is as precious as gold. But for some its worth far outweighs its financial value. For carried in these ores is uranium, the ninety-second element on the periodic table, and the fuel for an atomic bomb.
For three decades the miners of Niger have carried on their business, largely unnoticed by all except those who follow the heavy metal markets.
Now suddenly the uranium mines of Niger - and those seeking to do business with them for their uranium ores - have been thrown into the sharpest relief by a question that may have crucially influenced the decision of the US and Britain to go to war against Saddam Hussein.
Did Iraq seek uranium from Niger to fuel its nuclear weapons programme? Or was the claim, repeated by both President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, based on a crude forgery, discredited both by the CIA and a senior US diplomat sent to investigate the claim?
The story of the 'Niger connection' is one that has embroiled the US and British governments in a new round of charges that President Bush and Tony Blair led their countries to war on a false premise - that Iraq was actively seeking uranium for its nuclear weapons programme, a charge made in both the British Government's dossier on Iraqi WMD last September and in Bush's State of the Union address this January.
It is an affair that is now threatening to claim the first major scalp in the row over whether governments on both sides of the Atlantic hyped up the evidence against Iraq to justify a war - that of the CIA's director George Tenet, who yesterday was forced to take the blame for his agency's failure properly to warn the White House that the claims about Niger were 'highly dubious'.
In a remarkable admission Tenet has publicly conceded that the CIA wrongly allowed Bush to tell the American people that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, despite analysts' doubts about the information.
'These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President,' Tenet said, referring to a section of January's State of the Union address in which Bush said: 'The British Government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'
Tenet's admission follows an unprecedented round of finger- pointing by both Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the CIA - effectively accusing it of clearing what it knew to be defective intelligence for a major presidential speech.
Boiled down to their bare bones, the allegations go like this: with deep suspicion at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA over allegations of Iraqi attempts to procure uranium ore from Niger, the CIA was getting cold feet. What evidence they did have, as Tenet admitted on Friday, was fragmentary.
So, in early 2000, the CIA dispatched a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to investigate the claims. He rapidly concluded that the alleged Iraqi procurement programme did not exist, and at most Baghdad had merely attempted to discuss improved trade relations with Niger in the late 1990s.
Wilson and the CIA became convinced that some evidence of the Niger connection was based on crudely forged documents that agency sources suggested had been obtained by Italian authorities and passed on to Britain which - the same sources told the US media - passed the forgeries on to the CIA. When those documents emerged after Bush's State of the Union address, they would be quickly exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as the confections that they were.
Crucially, despite knowing of the dubious nature of the Niger connection, the CIA did not impress upon the White House its serious doubts. Instead, it allowed the President, citing 'British intelligence' as proof, to claim the Niger connection as hard evidence of Saddam's efforts to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.
If Tenet's account is true, it is doubly embarrassing, for the CIA had made its reservations clear elsewhere, if not to Bush.
The previous year, ahead of Blair's September 2002 dossier setting out the British case against Saddam, the CIA told London that the Niger claim was deeply questionable. And it also warned US Secretary of State Colin Powell against using the Niger evidence before he made his powerful presentation about the Iraqi threat to the UN in February, just weeks after Bush's State of the Union address.
In other words, the CIA told everyone about its doubts except the White House.
What is most revealing is Tenet's admission that the central claim was left in Bush's speech because it had been attributed to British intelligence. 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,' Tenet said.
'This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed.'
But there is a big question hanging over Tenet's account. For Britain vehemently rejects American claims that the Niger link was based solely on the forged documents or that it supplied any intelligence on the Niger connection to the CIA.
'The information in the British Government's September dossier regarding Niger categorically did not come from the forged Italian documents; it came from our own source. That information was not passed on to the US,' said an intelligence source last week. 'It was an entirely separate and credible source.'
On one crucial issue Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in his letter released yesterday, does agree with the US version of events. He admits that the CIA did warn Britain against including claims on the Niger connection in the Government's September dossier on WMD.
'The media have reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about the [Niger] element of the September dossier,' he said. 'This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US.'
The consequence of the gulf between these two positions is a new crisis over the intelligence on Iraq that is no longer limited to either just Britain or the US. For the first time Washington and London now point their fingers at each other.
The controversy is beginning to affect public support for the President. A Washington Post poll has found that 50 per cent of the US public now believe the administration exaggerated WMD claims in order to justify war with Iraq.
Here it was the turn yesterday of Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram to throw his weight behind fresh demands for a full and independent inquiry, saying Straw's letter did little to clarify the situation.
Ancram said: "An independent judicial inquiry is the most sensible way of establishing the facts.'
Andrew Mackinlay, the Labour MP for Thurrock who sits on the foreign affairs committee, said, if there was no political interference with the September dossier, then 'at the very least it raises questions about the competence of the security and intelligence services'."
observer.guardian.co.uk...
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"Even in Africa, Bush can't avoid Iraq
Five-day triumphal tour derailed by questions over uranium sales
Rory Carroll in Abuja
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
It was the moment the script changed - and President George W. Bush was not ready for his new role. The smile became a scowl, the voice moved up an octave and back came the jabbing finger, as if puncturing bubbles.
Just seconds earlier, he had been cracking jokes in the assurance that the five-nation African tour was going according to plan. It was day two, a press conference in lush gardens near Pretoria's Union Buildings, and Bush was polishing his compassionate credentials as the continent's saviour.
And then the question: 'Mr President, the White House has admitted it was a mistake to accuse Iraq of trying to buy African uranium...'
Maybe it was the midday sun, but Bush's eyes narrowed and face reddened before the questioner finished. It was the first time he had been asked about his claim that Baghdad sought nuclear materials from Niger.
Washington had disowned part of the evidence that was used to justify invading Iraq and the political storm had crossed the Atlantic to buffet the President on a balmy South African morning.
He blustered, coming across as angry and defensive: 'Look, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. There's no doubt in my mind that, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth.' But everyone else seemed to have doubts and the controversy dogged the five-day swing through five sub-Saharan countries that ended in Nigeria yesterday afternoon.
What was supposed to be a window on to a kinder, gentler White House that cared about Aids and poverty cracked into a ragged, ad lib damage limitation exercise.
Instead of softening Bush's image, Africa became the stage for questions about his administration's integrity and credibility, which followed him to Uganda, when he implicitly blamed the CIA for allowing faulty intelligence into January's State of the Union address.
On the way from Botswana to Uganda, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, briefed reporters on Air Force One: 'The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,' she said, prompting rumours that the agency's director, George Tenet, was for the chop.
Yesterday, in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the talk of trade and aid was again eclipsed when Bush felt compelled to back the beleaguered agency. 'I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I ... look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror.'
Democratic presidential hopefuls are lining up to demand an investigation and trying to chip at Bush's integrity. 'Instead of engaging in bureaucratic finger pointing, he needs to be honest with the American people. To achieve that goal, we need a full and honest investigation into intelligence failures,' said Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
The trip started so well. Accompanied his wife Laura and daughter Barbara, the President visited the dungeons of Goree Island, a port off Senegal from which slaves were shipped to America, and denounced slavery in an impassioned speech rich in Christian language. Even cynics who sensed a pitch to black voters praised his eloquence.
The White House wanted photo-ops with smiling Africans and, with Colin Powell and Rice at the helm, the tour went well: no heads of state publicly grumbled about US agricultural subsidies that damage African producers, or the dithering over whether to commit US troops to Liberia.
Nor did the anti-Bush demonstrations take off, with just a few thousand in Pretoria and Cape Town dispersing without incident, leaving the field clear for the President to trumpet $15bn to fight HIV/Aids.
Adoring crowds were few and far between, but back home Bush was being described as a genuine compassionate Republican.
'After meeting Aids patients, Bush heard a moving rendition of "America the Beautiful" by a choir of children ... they finished the song with broad smiles on their faces and their arms stretched toward heaven,' reported the New York Times.
So keen was Bush to keep the mood cosy that South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki was not publicly pushed to take a tougher line on Zimbabwe, nor was Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni urged to step down at the end of his second term, as the constitution demands.
As Air Force One yesterday climbed over Abuja, most American commentators agreed that the warrior president was returning home with a more human face, but the talk shows reckoned this trip will be remembered as the great White House squirm."
observer.guardian.co.uk...
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"Tony Blair's troubles won't fly away
The Prime Minister's world tour may have been planned as a victory parade but it is turning into an assault course
Andrew Rawnsley, political journalist of the year
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
After such a dreadful run of weeks at home, it would be perfectly understandable if Tony Blair is desperate to get away from it all. Getting away from it all the Prime Minister may think he will be when he embarks on a circumnavigation of the planet which will take the Phileas Fogg of Downing Street spinning around the globe from London to Washington to Hong Kong and back to London via Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Shanghai.
When he takes off on Thursday, he will be putting thousands of wonderful miles between himself and revolting Labour MPs, dissatisfied voters, scheming colleagues, and sneering newspapers.
As the jumbo grumbles down the runway, I can just imagine Mr Blair looking out of the window and a smile of relief growing on his lips as Britain shrinks ever smaller until this difficult country disappears below the horizon altogether.
Half of the public - according to one poll - say they wouldn't trust the Prime Minister as far as they could throw him. Some of his MPs - the ingrates - are now as openly contemptuous of him as he has always been of them. Given the chance, a chunk of his parliamentary party - the unreconstructed expletives - would ditch the man who has won them double landslides unique in the Labour Party's history. He looks around the Cabinet table and finds himself surrounded by Brownites and Kinnockites, but very few allies he can really call true and faithful Blairites.
There are various ways of measuring Mr Blair's recent difficulties. Some may point to the biggest revolt against him when his majority was slashed to 35 in the vote on foundation hospitals. Some may look at the tumble in his personal poll ratings. Some may note that he has been forced to lecture his parliamentary party not to 'self-destruct', which comes perilously close to being an echo of another leader's plea to his MPs to 'unite or die'. Did Mr Blair ever imagine that he would find himself impersonating Iain Duncan Smith?
For myself, a particularly telling measure of Mr Blair's difficulties is the sense of humour of Gordon Brown. You had forgotten that the Chancellor possesses a sense of humour? That is the point: Mr Brown tends to relocate his funny bone whenever the Prime Minister is in trouble. The worse it gets for Mr Blair, the more Mr Brown finds to grin about. In the Commons on Monday, the Chancellor chuckled that a health document had not been 'sexed-up', a joke at the expense of Number 10 that Mr Brown liked so much that he cracked it again on Thursday.
At least abroad, Tony Blair has people he can call real friends. Foreigners know how to treat a statesman of his magnitude with the respect that he deserves. Consider the impressive roster of leaders of the centre-Left who have come to London this weekend for the Progressive Governance Conference hosted by the Prime Minister. From Africa, Latin America, eastern as well as western Europe, North America and the Pacific they have come.
He is still in power, unlike his counterparts in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and America. At the conference dinner in the Guildhall on Friday night, Bill Clinton lamented that a 'resurgent Right' has been sweeping centre-Left parties out of office around the world. The former President sighed: 'It's bad enough that to attend a conference on progressive governance hosted by the nation's leader I have to leave my country.'
Mr Blair is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Among his global peer group, he earns respect and admiration, if not always affection, as one of the few centre-left leaders in the world who has managed to sustain a progressive party in power for a decent length of time. And he has done so, moreover, in Britain, a country with a long history of mainly electing the Right.
Consider the adulation with which he can be expected to be treated in the United States. He has been invited to address a special joint session of the American Congress, an accolade conferred on only three other British Prime Ministers - Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. And of them, only Churchill, and then only posthumously, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the most prestigious civilian honour that America can bestow.
What bloody medals have you ever won, Gordon? Whereas the Prime Minister has to shout to be heard in the House of Commons, Congress will listen to him with respectful silence broken only by thunderous applause. He can expect a standing ovation before he opens his mouth. And at least one more stander before he leaves.
If only, so Mr Blair might be seduced into thinking, he could just carry on flying around the planet collecting plaudits, a statesman in perpetual motion, leaving the Chancellor to run obstreperous, ungrateful, bitching Britain. Mr Brown would soon see how difficult governing this country is when when there is no Blair around to blame for all the hard choices.
Alas for the Prime Minister, travel is unlikely to prove to be an escape. Even abroad, he will not find refuge from the pressures at home. His world tour may even add to them.
That his greatest admirers in Washington are Republicans will underline the suspicions within his own party about his closeness to George Bush and why they went to war together. It was the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives who issued the stiffy to address the joint Congressional session 'to honour Mr Blair for his leadership and support during the war in Iraq'. The medal, which isn't quite ready for collection and has become the subject of some contentious debate in Washington, is to be minted for Mr Blair to reward his 'steadfast stand against evil'.
One of the Republican Congressmen who supported the idea says: 'I understand that it may not be entirely helpful to Tony Blair politically at this point in time for the people of the UK to hear he is so loved by the United States.' Who says Americans are not capable of under-statement? Some, especially in his own party, regard the medal not as an adornment on the chest of their leader, but a symbol of what they loathe about him.
A Labour MP has been quoted saying that Blair getting a medal from Bush is 'like being anointed by Satan' - a ludicrous statement, but telling all the same about the feelings of animosity the Prime Minister provokes among some on his backbenches.
For the Blair-haters, whatever he does will be another reason to scorn him. More mainstream opinion, in the Labour Party and beyond, will treat the Washington trip as an important test of whether Mr Blair's claims to influence over the Americans are anything more than deluded vainglory. The absolute minimum they are demanding is that President Bush addresses British concern about the planned trials of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, not least the two British citizens facing an American military tribunal - and possible execution - unless the Prime Minister can persuade Washington otherwise. A failure to come away with something substantial on this controversy will provoke hoots of derision about his vaunted influence so loud that they will be heard all the way across the Atlantic.
The American leg of his world tour already looks like less of a victory parade and more of an assault course. In Japan and South Korea, there will be the issue of North Korea, which definitely has the weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear ones that can be used, which have yet to be found in Iraq.
Mr Blair is also likely to be pursued around the Far East by questions about when he is going to commit to the European single currency, another form of credibility test. In Hong Kong, human rights groups will damn him if he has not raised his voice about the record of China and its attempts to impose authoritarian laws on the former British colony.
Happy travels, Prime Minister. By the time that Britain swims back into view, Tony Blair might even be relieved to be coming home."
politics.guardian.co.uk...
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"Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator.
In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister.
The letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the case for war against Iraq, reveals that Britain ignored a request from the CIA to remove claims that Saddam was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger, despite concerns that the allegations were bogus. It also details a government decision to block information going to the CIA because it was too sensitive.
As diplomatic relations between America and Britain become increasingly strained over Iraq's WMD, Straw said that the Government had separate evidence of the Niger link, which it has not shared with the US.
The revelations come just four days before Tony Blair travels to America for his toughest visit there since he came to power in 1997. As well as WMD, the Prime Minister will also raise Britain's 'serious concerns' over the treatment of British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay.
Straw's letter reveals:
� That evidence given to the CIA by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson - that Niger officials had denied any link - was never shared with the British.
� That Foreign Office officials were left to read reports of Wilson's findings in the press only days before they were raised as part of the committee's inquiry into the war.
� That when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq's WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with 'any explanation'.
Although publicly the two governments are trying to maintain a united front, the admission two days ago by the head of the CIA, George Tenet, that President Bush should never have made the claim about the Niger connection to Iraq, has left British officials exposed.
Last night, Downing Street and Foreign Office sources said that 'they would not blink' over the Niger claims. One Downing Street figure said that they were based on intelligence from a third country that was reliable. 'We are not backing down,' he said.
Another official said that the claim was based on the 'intelligence assessment' made at the time, leaving the door open to a climbdown if the intelligence is found to be wrong.
'I want to make it clear that neither I nor, to the best of my knowledge, any UK officials were aware of Ambassador Wilson's visit until reference first appeared in the press,' Straw said in the letter.
'The media has reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about this element [the Niger connection] of the September dossier. This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which had not been shared with the US. A judgment was therefore made to retain it.'
Straw said that the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment of the Iraqi nuclear threat did not just rest on attempts to procure uranium. There was also other evidence of links between the two countries and attempts to sign export deals.
Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary who has become a trenchant critic of the Government's case for war against Iraq, said that it 'stretched credibility' to say that the Americans and the British had failed to share such basic information.
'From all I know of the intimate relationship between the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Services, I find it hard to credit that there was such a breakdown of communication between them,' Cook said.
'It is time the Government came clean and published the evidence. The longer it delays, the greater the suspicion will become that it didn't really believe it itself.
'There is one simple question it must answer. Why did its evidence of the uranium deal not convince the CIA? If it was not good enough to be in the President's address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister's dossier.'
Yesterday, in another damaging broadside, Richard Butler, who was executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission to Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said that anyone who had claimed that there was a link between Niger and Iraq should resign.
Referring to Australian politicians who had made similar claims, only to withdraw them and apologise later, Butler said: 'In the justification for the war, these claims were false and known to be false.
'A Minister who misleads Parliament must accept responsibility for it and resign. Ministers must be held responsible, not public servants.'"
observer.guardian.co.uk...
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"How did a poor African nation become crucial to justifying war in Iraq? Now doubts over intelligence claims that Saddam sought uranium from Niger threaten a damaging split between the US and Britain write Peter Beaumont and Edward Helmore in New York
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
In the tunnels of Akouta in Niger, the miners dig for a dark and heavy ore, tar-like in lustre. In economic terms it is as precious as gold. But for some its worth far outweighs its financial value. For carried in these ores is uranium, the ninety-second element on the periodic table, and the fuel for an atomic bomb.
For three decades the miners of Niger have carried on their business, largely unnoticed by all except those who follow the heavy metal markets.
Now suddenly the uranium mines of Niger - and those seeking to do business with them for their uranium ores - have been thrown into the sharpest relief by a question that may have crucially influenced the decision of the US and Britain to go to war against Saddam Hussein.
Did Iraq seek uranium from Niger to fuel its nuclear weapons programme? Or was the claim, repeated by both President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, based on a crude forgery, discredited both by the CIA and a senior US diplomat sent to investigate the claim?
The story of the 'Niger connection' is one that has embroiled the US and British governments in a new round of charges that President Bush and Tony Blair led their countries to war on a false premise - that Iraq was actively seeking uranium for its nuclear weapons programme, a charge made in both the British Government's dossier on Iraqi WMD last September and in Bush's State of the Union address this January.
It is an affair that is now threatening to claim the first major scalp in the row over whether governments on both sides of the Atlantic hyped up the evidence against Iraq to justify a war - that of the CIA's director George Tenet, who yesterday was forced to take the blame for his agency's failure properly to warn the White House that the claims about Niger were 'highly dubious'.
In a remarkable admission Tenet has publicly conceded that the CIA wrongly allowed Bush to tell the American people that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, despite analysts' doubts about the information.
'These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President,' Tenet said, referring to a section of January's State of the Union address in which Bush said: 'The British Government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'
Tenet's admission follows an unprecedented round of finger- pointing by both Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the CIA - effectively accusing it of clearing what it knew to be defective intelligence for a major presidential speech.
Boiled down to their bare bones, the allegations go like this: with deep suspicion at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA over allegations of Iraqi attempts to procure uranium ore from Niger, the CIA was getting cold feet. What evidence they did have, as Tenet admitted on Friday, was fragmentary.
So, in early 2000, the CIA dispatched a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to investigate the claims. He rapidly concluded that the alleged Iraqi procurement programme did not exist, and at most Baghdad had merely attempted to discuss improved trade relations with Niger in the late 1990s.
Wilson and the CIA became convinced that some evidence of the Niger connection was based on crudely forged documents that agency sources suggested had been obtained by Italian authorities and passed on to Britain which - the same sources told the US media - passed the forgeries on to the CIA. When those documents emerged after Bush's State of the Union address, they would be quickly exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as the confections that they were.
Crucially, despite knowing of the dubious nature of the Niger connection, the CIA did not impress upon the White House its serious doubts. Instead, it allowed the President, citing 'British intelligence' as proof, to claim the Niger connection as hard evidence of Saddam's efforts to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.
If Tenet's account is true, it is doubly embarrassing, for the CIA had made its reservations clear elsewhere, if not to Bush.
The previous year, ahead of Blair's September 2002 dossier setting out the British case against Saddam, the CIA told London that the Niger claim was deeply questionable. And it also warned US Secretary of State Colin Powell against using the Niger evidence before he made his powerful presentation about the Iraqi threat to the UN in February, just weeks after Bush's State of the Union address.
In other words, the CIA told everyone about its doubts except the White House.
What is most revealing is Tenet's admission that the central claim was left in Bush's speech because it had been attributed to British intelligence. 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,' Tenet said.
'This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed.'
But there is a big question hanging over Tenet's account. For Britain vehemently rejects American claims that the Niger link was based solely on the forged documents or that it supplied any intelligence on the Niger connection to the CIA.
'The information in the British Government's September dossier regarding Niger categorically did not come from the forged Italian documents; it came from our own source. That information was not passed on to the US,' said an intelligence source last week. 'It was an entirely separate and credible source.'
On one crucial issue Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in his letter released yesterday, does agree with the US version of events. He admits that the CIA did warn Britain against including claims on the Niger connection in the Government's September dossier on WMD.
'The media have reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about the [Niger] element of the September dossier,' he said. 'This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US.'
The consequence of the gulf between these two positions is a new crisis over the intelligence on Iraq that is no longer limited to either just Britain or the US. For the first time Washington and London now point their fingers at each other.
The controversy is beginning to affect public support for the President. A Washington Post poll has found that 50 per cent of the US public now believe the administration exaggerated WMD claims in order to justify war with Iraq.
Here it was the turn yesterday of Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram to throw his weight behind fresh demands for a full and independent inquiry, saying Straw's letter did little to clarify the situation.
Ancram said: "An independent judicial inquiry is the most sensible way of establishing the facts.'
Andrew Mackinlay, the Labour MP for Thurrock who sits on the foreign affairs committee, said, if there was no political interference with the September dossier, then 'at the very least it raises questions about the competence of the security and intelligence services'."
observer.guardian.co.uk...
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"Even in Africa, Bush can't avoid Iraq
Five-day triumphal tour derailed by questions over uranium sales
Rory Carroll in Abuja
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
It was the moment the script changed - and President George W. Bush was not ready for his new role. The smile became a scowl, the voice moved up an octave and back came the jabbing finger, as if puncturing bubbles.
Just seconds earlier, he had been cracking jokes in the assurance that the five-nation African tour was going according to plan. It was day two, a press conference in lush gardens near Pretoria's Union Buildings, and Bush was polishing his compassionate credentials as the continent's saviour.
And then the question: 'Mr President, the White House has admitted it was a mistake to accuse Iraq of trying to buy African uranium...'
Maybe it was the midday sun, but Bush's eyes narrowed and face reddened before the questioner finished. It was the first time he had been asked about his claim that Baghdad sought nuclear materials from Niger.
Washington had disowned part of the evidence that was used to justify invading Iraq and the political storm had crossed the Atlantic to buffet the President on a balmy South African morning.
He blustered, coming across as angry and defensive: 'Look, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. There's no doubt in my mind that, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth.' But everyone else seemed to have doubts and the controversy dogged the five-day swing through five sub-Saharan countries that ended in Nigeria yesterday afternoon.
What was supposed to be a window on to a kinder, gentler White House that cared about Aids and poverty cracked into a ragged, ad lib damage limitation exercise.
Instead of softening Bush's image, Africa became the stage for questions about his administration's integrity and credibility, which followed him to Uganda, when he implicitly blamed the CIA for allowing faulty intelligence into January's State of the Union address.
On the way from Botswana to Uganda, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, briefed reporters on Air Force One: 'The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,' she said, prompting rumours that the agency's director, George Tenet, was for the chop.
Yesterday, in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the talk of trade and aid was again eclipsed when Bush felt compelled to back the beleaguered agency. 'I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I ... look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror.'
Democratic presidential hopefuls are lining up to demand an investigation and trying to chip at Bush's integrity. 'Instead of engaging in bureaucratic finger pointing, he needs to be honest with the American people. To achieve that goal, we need a full and honest investigation into intelligence failures,' said Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
The trip started so well. Accompanied his wife Laura and daughter Barbara, the President visited the dungeons of Goree Island, a port off Senegal from which slaves were shipped to America, and denounced slavery in an impassioned speech rich in Christian language. Even cynics who sensed a pitch to black voters praised his eloquence.
The White House wanted photo-ops with smiling Africans and, with Colin Powell and Rice at the helm, the tour went well: no heads of state publicly grumbled about US agricultural subsidies that damage African producers, or the dithering over whether to commit US troops to Liberia.
Nor did the anti-Bush demonstrations take off, with just a few thousand in Pretoria and Cape Town dispersing without incident, leaving the field clear for the President to trumpet $15bn to fight HIV/Aids.
Adoring crowds were few and far between, but back home Bush was being described as a genuine compassionate Republican.
'After meeting Aids patients, Bush heard a moving rendition of "America the Beautiful" by a choir of children ... they finished the song with broad smiles on their faces and their arms stretched toward heaven,' reported the New York Times.
So keen was Bush to keep the mood cosy that South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki was not publicly pushed to take a tougher line on Zimbabwe, nor was Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni urged to step down at the end of his second term, as the constitution demands.
As Air Force One yesterday climbed over Abuja, most American commentators agreed that the warrior president was returning home with a more human face, but the talk shows reckoned this trip will be remembered as the great White House squirm."
observer.guardian.co.uk...
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"Tony Blair's troubles won't fly away
The Prime Minister's world tour may have been planned as a victory parade but it is turning into an assault course
Andrew Rawnsley, political journalist of the year
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer
After such a dreadful run of weeks at home, it would be perfectly understandable if Tony Blair is desperate to get away from it all. Getting away from it all the Prime Minister may think he will be when he embarks on a circumnavigation of the planet which will take the Phileas Fogg of Downing Street spinning around the globe from London to Washington to Hong Kong and back to London via Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Shanghai.
When he takes off on Thursday, he will be putting thousands of wonderful miles between himself and revolting Labour MPs, dissatisfied voters, scheming colleagues, and sneering newspapers.
As the jumbo grumbles down the runway, I can just imagine Mr Blair looking out of the window and a smile of relief growing on his lips as Britain shrinks ever smaller until this difficult country disappears below the horizon altogether.
Half of the public - according to one poll - say they wouldn't trust the Prime Minister as far as they could throw him. Some of his MPs - the ingrates - are now as openly contemptuous of him as he has always been of them. Given the chance, a chunk of his parliamentary party - the unreconstructed expletives - would ditch the man who has won them double landslides unique in the Labour Party's history. He looks around the Cabinet table and finds himself surrounded by Brownites and Kinnockites, but very few allies he can really call true and faithful Blairites.
There are various ways of measuring Mr Blair's recent difficulties. Some may point to the biggest revolt against him when his majority was slashed to 35 in the vote on foundation hospitals. Some may look at the tumble in his personal poll ratings. Some may note that he has been forced to lecture his parliamentary party not to 'self-destruct', which comes perilously close to being an echo of another leader's plea to his MPs to 'unite or die'. Did Mr Blair ever imagine that he would find himself impersonating Iain Duncan Smith?
For myself, a particularly telling measure of Mr Blair's difficulties is the sense of humour of Gordon Brown. You had forgotten that the Chancellor possesses a sense of humour? That is the point: Mr Brown tends to relocate his funny bone whenever the Prime Minister is in trouble. The worse it gets for Mr Blair, the more Mr Brown finds to grin about. In the Commons on Monday, the Chancellor chuckled that a health document had not been 'sexed-up', a joke at the expense of Number 10 that Mr Brown liked so much that he cracked it again on Thursday.
At least abroad, Tony Blair has people he can call real friends. Foreigners know how to treat a statesman of his magnitude with the respect that he deserves. Consider the impressive roster of leaders of the centre-Left who have come to London this weekend for the Progressive Governance Conference hosted by the Prime Minister. From Africa, Latin America, eastern as well as western Europe, North America and the Pacific they have come.
He is still in power, unlike his counterparts in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and America. At the conference dinner in the Guildhall on Friday night, Bill Clinton lamented that a 'resurgent Right' has been sweeping centre-Left parties out of office around the world. The former President sighed: 'It's bad enough that to attend a conference on progressive governance hosted by the nation's leader I have to leave my country.'
Mr Blair is one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Among his global peer group, he earns respect and admiration, if not always affection, as one of the few centre-left leaders in the world who has managed to sustain a progressive party in power for a decent length of time. And he has done so, moreover, in Britain, a country with a long history of mainly electing the Right.
Consider the adulation with which he can be expected to be treated in the United States. He has been invited to address a special joint session of the American Congress, an accolade conferred on only three other British Prime Ministers - Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. And of them, only Churchill, and then only posthumously, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the most prestigious civilian honour that America can bestow.
What bloody medals have you ever won, Gordon? Whereas the Prime Minister has to shout to be heard in the House of Commons, Congress will listen to him with respectful silence broken only by thunderous applause. He can expect a standing ovation before he opens his mouth. And at least one more stander before he leaves.
If only, so Mr Blair might be seduced into thinking, he could just carry on flying around the planet collecting plaudits, a statesman in perpetual motion, leaving the Chancellor to run obstreperous, ungrateful, bitching Britain. Mr Brown would soon see how difficult governing this country is when when there is no Blair around to blame for all the hard choices.
Alas for the Prime Minister, travel is unlikely to prove to be an escape. Even abroad, he will not find refuge from the pressures at home. His world tour may even add to them.
That his greatest admirers in Washington are Republicans will underline the suspicions within his own party about his closeness to George Bush and why they went to war together. It was the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives who issued the stiffy to address the joint Congressional session 'to honour Mr Blair for his leadership and support during the war in Iraq'. The medal, which isn't quite ready for collection and has become the subject of some contentious debate in Washington, is to be minted for Mr Blair to reward his 'steadfast stand against evil'.
One of the Republican Congressmen who supported the idea says: 'I understand that it may not be entirely helpful to Tony Blair politically at this point in time for the people of the UK to hear he is so loved by the United States.' Who says Americans are not capable of under-statement? Some, especially in his own party, regard the medal not as an adornment on the chest of their leader, but a symbol of what they loathe about him.
A Labour MP has been quoted saying that Blair getting a medal from Bush is 'like being anointed by Satan' - a ludicrous statement, but telling all the same about the feelings of animosity the Prime Minister provokes among some on his backbenches.
For the Blair-haters, whatever he does will be another reason to scorn him. More mainstream opinion, in the Labour Party and beyond, will treat the Washington trip as an important test of whether Mr Blair's claims to influence over the Americans are anything more than deluded vainglory. The absolute minimum they are demanding is that President Bush addresses British concern about the planned trials of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, not least the two British citizens facing an American military tribunal - and possible execution - unless the Prime Minister can persuade Washington otherwise. A failure to come away with something substantial on this controversy will provoke hoots of derision about his vaunted influence so loud that they will be heard all the way across the Atlantic.
The American leg of his world tour already looks like less of a victory parade and more of an assault course. In Japan and South Korea, there will be the issue of North Korea, which definitely has the weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear ones that can be used, which have yet to be found in Iraq.
Mr Blair is also likely to be pursued around the Far East by questions about when he is going to commit to the European single currency, another form of credibility test. In Hong Kong, human rights groups will damn him if he has not raised his voice about the record of China and its attempts to impose authoritarian laws on the former British colony.
Happy travels, Prime Minister. By the time that Britain swims back into view, Tony Blair might even be relieved to be coming home."
politics.guardian.co.uk...
......................................................................................
You know what the republicans are saying here?
That regardless of how the Bush Admin LIES to the American people and gets American soldiers killed (not withstanding innocent foreigners) the Dems shouldn't call Bush on this b/c it looks like a form of political desperation.
You see the warped mentality I'm talking about?
That regardless of how the Bush Admin LIES to the American people and gets American soldiers killed (not withstanding innocent foreigners) the Dems shouldn't call Bush on this b/c it looks like a form of political desperation.
You see the warped mentality I'm talking about?
Originally posted by Mokuhadzushi
are you ... are you seriously defending this usurpator bush .. this guy who's been lying to you everyday ? this guy who's bankrupting YOUR country with defence expenditures ???
Sure, its expensive. Its more expensive to sit around a do nothing. In the long run, being a coward costs more than just money.
The same arguments were made against Reagan the whole time he did what it took to achieve victory in the Cold War. Had he not accomplished what he did, we'd still be paying for a protracted struggle.
Originally posted by Colonel
You know what the republicans are saying here?
That regardless of how the Bush Admin LIES to the American people and gets American soldiers killed (not withstanding innocent foreigners) the Dems shouldn't call Bush on this b/c it looks like a form of political desperation.
You see the warped mentality I'm talking about?
No, what is warped is that people like you attack with venom over little crap, as if it was big crap. People like you casue those who would not ordinarily be a Bush defender defend him. Its not that we think Bush is great, or that Bush is right all the time, its just that you and those like you are wrong all the time, even when you are right. That's because when you're right, you are right for the wrong reasons.
If you cut this administration half the slack you cut the last one, you'd be voting to annoint Bush King of the known universe.
Originally posted by Colonel
You know what the republicans are saying here?
That regardless of how the Bush Admin LIES to the American people and gets American soldiers killed (not withstanding innocent foreigners) the Dems shouldn't call Bush on this b/c it looks like a form of political desperation.
You see the warped mentality I'm talking about?
Sad part about it Colonel, its true! In light of the choices being presented by the Democratic Party, it amounts to warped political desparation, eh?
regards
seekerof
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
No, what is warped is that people like you attack with venom over little crap, as if it was big crap.
Lying to the american people in order to send americans and Iraqis to their death and robbing a countries resources isnt little crap, it's a heinous crime
Sure, its expensive. Its more expensive to sit around a do nothing. In the long run, being a coward costs more than just money.
The same arguments were made against Reagan the whole time he did what it took to achieve victory in the Cold War. Had he not accomplished what he did, we'd still be paying for a protracted struggle.
You are in logical fault. Are you talking about the war on terrorism or the armed robbery in Iraq ?
Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
No, what is warped is that people like you attack with venom over little crap, as if it was big crap. People like you casue those who would not ordinarily be a Bush defender defend him. Its not that we think Bush is great, or that Bush is right all the time, its just that you and those like you are wrong all the time, even when you are right. That's because when you're right, you are right for the wrong reasons.
If you cut this administration half the slack you cut the last one, you'd be voting to annoint Bush King of the known universe.
You have just proven what I'm talking about. Bush runs a criminal enterprise from the White House where he employs American volunteer citizen soldiers to fight and die over LIES daily and you sit and defend him with "King of the known Universe."
Yet, obssess (sp) over Clinton and his evil penis---even 3 years AFTER the man is out of office.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?????
Hey Colonel you know that Tenet was hired by Clinton a Democrat? Tenet was the only person from the Clinton Admin that Bush kept. So know that you
know that a fellow Democrat installed him what do you have to say?
Bush is driving the Democrats and the liberals crazy. They don't understand why everyone doesn't see what they see. It's not so much that they want
to refight the war over the war -- some supporting toppling Saddam -- but this is obviously an opening they can use to tarnish the president's image
on a national security issue. The problem is, most folks don't seem to care.
Michael Tomasky channels the liberal complaints in American Prospect:
"A fresh and potentially damning revelation about pre-war manipulation of intelligence comes out, and the administration -- for the first time -- has to acknowledge that an 'incorrect' justification for war was bruited.
"It's yet another instance -- the 13,862nd, I think -- over which we shake our heads, imagining what the right would have done if a Gore administration had tried to get away with something like this. And so, once again, we are confronted with the same exasperating question: What has to happen to make the American people care about the lies told to get us into this war? . . .
"This has been, without question, the most vexing two years in modern American history for liberals. When we talk with one another, we talk -- and talk -- about one thing: How can this be happening? What this administration is doing to this country is not merely Republican, or merely conservative. It is revolutionary, as indeed some within the administration clearly fancy their project and themselves (Paul Wolfowitz springs to mind). And with all revolutionaries, it's always the same old story: interpretation first, facts later.
"Those of us who hang on every turn of the screw and have been maddened for months about how Bush can get away with converting Saddam Hussein into an imminent threat to America -- or calling his tax cut middle-class, or labeling this Medicare swindle 'reform,' or any of a hundred other surrealities -- have been dumbfounded at how thoroughly the interpretation has taken hold."
Al Hunt complains about "the fog of deceit" in his Wall Street Journal column:
"The phony Iraq-Niger deal may be the smoking gun in what was a pervasive pattern of exaggeration and distortion to justify the war against the Iraqi dictator. Some of these claims -- the alleged Baghdad-al Qaeda ties, the extent of his biological and chemical weapons or even his nuclear designs -- reflected selective use of conflicting intelligence.
"The false Niger connection was much more. Yet Congress, under pressure from the White House, is abdicating its responsibility to investigate why the public was misled on such a momentous matter. . . .
"If Bill Clinton could be impeached for lying about sex, or Al Gore discredited for exaggerating his relationship with James Lee Witt, then lying about the reasons for going to war -- whether it was the president or one of his subordinates -- ought to command an inquiry from the people's representatives."
The Clinton double standard is really starting to irk liberal commentators.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen compares Bush to a CEO who has to keep "restating" corporate profits:
"The president recently restated some of the reasons for invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which Bush told the world was being 'reconstituted,' may in fact not exist. The White House the other day restated its earlier insistence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the West African nation of Niger. It turned out that the supporting documents had been forged. The White House admitted that in a press release left behind after Bush had departed for Africa.
"Similarly, the accusation that Iraq was buying high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were 'used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons,' has to be restated. The tubes appear to have been bought for another purpose entirely and may not be high-strength after all.
"As for the charge that Iraq was bristling with other weapons of mass destruction, none have yet been found, raising the distinct possibility that -- in an upcoming quarter -- this too will be restated and the Bush administration will take a one-time charge against future credibility. . .
Michael Tomasky channels the liberal complaints in American Prospect:
"A fresh and potentially damning revelation about pre-war manipulation of intelligence comes out, and the administration -- for the first time -- has to acknowledge that an 'incorrect' justification for war was bruited.
"It's yet another instance -- the 13,862nd, I think -- over which we shake our heads, imagining what the right would have done if a Gore administration had tried to get away with something like this. And so, once again, we are confronted with the same exasperating question: What has to happen to make the American people care about the lies told to get us into this war? . . .
"This has been, without question, the most vexing two years in modern American history for liberals. When we talk with one another, we talk -- and talk -- about one thing: How can this be happening? What this administration is doing to this country is not merely Republican, or merely conservative. It is revolutionary, as indeed some within the administration clearly fancy their project and themselves (Paul Wolfowitz springs to mind). And with all revolutionaries, it's always the same old story: interpretation first, facts later.
"Those of us who hang on every turn of the screw and have been maddened for months about how Bush can get away with converting Saddam Hussein into an imminent threat to America -- or calling his tax cut middle-class, or labeling this Medicare swindle 'reform,' or any of a hundred other surrealities -- have been dumbfounded at how thoroughly the interpretation has taken hold."
Al Hunt complains about "the fog of deceit" in his Wall Street Journal column:
"The phony Iraq-Niger deal may be the smoking gun in what was a pervasive pattern of exaggeration and distortion to justify the war against the Iraqi dictator. Some of these claims -- the alleged Baghdad-al Qaeda ties, the extent of his biological and chemical weapons or even his nuclear designs -- reflected selective use of conflicting intelligence.
"The false Niger connection was much more. Yet Congress, under pressure from the White House, is abdicating its responsibility to investigate why the public was misled on such a momentous matter. . . .
"If Bill Clinton could be impeached for lying about sex, or Al Gore discredited for exaggerating his relationship with James Lee Witt, then lying about the reasons for going to war -- whether it was the president or one of his subordinates -- ought to command an inquiry from the people's representatives."
The Clinton double standard is really starting to irk liberal commentators.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen compares Bush to a CEO who has to keep "restating" corporate profits:
"The president recently restated some of the reasons for invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which Bush told the world was being 'reconstituted,' may in fact not exist. The White House the other day restated its earlier insistence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the West African nation of Niger. It turned out that the supporting documents had been forged. The White House admitted that in a press release left behind after Bush had departed for Africa.
"Similarly, the accusation that Iraq was buying high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were 'used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons,' has to be restated. The tubes appear to have been bought for another purpose entirely and may not be high-strength after all.
"As for the charge that Iraq was bristling with other weapons of mass destruction, none have yet been found, raising the distinct possibility that -- in an upcoming quarter -- this too will be restated and the Bush administration will take a one-time charge against future credibility. . .
Here's what I see....the Democrats have nothing going for them. In respect to this, they are basically, hinging the whole "shabang" on the WMD's
issue. Since the WMD have not currently been found, be rest assurd, this will be the focus of all the Democratic Presidential candidates come closer
to election time. This is their current platform and is their only platform and emphasis.
The 'if' to this is self-evident.......'if' the WMD's are not found, the Democrats stand to do decently against Bush come the elections. But, 'if' the WMD's are found....the Democratic platform collapses and the word "landslide" becomes realistic and probable in relation to the election outcome.
regards
seekerof
The 'if' to this is self-evident.......'if' the WMD's are not found, the Democrats stand to do decently against Bush come the elections. But, 'if' the WMD's are found....the Democratic platform collapses and the word "landslide" becomes realistic and probable in relation to the election outcome.
regards
seekerof
I believe what the issue about "Known Universe" isn't that Thomas Crowne is saying that is waht Bush is but that is what you'd have to promote him
to if you overlooked as much about him as you do with the democrats, including Clinton who may be out of office but doesn't leave the spotlight for
very long.
There is more evidence of you, Colonel, lying than Bush, as you have omitted more facts since being here than Bush has, and Bush has advisors to omit the facts for him. Plausible deniability and what-not.
There is more evidence of you, Colonel, lying than Bush, as you have omitted more facts since being here than Bush has, and Bush has advisors to omit the facts for him. Plausible deniability and what-not.
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