Very Interestin’

2:10 pm EST October 24th, 2005 | Politics | 13 Comments

Is it all about the war

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

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13 Responses to “Very Interestin’”

  1. JWG says:
    October 24, 2005 at 2:10 pm

    about the lies and exaggerations

    Did you read the linked article?

    And since no WMD were found in Iraq after the 2003 war, despite the evidence from the U.N. inspections of the 1990s that demonstrated that Saddam Hussein had initiated both a nuclear and a biological weapons program, the strongest plank in the Bush administration’s case for war has crumbled beneath its feet.

  2. jnfr says:
    October 24, 2005 at 2:10 pm

    It was always about the war, and about the lies and exaggerations that got us into it.

  3. BD says:
    October 24, 2005 at 2:10 pm

    Um…that was why we sent inspectors in right before going to war. Because the UN inspections had been in the 1990s.

    The inspectors found nothing. We went to war anyway.

    Did you read your own cut and bolded text?

  4. mr.curmudgeon says:
    October 24, 2005 at 3:10 pm

    JWG,

    Clap harder!!!!

  5. TomY says:
    October 24, 2005 at 3:10 pm

    Christ, JWG, all evidence since the war shows that the UN was right: Saddam abandoned his nuke program years ago. If Bush hadn’t pulled the UN inspectors out, we could have prevented the alleged WMD threat without ever getting into this idiotic, counterproductive war.

  6. madape says:
    October 24, 2005 at 5:10 pm

    These particular documents were reportedly delivered to French intelligence in 2000 by an Italian spy on the French goventment’s payroll.

    Some have clamed that the French government circulated these bogus documents to Britain and the US with the intention that they would wrongfully use them to justify the Iraq war… the theory being that France was trying to “set up” Blair and Bush with false documents which when revealed, would humiliate them and undermine the case for war.

    Here’s a link: http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/19/wniger19.xml

    I don’t know if I buy it, but it will be interesting to see the results of the investigation, but I’m also no buying the theory that the U.S. is behind the forgeries. At the very least, the Bush and Blair administrations used highly questionable intelligence to justify that Iraq was planning to procure nuclear material, and for that they should be embarassed.

  7. buma says:
    October 24, 2005 at 6:10 pm

    If anybody ever wanted to see what things would be like if Republicans got to call all the shots for 5 years — we now can behold what a disaster it would be. Jeebus what a bunch of morons. Bush is making history, alright. When is this long national nightmare going to end?

  8. buma says:
    October 24, 2005 at 6:10 pm

    Speaking of the legacy of presidents, if some Republicans think Reagan should be credited with the fall pf the Berlin wall, shouldn’t history also record that Saddam abandoned his weapons programs during Clinton’s presidency?

  9. Semanticleo says:
    October 24, 2005 at 6:10 pm

    Bush’s famous 16 words;  The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .

    It is interesting to note that in spite of the fact that Cheney, Rice and minions kept hammering  mushroom cloud that Bush would weasel his State of the Union address by referencing  British . This suggests the need for legal loopholes was anticipated by the Administration. Hence their rallying the troops around the  technically legal defense as the only strategy left for their rapidly evaporating credibility. As for the stretch to an all-encompassing conspiracy. It is doubtful. But their awareness of their “House of Straw”and the paper-thin ‘evidence’, is at least evidence of “careless disregard”,

  10. JWG says:
    October 24, 2005 at 11:10 pm

    Christ, JWG, all evidence since the war shows that the UN was right

    The UN believed Iraq had a working WMD program and was pursuing a more advanced productivity. The UN was wrong.

    I made no statements about the decision to actually go to war. I merely restated the FACT that the world believed Iraq had a WMD program.

    There’s a difference between lying and being wrong.

    Did you read your own cut and bolded text?

    Yes, I did, BD. It was very clear. Did YOU read it? It says the UN had evidence that “demonstrated that Saddam Hussein had initiated both a nuclear and a biological weapons program.”

    Was the UN lying?

  11. BD says:
    October 25, 2005 at 9:10 am

    “Initiated,” JWG, doesn’t immediately constitute threat. It meant that he was determined to create one. Clearly, by the end of the 1990s and by the time we were gearing up for Iraqi Freedom, he had failed to create the nuclear and biological weapons program.

    My point is that we could have known this if we had let the inspectors do their job, but they were undercut and ridiculed by the warmongers in the WH before their job was over. The inspectors said “we can’t find current evidence of a weapons program,” and the WH said “It’s there, trust us. You can’t find it because you don’t have unfettered access, the sort of access one can only get by taking over the country.”

    So we did that. And unfettered access turned up Jack and Squat.

    If I bought a butcher knife ten years ago, it doesn’t mean I’m a serial killer today.

  12. JWG says:
    October 26, 2005 at 11:10 am

    Uh, Oh…

    Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France
    [...]
    His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that – by commissioning “Giacomo” to procure and circulate documents – France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

    Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade “yellowcake” uranium from Niger, France was trying to “set up” Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

  13. JWG says:
    October 26, 2005 at 11:10 am

    Sorry…link