Yellowcake Con; Time to apologize to Bush

[Sparrowhawk]

REVIEW &amp; OUTLOOK <br />
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DOW JONES <br />
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The Yellowcake Con <br />
July 15, 2004; Page A10 <br />
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So now the British government has published its own inquiry into the intelligence behind the invasion of...

[yellowwing]

Bush and Blair only said that Iraq had "sought" or was "trying to buy" uranium, not that it had succeeded.

Isn't that kind of splitting of hairs and passing the buck? The intent was very clear.

George Tenet took the bullet on this one for not forwarded that the previous Niger reports were outright forgeries.

I'd like to hear more about the Chalabi~Iranian Intelligence Service connections.

When we lost the Tehran Embassy (you should have stuck to peanut farming), Iranian intelligence found a gold mine of data. Not necessarily hard facts and secrets. More importantly they discovered how American intelligence works. They learned how their enemy , 'The Great Satan', thinks.

I see big trouble for Iran if they try to move on Iraq.

[cknow]

I agree it's time for Mr. Wilson to own up to the lies he has had ample opertunity in the media to air, the only problem is that we wont be seeing much of him on those same media outlets.

[thedrifter]

'Yellowcake' and black marks



As the idiom goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Last summer, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV made some fairly extraordinary claims about the Bush administration, which earned him a spot on the John Kerry campaign (see www.restorehonesty.com). The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report addresses Ambassador Wilson on many of his allegations. In nearly every case, the report concludes, the ambassador was wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately so.
Traversing the talk-show circuit last summer, Ambassador Wilson explained to a fawning press corps how the Bush administration had ignored his 2002 mission to Niger, in which he was responsible for investigating intelligence suggesting that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy enriched uranium — "yellowcake" — from there (the ambassador's conclusion, based on a highly intensive eight days of sweet-mint-tea drinking: no evidence); and how senior administration officials had purposefully and maliciously "outed" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame, to columnist Robert Novak, for spite. At the time, Ambassador Wilson was at the height of his fame, which he packaged in a book with a title as long as the author's ego: "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir."

Those were his extraordinary claims, designed with the explicit intention of casting the entire Bush administration as a bunch of liars and crooks. Now, the Senate Intelligence report provides the lack of extraordinary proof. First, as for the "yellowcake" matter, the report finds that Ambassador Wilson's 2002 Niger mission did nothing if not give further evidence that negotiations with Iraq had taken place. As we've said before, the "yellowcake" fiasco is pretty much over. Those "16 words" in the president's speech were correct exactly as the president spoke them. But to belabor the point, and show just how wrong the ambassador actually was, the British intelligence report, released Wednesday, also vindicates the president: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 ... was well-founded."
It gets worse for Ambassador Wilson, however. According to a July 10 article in The Washington Post, the ambassador "provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged." Problem is, The Post reports, Ambassador Wilson hadn't seen those documents at the time he made his conclusions. Moreover, the Senate report found a memo written by Mrs. Plame recommending her husband for the Niger mission — a finding contrary to the account given by the ambassador in his book — just as Mr. Novak reported. Indeed, this might help explain why a former ambassador with no experience in conducting these kinds of investigations was chosen in the first place.
Once championed by the likes of John Kerry and an adoring media, the ambassador is now thoroughly discredited. As occasionally happens in Washington, the "truth" of Ambassador Wilson's flagrant assertions has been disproven by the facts.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040715-082643-6068r.htm


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Yellowcake twists <br />
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By Jack Kelly <br />
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Joseph C. Wilson IV's shattered credibility illustrates much of what is wrong with the CIA, and with &quot;mainstream&quot; journalism. <br />
Mr. Wilson's 15 minutes...

[yellowwing]

"If we're to win the war on terror, we need a CIA ...", being safeguarded from "a still unknown Administration official told columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee".

A crime was committed and the response is to orchestrate an attack on the Ambassador. The CIA is a National Asset in combatting terror. Telling reporters who the spies are is Aldritch Ames stuff.