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July 8, 2003
Oh, and uh, they lied
But it was someone else's fault, and they're very, very sorry:
"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House.
As part of his case against Iraq, Bush said in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council in March that the uranium story -- which centered on documents alleging Iraqi efforts to buy the material from Niger -- was based on forged documents. Although the administration did not dispute the IAEA's conclusion, it launched the war against Iraq later that month.
It subsequently emerged that the CIA the previous year had dispatched a respected former senior diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson, to Niger to investigate the allegation and that Wilson had reported back that officials in Niger denied the story. The administration never made Wilson's mission public, and questions have been raised over the past month over how the CIA characterized his conclusion in its classified intelligence reports inside the administration.
Seems to me there's only one question for the CIA: Was the president munching pretzels and unable to hear you say the documents were forged, or did he say, "Hell, let's go with it--I bet only 23% of the voters will give a shit"?
How Mr. Bush's statement made it into last January's State of the Union address is still unclear. No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate. That document contained a footnote — in a separate section of the report, on another subject — noting that State Department experts were doubtful of the claims that Mr. Hussein had sought uranium.
That's from the New York Times story. Earlier quote and link are from the Washington Post.
Comments
The State of the Union speech was in January. The documents were determined to be forged in March. How were they to know that in January?
Wilson's mission was inconclusive; of course officials in Niger were going to deny it. The discovery last week of a centrifuge buried in an Iraqi nuclear scientist's garden is clear evidence of a point no one seriously disputed: that Hussein made repeated attempts to acquire or build a nuclear weapon.
Posted by: brett at July 9, 2003 3:29 AM
The documents were known by intelligence experts to have been forged long before the I.A.E.A. informed the U.N. Security Council that they were. Even if we forget Wilson's trip, how does one account for the fact that the officials on the document had not been in Niger's government for several years?
It was an obvious, shoddy forgery, and intelligence officials were shocked when the president put it in his speech. If such was not the case, do you imagine this White House would back away from its allegations?
As for the discovery last week of a centrifuge buried--several years ago--in an Iraqi nuclear scientist's garden: it's clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was nowhere near succeeding in building a nuclear weapon.
I can't deny that unseating Saddam Hussein was a bad thing. My point is that this administration has done a good thing in such a bad way that it may, in the aggregate, turn out to do more harm than good. If they had a better argument, as some would claim they did, why didn't they use it? If they had better intentions, why are they at this point failing so miserably?
To me it looks like they used selected intelligence to support their war, and they've used selected intelligence to plan their occupation. You can decide for yourself whether to blame intelligence or blame them. In the case of the Niger-uranium scam, it looks to me like the intelligence was good, and the administration was duplicitous.
Posted by: pk at July 9, 2003 5:49 AM
Yeah, you're probably right - they did use select intelligence to support the war. There was a good article making that point in Slate not too long ago, which made a comparison to the "missile gap" many experts thought existed during the Cold War. The US boosted production of nuclear missiles because of a perceived shortfall which turned out to be false - and it ended up being a good thing, helping to cause the USSR's collapse.
If these documents were as fake as they sound, you're absolutely right, the administration shouldn't have relied on them. But at the time, no one doubted that Hussein either had WMD or was trying to get them, and no one doubted his ill intent.
Don't we all selectively choose the information we use to support our points of view, to a degree? Glad to hear you say that getting rid of S. was a good thing - many liberals dispute even that point, even Democratic candidates.
Posted by: brett at July 9, 2003 7:35 AM
Actually, I didn't say getting rid of Saddam was a good thing--but that is what I meant. (My syntax was garbled; it was after midnight.)
The pre-war debate wasn't about whether Saddam had bad intentions. As you say, no one--then or now--doubted that he was at least trying to get WMDs. The debate was about whether war was the best way to contain him and ensure regional stability. Time will tell who was right. For now, at least, Mr. Bush based his administration's argument for war on bad information. I hope that their post-war plans are based on all that good information they've been keeping from us.
Posted by: pk at July 9, 2003 2:56 PM