FJRP's Political Blog: The Uproar

July 19th, 2004 by mjg

From The New York Times
By William Safire
Op-Ed
July 19, 2004

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

� George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 28, 2003

WASHINGTON � Those were “the 16 words” in a momentous message to a joint session of Congress that were pounced on by the wrong-war left to become the simple centerpiece of its angry accusation that “Bush lied to us” � or, as John Kerry more delicately puts it � “misled” us into thinking that Saddam’s Iraq posed a danger to the U.S.

The he-lied-to-us charge was led by Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat sent in early 2002 by the C.I.A. to Niger to check out reports by several European intelligence services that Iraq had secretly tried to buy that African nation’s only major export, “yellowcake” uranium ore.

Wilson testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had assured U.S. officials back in 2002 that “there was nothing to the story.” �

Two exhaustive government reports came out last week showing that it is the president’s lionized accuser, and not Mr. Bush, who has been having trouble with the truth. �

More important, it now turns out that senators believe his report to the C.I.A. after visiting Niger actually bolstered the case that Saddam sought � Bush’s truthful verb was “sought” � yellowcake, the stuff of nuclear bombs. The C.I.A. gave Wilson’s report a “good” grade because “the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999 and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium” � confirming what the British and Italian intelligence services had told us from their own sources. �

Did Saddam seek uranium from Africa, evidence of his continuing illegal interest in a nuclear weapon? Here is Lord Butler’s nonpartisan panel, which closely examined the basis of the British intelligence:

”. . . we conclude that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa’ was well-founded.”