Bush Considers Matter Closed
So, here's the summary version of the Nigerian yellow cake scam:
According to the New York Times George W. Bush "considers the matter closed". Why? Because we are supposed to believe that George Tenent, Director of the CIA and a Clinton appointee, is the one responsible for the false accusation that Iraq was shopping around Africa to acquire material for their "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. Of course, at that time the Iraqi nuke program wasn't a few random bits of hardware under a rosebush. It was stuff, not a program, and intention. The Bush administration stated unequivocally that Iraq was only months away from having functional nuclear weapons, if they did not have them already. Also, Iraq had a delivery system which turned out to be remotely piloted Cessnas with a range of only 300 miles.
The claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase 500 tons of uranium oxide from Niger was the cornerstone of Bush's preemptive case for war. It was not, as some ad hoc spinners have claimed, just a little piece of the case. If we are talking about weapons of mass destruction, then nuclear weapons are the premier weapon of mass destruction. The uranium oxide could be used for power generation, but when processed in a certain way, that amount of "yellow cake" could also be used to construct a bomb.
What is beyond question now is this this information was false, complete bullshit based on crudely forged documents that wouldn't fool a bar bouncer checking IDs, much less members of intelligence agencies. What seems clear is that even though the claim was false it was too good not to use.
And the Bush White House used it. What they did, however, was construct the claim in the State of the Union Address as
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon, and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
In bold are two known falsehoods. The speech itself is a series of rather shoddily constructed slippery slope arguments, that if Iraq had a weapons program and if Iraq attempted to buy uranium and if they constructed a working bomb and if they gave that bomb to terrorists and if those terrorists used that bomb, etc.
But that chain of argument is broken by the fact that the Bush administration knew--and it's inconceivable to think otherwise--that those claims were false. Their own efforts at verification through Joseph C. Wilson showed that there was nothing behind the Niger documents and the claim that the aluminum tubes bought were suitable for nuclear weapons production was directly contradicted by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, before the State of the Union address.
By attributing the claim to the British, although by that point the Bush Administration, based on the inquiries by Ambassador Wilson, knew that it was false. The "intelligence sources" whomever they are, were not supported by the very International Atomic Energy Agency cited in the beginning to lend credibility to the whole paragraph.
Bush said, "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."
And now, so does George W. Bush.
By building the case for war on false information designed to cause fear and hysteria, Bush becomes complicit in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of American servicemen and thousands of Iraqi nationals.
After a few days thrashing about as the depth of the Bush administration lies surfaced, the administration came up with a pat answer that George W. Bush was a liar:
It was George Tenent's fault. Tenent did it. Of course, Tenent's name was only invoked when the claim was admitted to be false. When it was said to be "technically correct", a sure euphemism for a lie, the Bushies were still on the playing field.
OK, Bush isn't a liar then. He's just lazy and incompetant, stabbed in the back by a deceitful Democratic appointee.
And they expect us to believe this bullshit.
The single most important scrap of information in the case for war against Iraq and Tenent, supposedly, was bogarting the fact that the Niger documents were bogus. Tenent allowed the Bush administration to continue thinking it was true, despite Cheney sending Wilson to track down this info months before the CIA cleared the State of the Union speech. It was a "clearance problem", according to Condoleeza Rice. Just a little paperwork SNAFU, kids. **** happens, sorry about the dead kids.
Sure.
War may be a necessary evil, but when it is not necessary, it's simply evil.
And so is George Bush. A banal type of evil, that of a stupid and arrogant man, but evil nevertheless.
What Bush did may not have been, strictly speaking, a treasonable offense, but based on the precedent established by the Republicans in recent years, it sure as Hell is an impeachable offense. By lying to America and the world Bush has not "returned dignity to the White House". In fact, he is the greatest embarrassment and shame to America since Richard Nixon. And considering the gravity of the offenses, a bungled break-in to get dirt on political opponents vs. a mendacious and cynical case for preemptive war in which thousands died.
Thousands. Thousands died. If the attack on the World Trade Center was an atrocity because it killed 2800 innocent people, then how does one categorize a needless attack on a nation that killed over 6,000 innocent civilians?
If America lets the Bush administration slide for this lie and the resulting bloodshed, then this country has truly and finally lost it's moral compass. We will be exactly the callow and stupid people the world suspects we are. We will have met the enemy and it is us.
The matter is closed?
Only at the cost of our souls.
"If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."
--George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 2003.
hey C.I. if you want the most definitive timeline and compellation to deal with the yahoo mouthbreathers on the Right about "Plamegate and the Yellowcakes"
go here: it refutes virutally everything Rainman has posted, and does it with thoroughness and links to the actual government documents.
it is an excellent piece of research useful in deal with so many rightwing lies and talking points.
enjoy.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007640.php
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005211.php#1_1
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004909.php
kuvasz, Thank you for the summary explaining the fraud perpetrated by Bush and the Brits about what Bush said in his SOTU and how the Brits tried to reinforce the falsehoods by both sides.
How Bush and Blair managed to survive all the lies they perpetrated and the subsequent killings of innocent people is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Wheres your evidence that Cheney sent Wilson to Niger? cicerone, just one of many inconsistencies in your "setting the record straight"
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
okie, Go do your own chase. I'm no longer available as a gofer.
Just go to Google. A good place to start your hunt.
You're the one making grand statements, not me. Again, where is the evidence Cheney sent Wilson to Niger? Before you sit there and purportedly set the record straight, try to have backup data to support your statements. I recall he had nothing to do with Wilson, and in fact did not even receive so much as a written report by Wilson concerning his trip.
By the way, did you bother to read my link to Factcheck.org?
By all means, nitpick the details and ignore the overriding message.
okie, It's up to you to prove the information is wrong, not that it's right. That's how arguments work; show what is claimed by the media to be false.
YOu must show the proof that it's wrong; not the other way around.
We'll be waiting.
Quote:Wilson would later angrily deny that his wife had recommended him for this mission, and would do his best to spread the impression that choosing him had been the Vice President's idea.
I can't find any evidence that this is, in fact, true. Wilson was chosen to go by the CIA; his contention, as far as I can tell, is that the CIA chose him after Cheney asked for more information on the case.
Cycloptichorn
Here is documentation that the CIA assigned Wilson to go to Niger.
1. Summary
In response to Vice President Cheney's request for more information after the first two uncorroborated reports surfaced (from the same foreign intelligence service) on an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction in 2000 (Part 3A-1), the CIA's Counterproliferation Division (CPD) took the decision to contact Joe Wilson, and after some discussions decided to send him to Niger to see if he could shed some light on the allegations. Wilson arrived in Niger on 2/26/02. Shortly prior to his arrival, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey sent out a cable informing U.S. intelligence about the results of a meeting held previously with Niger's President Mamadou Tandja and Foreign Minister Aichatou Mindaoudou, by the U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick and the Deputy Commander of European Command, General Carlton Fulford. In that meeting, the Americans were assured by the Nigerien President that "Niger's goal was to keep its uranium 'in safe hands'."
From Wikipedia:
Wilson's trip to Niger and critical editorial
Wilson said that his African diplomatic experience led to his selection for the mission to Niger; he is a former ambassador to Gabon, another uranium-producing African nation, and was once posted in the 1970s to Niamey, Niger's capital. He was also once Director for African Affairs in the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. According to the Senate investigation and the Libby indictment, Wilson's wife recommended Wilson when she was consulted on who to send on the mission.
In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush cited a claim by British intelligence that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, saying "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This is a claim the British government still maintains despite the forgery of some of the public documents released by the U.S. and British governments.
Beginning in May, 2003, Wilson began a series of anonymous interviews with various reporters, and wrote a critical opinion piece in The New York Times, published 6 July 2003.[7] In it, Wilson suggested that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence findings in order to bolster a pre-established agenda to invade Iraq during the Iraq disarmament crisis that led to that 2003 invasion. On 11 July 2003, five days following the publication of Wilson's op-ed piece, the CIA issued a statement discrediting what it called "highly dubious" accounts of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger.[8]
Wilson's central claim was that several reports and investigations were done on Niger, among them his own on a journey in 2002, and all found the claims from President George Bush about a contact between Iraq and Niger to be unsubstantiated. He claimed the information given by the American government before the Iraq war was based on deceptions and false information.
In the press release, CIA Director George Tenet said it should "never" have permitted the "16 words" relating to alleged Iraqi uranium purchases to be used in the State of the Union address, and called it a "mistake" that the CIA allowed such a reference in a speech Bush used to take the United States to war.
Eight days following Wilson's Times editorial, Novak published his column containing the information about Plame's identity. Wilson claimed that the leak was an act of political retribution against him designed to destroy his wife's career.
The Right discovers Bush's 'honesty'.
Conservatives are finally getting a taste of his misleading rhetoric.
are they blind, stupid, or are just not used to being on the receiving end his lying ways?
Quote:This outbreak of unflattering conservative insights suggests two possibilities. The first is that, until this moment, Bush never used dishonest tactics to frame his views and those of his critics, and conservative activists never displayed a fanatical aversion to compromise. Somehow, though, Bush and the conservatives are suddenly using tactics against each other that they were too honest and thoughtful to use against the Democrats. The second possible interpretation is that they've been like this all along, and the conservatives are only starting to notice because for once they're on the receiving end.
I know which interpretation I'm going with.
see link for the rest
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait21may21,1,7775844.column?coll=la-util-op-ed
What was Wilson's role? Wilson had been an ambassador to Gabon and was posted to Niger earlier in his career. In 1999, he had gone to Niger to gather information about rumors of uranium sales to Iraq. The CIA sent Wilson back to Niger in February 2002 to check on unconfirmed reports about an Iraqi contract to buy uranium. Wilson reported that he found no evidence of a contract and that Niger's uranium was under French control and could not be diverted to Iraq.
He said Niger's former prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki, had told him that in 1999 he had been approached by a businessman who urged him to meet with an Iraqi delegation. Mayaki said he assumed the meeting would be about uranium, but uranium never came up.
•What did the Senate Intelligence Committee report say about Wilson, and how does he respond? The committee reported that CIA analysts believe Mayaki's comments about the meeting, while inconclusive, tended to support allegations that Iraq was at least trying to buy uranium. Wilson says the Mayaki information was thin and notes that the CIA did not deem it important enough to report to the White House.
The committee reported that Wilson conceded he may have "misspoken" when he told a reporter last year that documents purporting to confirm an Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries when, in fact, he had no access to those documents and could not have known they were forgeries. Wilson says he never claimed to have known about the forged documents.
The committee also questioned Wilson's repeated denials that his wife had "anything to do" with his selection by the CIA to go to Niger. It quoted from a memo by Plame that lays out Wilson's qualifications for the assignment. Wilson and the CIA confirm that the agency, not Plame, selected him for the mission. He says the memo merely laid out his qualifications after he was picked.
imposter, when you post long articles, this is old stuff that we already know. We've read this stuff and all the different spins more than once.
Also, you say its up to me to prove the news wrong. I used to think that, but I don't swallow a great deal of it now without waiting for more proof. Take the NSA flap about the 3 phone companies handing over records. Have 2 of them denied it already and demanded USA today retract their story? At least that was the word 3 or 4 days ago, I haven't checked it today.
Back to Joseph Wilson. Yes, Cheney probably asked for more information. I knew that already. He did not send Wilson. The CIA sent Wilson, probably because his wife, Valerie Plame, recommended him. Did he find out anything that wasn't already known? Very little as far as I can tell. He did not even submit a written report. The trip appears to me to be a setup because how could he come to any final conclusion either way in terms of whether Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger? If he found out anything, the officials confirmed contact with Iraq officials, and what else would Iraq want from Niger, and perhaps the Niger officials may have suspected that intelligence sources already knew of the contacts, so they acknowledged that much but said it was about something else. Do we really know for sure? Some analysts thought his information bolstered the likelihood of Iraq seeking yellowcake, while others do not.
To summarize, if the intelligence experts did not come to a sound conclusion in light of everything known at that time, how does Wilson claim to be so all-knowing and so confident that Niger officials are going to tell him everything while sitting around drinking tea? He collected no covert information whatsoever as far as I've found out so far. The trip appears to me as having accomplished little, and certainly does not appear to me to have found such conclusive information as to justify going on his vendetta against the administration.
Have you read my link to factcheck.org?
http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
Can you show, Okie, where Wilson claimed that Cheney sent him to Nigeria? This has been claimed by the right-wing, as evidence that he is lying, but I have yet to see the documentation on that.
Quote:Take the NSA flap about the 3 phone companies handing over records. Have 2 of them denied it already and demanded USA today retract their story? At least that was the word 3 or 4 days ago, I haven't checked it today.
So what? The phone companies handed their records over to a third party, who then handed them to the NSA. Their carefully worded 'denials' are bullsh*t. You may note that USA Today has refused to retract their story.
Today we find out that the NSA has also been tapping Internet Communications illegally. I suppose you will poo-pah this as well.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70944-0.html
Cycloptichorn
Are you shaking in your boots now concerning using the internet?
As to what Wilson has actually said and what he claims to have said, plus what he claims to "set the record straight," there is lots of spin and counter spin, and I will be continuing to check the latest out on this to continue the debate.
okie wrote:Are you shaking in your boots now concerning using the internet?
As to what Wilson has actually said and what he claims to have said, plus what he claims to "set the record straight," there is lots of spin and counter spin, and I will be continuing to check the latest out on this to continue the debate.
If you admit - in this Wilson affair - that information was leaked by this administration as a reprisal against a political enemy, I have no debate with you about it.
The title of this thread is Bush, is he a liar?
So why do you keep harping on Wilson okie? Don't want to talk about Bush?
