Who Is Buried in Bush's Speech?

Sofia wrote:

I'm not saying we should go off half-cocked at every whisper that floats across a President's desk--but what Bush said, IMO, was accurate. "British sources have said..." Misleading, yes. A lie, no.

Where we differ in our opinion is that all of the US intelligence information said the yellow cake information was unreliable, but GWBush included that information anyway. Under those circumstances, it becomes a lie, because he failed to reconfirm the information again and again to justify this information. It wasn't "misleading," as you say when he had intelligence at home to prove otherwise. If he had confirmed that the British intelligence was accurate, and reconfirmed by our intelligence, that's another story, but that's not the case here. c.i.

I characterize it as support in contrast to calls for impeachment.

The heart of President Bush's January 28 State of the Union address was his case for going to war against Saddam Hussein. In making his case, the president laid out fact after fact about Saddam's alleged unconventional weapons. Indeed, the claim that these weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat was his primary argument in favor of war.

Now, as more and more time passes with WMD still not found, it seems that some of those facts may not have been true. In particular, recent controversy has focused on the president's citations of British intelligence purportedly showing that Saddam was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In this column, I will examine the publicly available evidence relating to this and other statements in the State of the Union concerning Saddam's WMD. Obviously I do not have access to the classified information the president doubtlessly relied upon. But much of the relevant information he drew from appears to have been declassified and made available for inquiring minds.