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| 5/24 |
| 2006/9/1-5 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:44231 Activity:nil |
9/1 More proof that Karl Rove was involved and Bush should be impeached.
Of course there won't be a single mea culpa on this one from the left.
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460_pf.html
"Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the
end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go
public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out
-- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and
that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He
ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such
as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent
on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He
diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming
that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal
conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously."
\_ If this was all so harmless, why did Cheney's chief of staff
take the risk of lying to a federal prosecutor about it?
\_ Who said he lied about it? Has he been found guilty of anything?
In this country he's still innocent until *proven* guilty in a
*court of law* not the media. No one has been found guilty of
anything except Armitage, Powell, and the State Department folks
who knew the truth years ago and only recently let it be known.
\_ err... Guantonimo Bay, Cuba?
\_ Uh? what's that have to do with scooter or plame/wilson or
anything else on this thread?
\_ That op-ed seems deluded. There is plenty of evidence that
Cheney and Rove instructed their staff to gather 'dirt' on
Wilson and ruin anyone who got in the way of their
campaign to convince the public that Iraq was trying to
acquire nuclear weapons.
\_ Plenty of evidence, such as? This is from the WaPo who were at
the forefront of the "frog-march Cheney" brigade. This is a huge
180 from their former position. What do you know that the WaPo
doesn't?
\_ Joe Wilson on the matter of Iraq, Niger, and yellowcake:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm
\_ Published in 2003 and since then, fortunately, enough facts have
come out that even WaPo now says he's a liar. Seriously,
sometimes people we trust, especially public gov. figures with
an axe to grind lie to us. Wilson is a liar. Delay is corrupt.
The other guy was stashing $90k in his freezer. Most of them
are cheating on their spouses, taking campaign money in exchange
for votes and 'custom' legislation, taking freebie trips on your
tax dollars and their patron corporate sponsors. Washington is
dirty. There are no clean hands in the entire city, no heros.
dirty. There are no clean hands in the entire city, no heroes.
Deal with it.
\_ the WaPo editorial board is full of nincompoops
\_ For a bunch of nincompoops they sure do get quoted a lot
on the motd without anyone questioning the quality of
their editorials or their neutrality.
\_ Spell out for me, using facts and sources, how Wilson was
wrong about Iraq, Niger, and yellowcake.
\_ Answering myself, so don't bother to flame:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery#Butler_Report_2
\_ I don't have an agenda or an axe to grind. I wouldn't
have flamed. I'm interested in the truth and a govern-
ment free of corruption no matter who is in office.
There are no heroes in Washington D.C. I don't see it
as you vs. me but the truth vs. a blizzard of lies and
propaganda from the agenda driven power pols in DC, the
media, corporate board rooms, etc. Had Wilson proved to
be honest and if his wife was actually a secret agent
who got her cover blown then I'd be the first one
calling for heads to roll. |
| 5/24 |
|
| www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm New York Times What I Didn't Find in Africa by Joseph C Wilson 4th Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake a form of lightly processed ore by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the CIA paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government. In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible. The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival. I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government and were probably forged. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the CIA I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip. Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure. I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government. The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. ") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted. I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons. Joseph C Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant. E-Mail This Article FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expr... |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery#Butler_Report_2 George W Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The British claim could not be substantiated with evidence. Butler Report is believed to be the source for the claim and the British Government continues to believe it is accurate. Critics claim the statement in the speech was a reference to the documents. Senate Intelligence Committee report and other sources seem to confirm that Plame gave her husband a positive recommendation. However, they also confirm that she did not personally authorize the trip (and in fact did not have any authority to do so). political scandal and criminal investigation into the source of the leak which "outed" Plame, and whether or not that person committed a crime. The actual words President Bush spoke: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" suggests that his source was British intelligence and not the forged documents. Butler Report issued after a review by the British government concluded that the report Saddam's government was seeking uranium in Africa appeared credible. Nevertheless, the Butler report fails to advance any evidence to substantiate this conclusion. human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq." In any case, French intelligence had repeatedly warned the Bush administration a year before his State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with evidence. New York Times revealed the existence of a memo which stated that the suggestion of uranium being sold was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles. At that time, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an unnamed African country. In December, the State Department issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council". The administration later conceded that evidence in support of the claim was inconclusive and stated "these 16 words should never have been included" in Bush's address to the nation, attributing the error to the CIA. edit European and British intelligence reports However, the front page of the June 28, 2004 Financial Times had a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. edit US doubts Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of US Armed Forces Europe, Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford, went to Niger and met with the country's president. He concluded that, given the controls on Niger's uranium supply, there was little chance any of it could have been diverted to Iraq. His report was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who reported that he knew of no sales to Iraq. Mayaki did however recall that in June 1999 an Iraqi delegation had expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations", which he had interpreted to mean yellowcake sales. Ultimately, Wilson concluded that there was no way that production at the uranium mines could be ramped up or that the excess uranium could have been exported without it being immediately obvious to many people both in the private sector and in the government of Niger. He returned home and told the CIA that the reports were "unequivocally wrong". The CIA retained this information in its Counter Proliferation Department, and was not even passed up to the CIA Director, according to the bipartisan, unanimous findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released results of his analysis of the documents. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerian officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the UN Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic." EA was able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of Niger and to compare the form, format, contents and signature of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation. EA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. op-ed, Ambassador Wilson recounted his experiences and stated "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Although the president had cited "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," British intelligence have failed to show any other source of information. The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on the forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip. Wilson had to backtrack and said he may have "misspoken" on this. The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." London) quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy, after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. It was later revealed that Martino had been invited to serve as the conduit for the documents by Col. Antonio Nucera of SISMI, the head of the counterintelligence and WMD proliferations sections of SISMI's Rome operations center. provided French officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been planning to expand 'trade' with Niger. This trade was assumed to be in uranium, which is Niger's main export. It was then that Mr Martino first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger's uranium exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing 'market' in documents. He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency by US diplomats. The Times article also stated that "French officials have not said whether they know Mr Martino, and are unlikely to either confirm or deny that he is a source." Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians: "The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. Hersh continues: He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired CIA clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves. "The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney," the former officer said. When Horton said that must be Ledeen, he confirmed it, and added that the ex-CIA officers, "also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing." "These people did it probably for a couple of reasons, but one of the reasons ... |
| washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460_pf.html -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460_pf.html REAL ESTATE End of an Affair It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband. A20 WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L Armitage. Mr Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms Plame's identity was classified information, Mr Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr Armitage. It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr Armitage's identity been known three years ago. That's not to say that Mr Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr Libby and Mr Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms Plame's role in recommending Mr Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr Libby and his boss, Mr Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr Wilson; if Mr Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified. Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms Plame's CIA career is Mr Wilson. Mr Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously. |