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pinkme2 -> RE: More bad news from Iraq (10/29/2007 11:02:06 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy
...the whole uranium thing from the Niger was disowned by intelligence sources both sides of the pond, yet our governments presented it as fact. That was deceit.
I think this sentence right here deserves it's own argument. First off, it's loaded with inaccuracies. If all you did was listen to the media, or the anti-war crowd, I see how you could see this as true.. But there was no deceit.
I have some great analysis from the "extremist" Diva herself. Read on please:
quote:
Night after night, it is blithely asserted on "Hardball" that Wilson's trip to Niger debunked the claim that Saddam Hussein had been seeking enriched uranium from Niger.
As David Shuster reported last week: "Wilson goes and finds out that the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger is not accurate."
There have been massive investigations into this particular claim of "Ambassador" Joe Wilson, both here and in Britain. Nearly three years ago, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that this was not merely untrue, it was the opposite of the truth: Wilson's report actually bolstered the belief that Saddam was seeking uranium from Niger.
"The panel found," as the Washington Post reported July 10, "that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts." So you can see how a seasoned newsman like David Shuster might come to the exact opposite conclusion and then repeat this false conclusion on TV every night.
Wilson's unwritten "report" to a few CIA agents supported the suspicion that Saddam was seeking enriched uranium from Niger because, according to Wilson, the former prime minister of Niger told him that in 1999 Saddam had sent a delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" with Niger. The only thing Niger has to trade is yellowcake. If Saddam was seeking to expand commercial relations with Niger, we can be fairly certain he wasn't trying to buy designer jeans, ready-to-assemble furniture or commemorative plates. He was seeking enriched uranium.
But Wilson simply accepted the assurances of the former prime minister of Niger that selling yellowcake to Saddam was the farthest thing from his mind. I give you my word as an African head of state.
Chris Matthews also repeatedly says that Bush's famous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address – which liberals say was a LIE! a LIE! a despicable LIE! – consisted of the claim that British intelligence said there was a "deal" for Saddam Hussein to buy enriched uranium from Niger.
Matthews huffily wonders aloud why Wilson's incorrect report didn't get into Bush's State of the Union address "rather than the president's claim of British intelligence that said there was a deal to buy uranium, which of course became one of the underpinnings of this administration's argument that we had to go to war with Iraq."
Considering how hysterical liberals were about Bush's "16 words," you'd think they'd have a vague recollection of what those words were and that they did not include the word "deal." What Bush said was: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Even if the British had been wrong, what Bush said was factually correct: In 2003, the British government believed that Saddam sought yellowcake from Niger. (Not "MSNBC factual," mind you. I mean "real factual.")
But in fact, the British were right and Wilson was wrong. By now, everyone believes Saddam was seeking yellowcake from Niger – the CIA, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, Lord Butler's report in Britain, even the French believe it.
But at MSNBC, it's not even an open question: That network alone has determined that Saddam Hussein was not trying to acquire enriched uranium from Niger. Actually, one other person may still agree with MSNBC: a discredited, washed-up State Department hack who used his CIA flunky wife's petty influence to scrape up pity assignments. But even he won't say it on TV anymore.
Shuster excitedly reported: "We've already gotten testimony that, in fact, that Joe Wilson's trip to Niger was based on forgeries that were so obvious that they were forgeries that officials said it would have only taken a few days for anybody to realize they were forgeries."
This is so wrong it's not even wrong. It's not 180 degrees off the truth – it's more like 3 times 8, carry the 2, 540 degrees from the truth. Shuster has twisted Wilson's original lie into some Frankenstein monster lie you'd need Ross Perot with a handful of flow charts to map out in full.
During Wilson's massive media tour, he began telling reporters that he knew Saddam was not seeking yellowcake from Niger because the documents allegedly proving a deal were obvious forgeries.
Again, thanks to endless investigations, we now know that Wilson was lying: He never saw the forged documents. (Not only that, but Bush's statement was not based on the forged documents because no one ever believed them.)
The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report notes that Wilson was asked how he "could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Indeed, the United States didn't even receive the "obviously forged" documents until eight months after Wilson's trip to Niger!
Wilson admitted to the committee that he had "misspoken" to reporters about having seen the forged documents. Similarly, Cain "misspoke" when God inquired as to the whereabouts of his dead brother, Abel.
But on "Hardball," the forged documents that no one in the U.S. government saw until eight months after Wilson's trip now form the very impetus for the trip. A perfectly plausible theory, provided you have a working time machine at your disposal.
This was written in Feb of this year. There was no lie. There may have been false intel, though they don't even think that's the case now. I would have responded myself, but seeing how complicated the whole back and forth thing with Wilson, Niger, and the yellowcake, I thought I'd just get another source, one who quotes actual news articles and such.
I have a UM who all the time likes to come to me and complain his sibling was caught in a "lie". Come to find out that the other person was simply "wrong" or "mistaken" about something. No lie there, just simply not having all the info, or coming to the wrong conclusions about what they did have. I see this as the same thing. No need to lift this up to the level of wrong doing or a lie unless you have another agenda. Those who actually know all the info here, about this supposed "lie" and still trumpet it as such, are obviously doing it for political reasons. Not saying you, Philo, but some here in the US.
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