Hundreds of US soldiers are already dead, and more are
dying almost daily. Thousands of Iraqis are already
dead. There is no end in sight. But at least this one
sliver of the Truth could not be ignored any longer.
On Sunday, Joseph C. Wilson identified himself as the
US diplomat who had been sent to Africa at the request
of the VICE _resident to follow-up on a story about
Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Niger during the
post-9/11 ramp up to the Anglo-American invasion. Of
course, if you read the LNS, you know that this
allegation has been discredited for quite awhile. The
NYTwits and the WASHPs finally deemed it worthy of
their front pages this morning...The White House has
been forced to begrudingly admit that the _resident's
State of the Union address was at least in part
factually incorrect. Will they consume hours every
night with rancorous TV debate between
propapunditgandists (skewed against him)on whether or
not the _resident, the VICE _resident or Condi the
White House au pair knew knew it was a bogus story?
Will we see the video tape of that moment in the State
of the Union speech over and over again? How about
Calm 'Em Powell's speech to the UN? Will the
propapunditgandists dissect it now? Will Tim Russert
roast some hihg-ranking Bush administration official
next Sunday morning on NotBeSeen's Meat the Press?
Nope. We'll "put this behind us." We'll hear about
Liberia and AIDS in Africa (you know it is bad for
them when Rove has him stumping on AIDS in Africa,
something that should be one of the US's three top
international priorities, along with global warming
and a real war on root causes of "terrorism") The "US mainstream news media" is spinning it as best they can, but it is quicksand ("Out, out damn spot!")
...Well, here is the headline news that actually made it to the
front page today at least in Washington and New York.
But because we have been through so much and seen so
much here at the LNS, we will post the story that ran
on the front page of London's Financial Times
(America's best business newspaper) this morning...
US admits Iraq-African uranium link 'bogus'
By James Harding and Guy Dinmore in Washington and
James Blitz in London
Published: July 7 2003 20:55 | Last Updated: July 8
2003 7:37
The two chief advocates of war in Iraq - George W.
Bush and Tony Blair - came under concerted pressure on
Monday over their use of intelligence to justify
military action against Saddam Hussein.
The White House was forced to admit that an assertion
by President Bush this year that Iraq was seeking to
buy uranium from Africa was based on "bogus"
information.
Responding to accusations that the White House twisted
information to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, Ari
Fleischer, the president's press secretary, insisted
Mr Bush did not know the reports were wrong when he
made the allegation - one of the central elements of
his case against Iraq - in the State of the Union
address in January.
In London, Tony Blair's government faced its first
formal criticism for the way it made the case for war
on Iraq. A parliamentary committee said parts of a
dossier on Mr Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
had been "more assertive" than would normally have
been the case and warned of "disquiet" for the
government until WMD are found.
News in-depth: Weapons of mass destruction
Click here
Mr Bush has not faced the same level of outcry over
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as Mr Blair. But
the White House is being dogged by a growing number of
questions about the president's eagerness to suggest
Iraq was developing a nuclear capability by citing
evidence of efforts to buy uranium and aluminium tubes
to serve as centrifuges.
The gathering concern over possible manipulation of
intelligence comes amid rising levels of national
anxiety about the prospects of a long, bloody
deployment of US soldiers in Iraq. US military
personnel have been dying at the rate of roughly one a
day since Mr Bush declared the end of combat
operations.
The Bush administration confirmed on Monday that
Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, investigated the
attempted purchase of uranium in Niger for the Central
Intelligence Agency. Nearly a year before Mr Bush's
State of the Union address, he delivered his findings
to the administration that there was no truth to the
allegations. Mr Wilson wrote in the New York Times on
Sunday that "some of the intelligence related to
Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was twisted to
exaggerate the Iraqi threat".
Mr Fleischer insisted that Mr Bush, and vice-president
Dick Cheney, were not aware that the Niger report had
been found to be inaccurate when the president made
his case at the State of the Union on January 28.
Mr Fleischer promised to publish a more detailed
expla- nation of Mr Bush's comment.
The White House has previously acknowledged the Niger
account was later discovered to be false, but Mr
Fleischer's admission yesterday was the clearest to
date that Mr Bush based a statement in the State of
the Union on misleading information. The other element
of Mr Bush's State of the Union allegation that Iraq
had "much to hide" is also under scrutiny. xref Iraq's
interim