Now this is interesting:
Thanks to Leakgate Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's decision to indict "Scooter" Libby last week, Bush administration accuser Joe Wilson is once again the toast of Washington, D.C. - recycling the fifteen minutes of fame he first purchased in July 2003 with the claim that Bush lied about Iraq's plan to acquire uranium from Niger.
Why was Bush's uranium claim so important? Because if true, the mere attempt by the Iraqi dictator to acquire uranium would show that he had clear and incontrovertible plans to restart his nuclear program.
Maybe that's why the press seldom discusses the fact that Saddam already had a staggeringly large stockpile of uranium - 500 tons, to be exact.
And if his mere intention to acquire uranium was enough to justify fears of Saddam's nuclear ambition, what would the average person deduce from that fact that he'd already stockpiled a huge quantity of the bombmaking fuel?
Read the whole thing and then check this out:
It’s puzzling that Wilson would find ridiculous the mere possibility of Saddam trying to make such deal with Niger. According to a Nigerian mining minister, Wilson had reported to the CIA that Saddam had indeed tried to purchase 400 tons of yellow cake uranium in 1998. Why would the idea be scoffed at by Wilson that Saddam would continue to try buy the illegal item just a few years later?
One question that needs to be answered is: Did Wilson have any meetings or contact with French Ambassador DeVillipan prior to being sent to Niger? DeVillipan was the man who brought a promise from his boss, Jacques Chirac, that France would stand by America if Bush would bring the Iraq situation before the United Nations for a vote. Colin Powell, secretary of state at that time, urged the president to take his case before the United Nations partly because of that promise of support. Once France had succeeded in fooling the gullible Colin Powell, the rest was easy. France quickly put a knife between America’s shoulder blades and reversed its vote in favor of Saddam.
Chirac had all but promised his good friend, Saddam, that he could use France’s vote on the Security Council to prevent the United States from invading Iraq. Chirac was wrong. But France apparently had a back-up plan to discredit both Bush and Blair. That plan included a forged document from Niger indicating that Saddam had tried to purchase yellow cake uranium. If Bush and Blair could be fooled into believing the document was genuine, it could be used against them later.
It was that forged document that Joe Wilson referred to when he spoke to a Washington Post reporter and told him that he came to his conclusions about the Niger intelligence because it was based on a forged document. Wilson stated specifically that he knew the document was forged because "the dates and names were wrong." The problem was that Wilson could not possibly have seen this document because even the CIA didn’t see that document until eight months later. Yet, somehow, Wilson knew it was forged. How could he have known then the reason it would be discarded as a forgery nearly a year later?
We now know that the document was indeed forged. An Italian agent named Rocco Martino—intelligence codename "Giacomo"—has shed some light on the origins of the bogus document. Mr. Martino has confessed to Italian authorities that he was commissioned by French intelligence to pick up the document from an agent at the Nigerian embassy. Martino claims that he didn’t know the document was a forgery. It was France’s ultimate goal to use the document to discredit both Bush and Blair in their claims that Saddam was acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Chirac’s plan seems to have worked beyond his wildest dreams.
So, Wilson, a loyal Democrat operative, is chosen to go to Niger on a quest to find out if Saddam was actually trying to purchase yellow cake on the suggestion of his CIA wife, Plame, also a loyal Democrat. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about exactly who requested an agent be sent to Niger and who within the CIA actually chose Wilson to go. Neither has been identified. Oddly, no one within the CIA seems to remember.
Did Wilson go, perhaps comforted by the fact that he already knew the document in question was forged? Was he taken into someone’s confidence not to worry about actually seeking the truth because the groundwork had already been laid to make Bush and Blair appear to be liars? Did Wilson have such a relaxed and pleasant time in Niger with his old friends because he knew before he went what his report was going to be? Did Wilson give an oral report instead of a written one so that if anything went awry, he could say he had been misquoted?
Were there two forces at work here? One force was France with its open hostility to the United States and support of Saddam and the other may have been the leftist forces in America who didn’t really care about Saddam one way or the other. George W. Bush was considered the enemy by the leftists and they would use any means necessary, even if it meant undermining the war effort, to discredit the president. Is it possible these two forces decided to work together? Was Joe Wilson the go-between?
Looks like Joe Wilson needs to be investigated. Read the whole thing and lets not forget about how much France benefited from the scandalous UN Iraqi oil for food program.
And in case you did not read the whole thing at the top:
Responding to the firestorm that erupted after Wilson's July 2003 column, Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters:
"In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger."
