In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started – since he was involved in starting it – he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role.
The missing e-mails from March 1, 2003, to May 23, 2003, cover another timeframe that is important to the “Plame-gate” affair. During this period, questions about the veracity of Bush’s Niger claims first surfaced.
During his State of the Union Address on Jan. 28, 2003, President Bush had cited what are now called the “16 Words” – “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
However, on March 7, 2003, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that the Niger documents were forgeries and could not be used to prove Iraq was a nuclear threat.
The next day, Wilson appeared on CNN click here commenting on Bush’s use of information that the IAEA had refuted.
"Well, this particular case is outrageous,” Wilson said. “We know a lot about the uranium business in Niger, and for something like this to go unchallenged by U.S. – the U.S. government – is just simply stupid.
“It would have taken a couple of phone calls. We have had an embassy there since the early '60s. All this stuff is open. It's a restricted market of buyers and sellers.”
Wilson added: "For this to have gotten to the IAEA is on the face of it dumb, but more to the point, it taints the whole rest of the case that the government is trying to build against Iraq."
What Wilson didn’t disclose at the time was that he had personally traveled to Niger a year earlier on behalf of the CIA – in response to an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney – to investigate whether Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African country. Wilson had reported back to the CIA that the suspicions were almost certainly false.
Wilson’s critical CNN comments apparently caught the attention of the Bush administration. A month-old Chicago Tribune op-ed by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that had promoted the Niger allegations was redistributed by the State Department on March 10, two days after Wilson appeared on CNN.
The column, "Two Potent Iraqi Weapons: Denial and Deception," repeated the suspicion that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger.
On the Attack
The Bush administration also went on the offensive against the IAEA. In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 16, Vice President Cheney rebutted ElBaradei’s debunking of the Niger documents as forgeries.
“I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said. The IAEA “has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past.”
The next day – March 17 – Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, sent a letter click here to President Bush further challenging his use of the Niger suspicions and citing ElBaradei’s findings.
“As subsequent media accounts indicated, the evidence contained ‘crude errors,’ such as a ‘childlike signature’ and the use of stationery from a military government in Niger that has been out of power for over a decade,” Waxman wrote.
Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
First, I can't buy this "Lotus" to Outlook conversion. Hellooee, Lotus is a 30yo program that is, for the most part, obsolete. How can the American public buy into that? Unless you pull the motherboard, how can anything EVER be completely deleted? It all goes on your hard drive. I guess a sledge hammer deletes fairly well.
Speaking of a black hole, somehow my OEN isn't getting through the queue to my inbox and twice this week(today, for one), I didn't get it. I know it isn't OEN's fault. It's AOL, the corporate FILTER that "allows" me to have WHAT they want me to read and discards what they don't like me to read. Just like they blocked my Truthout newsletters (and thousands of others on 9/07). Speaking of TO, that comes to me NOW in one of those AOL envelopes and what's up with their newspaper selection? Ash must be getting rightie on us? Maybe just a slow liberal day, eh?
I once got FDA notices straight from FDA. I Signed up when the dog food was coming up poisoned. Then they suddenly stopped, and then months later, started up again, but they came in one of those AOL envelopes. That to me, is repressing. I feel like they are proof reading my material. Hello, Adolph. Hello fascism.
This lost email excuse is hardly better than "the dog ate my homework" excuse. I certainly hope the IT ppl out there aren't buying this. Lotus, the Whitehouse is on Lotus? Unbelievable!! The money we all send to DC and they are still using Lotus? Oh puleaze. Do they have microwaves? Color TV? How about running water? Do they have running water in the Whitehouse?
OMG. I guess that's why I finally stopped watching MSM except Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. LOL.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 198 comments)
on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 8:19:13 PM
Get another ISP. Check out Olbermann and Abrams sometime. They still must obey their masters when the whip is snapped. But a remarkable amount of good work comes through. And don't forget PBS on Friday evenings. Moyers, NOW and Gwen Ifill continue to keep the journalist faith.
by
Pat Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 81 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 11:03:38 AM
Hey Pat, I can't download another ISP. I'm short on memory. So, until I get a new computer or more memory, I'm stuck for now. I voice in a whine, but I'm patient, it too will pass and I will be changing ISP when the computer is changed. AOL takes a lot of space with their programs and add more all the time. I like the tech support, online chat help. It's the best thing about them. Meanwhile, I put up and I should shut up, but...
I do watch Olbermann sometimes and Abrams(watched him religiously when he was on Court TV back then). However, with all this camp "pain"ing stuff, I just can't stand MSM. I watch Moyers regularly. I'm into CSPAN.
I have several online news sources and I am a peace activist so I get plenty of war news emails.
In regard to this email missing in action crap, we know they are lying, they know they are lying, we know they know that we know they are lying. However, we just sit by and wait for the earth to shake and out comes James Madison and slaps the books at them. LOL! Really, Journalists are coming alive, whistleblowers are meeting together, Attorneys are concentrating pressure on their state Bar Associations, and we, the ppl(some of us) are ready to become the real patriots this country has been starving for.
What's one thing that Bush could do that would simplemindedly wake the sheeple up? (Something that disappoints millions)
I have an idea of what that could be. T'ain't no terrorist attack. Think about it. Almost hate to say it online. I think I will keep it a secret...seems to work for Dick Cheney.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 198 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 8:19:00 PM
