BBC--"Bush knew months before"

[whirlygigspin]

Bush 'warned over uranium claim months before'

The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.

Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, the CIA has told the BBC.

On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January.

But the CIA has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.


Both President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the claim, based on British intelligence, that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger as part of its attempt to build a nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Blair is under fire from British MPs about the credibility of a dossier of evidence, which set out his case for war.

And in the US, increasing doubts are being raised about the American use of intelligence.

In his keynote speech to Congress in January, the President said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

But the documents alleging a transaction were found to have been forged.

White House spokesman Ari Feischer said on Tuesday: "The president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake from Niger".

"So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the president's broader statement."


But a former diplomat, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, went on the record at the weekend to say that he had travelled to Africa to investigate the uranium claims and found no evidence to support them.

Now the CIA has told the BBC that Mr Wilson's findings had been passed onto the White House as early as March 2002.

That means that the administration would have known before the State of the Union address that the information was likely false - not just subsequently.




http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Link, please

[Liberal_Andy]

4. some related links;

Inspectors contradict Blair on evidence of uranium purchase

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,972660,00.html

Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=419982

Cheney and The CIA: Not Business As Usual

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0627-03.htm

[Newsjock]

2. And edit, please

... for copyright, before one of our helpful-yet-firm moderators takes you out to the woodshed. ;)

[whirlygigspin]

3. thanks for pointing that out!

done!

[quilp]

5. Does our "media" understand what a national disgrace it is

that we have to go to the BBC to get information about what our own government is doing?

[DrBB]

6. Well, since Wilson "came out" in the Brit press a week

...or was it two weeks, before the NYTimes thing, maybe we should get ready to see this CIA leak come out here in another week or so. Then it will be "real."