Timeline of Bushco's Nuclear Lies (long)

[NicoleM]

I put this together for the benefit of some wingnuts on my local BB. Feel free to send it on, add, subtract, correct, whatever.

Joseph Wilson's service record:
For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.
source

End of 2001-Early 2002
The reports first surfaced around the end of 2001, when the British and Italian governments told the United States they had intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

The Washington Post, quoting unidentified U.S. officials, reported Thursday that the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White or other government agencies.

The U.S. intelligence official, however, said the CIA's doubts were made known to other federal agencies through various internal communications, starting more than a year before the war began.

A former intelligence official at the State Department, Greg Thielmann, said the Niger uranium claim was long regarded with skepticism. Thielmann retired in September 2002.

The CIA distributed the Europeans' information to the rest of the government in early 2002 and noted that the allegations lacked ``specifics and details and we're unable to corroborate them,'' the senior intelligence official said.
source

February 2002, Joseph Wilson
I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

March 2002, Joseph Wilson
I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.

September 2002, Joseph Wilson
Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
source

Late 2002
The British included their information in a public statement on Sept. 24, 2002, citing intelligence sources, that said Iraq ``sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'' That same day, a U.S. intelligence official expressed doubts to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a closed session about the truth of the uranium reports.

However, the uranium report was published in a State Department fact sheet that was put out Dec. 19 to poke holes in Iraq's declaration to the United Nations that it had no prohibited weapons. The CIA tried unsuccessfully to have it edited out of the fact sheet before it was published, the official said.

It was omitted from future statements by State Department officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5 address to the United Nations.
source


January 24, 2003
When President Bush traveled to the United Nations in September to make his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what he called Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."

Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim, with Rice describing the tubes as "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

After weeks of investigation, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium, according to officials familiar with the inspection process. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.-chartered nuclear watchdog, reported in a Jan. 8 preliminary assessment that the tubes were "not directly suitable" for uranium enrichment but were "consistent" with making ordinary artillery rockets -- a finding that meshed with Iraq's official explanation for the tubes. New evidence supporting that conclusion has been gathered in recent weeks and will be presented to the U.N. Security Council in a report due to be released on Monday, the officials said.

Moreover, there were clues from the beginning that should have raised doubts about claims that the tubes were part of a secret Iraqi nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and international experts on uranium enrichment. The quantity and specifications of the tubes -- narrow, silver cylinders measuring 81 millimeters in diameter and about a meter in length -- made them ill-suited to enrich uranium without extensive modification, the experts said.

But they are a perfect fit for a well-documented 81mm conventional rocket program in place for two decades. Iraq imported the same aluminum tubes for rockets in the 1980s.

The Bush administration, while acknowledging the IAEA's findings on the aluminum tubes, has not retreated from its earlier statements. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer reacted to the IAEA's initial report on Jan. 8 by asserting that the case was still open.
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January 28 2003, State of the Union address
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
source

March 19, 2003
First day of war.

March 22, 2003
CIA officials now say they communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence backing up charges that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons, charges that found their way into President Bush's State of the Union address, a State Department "fact sheet" and public remarks by numerous senior officials.

Asked how the administration came to back up one of its principal allegations against Iraq with information its own intelligence service considered faulty, officials said all such assertions were carefully tailored to stay within the bounds of certainty. As for the State of the Union address, a White House spokesman said, "all presidential speeches are fully vetted by the White House staff and relevant U.S. government agencies for factual correctness."

British officials said they "stand behind" the original allegation. They note they never mentioned "Niger," the subject of the forged documents, and imply, but do not say, that there was other information, about another African country. But an informed U.N. official said the United States and Britain were repeatedly asked for all information they had to support the charge. Neither government, the official said, "ever indicated that they had any information on any other country."
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June 8, Colin Powell on Fox News Sunday re: his UN speech
"We spent four days and nights out at the CIA, making sure that whatever I said was supported by our intelligence holdings."
source

July 9, 2003
Q: Mr. Secretary, getting back to the question of uranium, Ari Fleischer today said that that information should not have gotten, should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech.
Rumsfeld: I'm sure he's right.
Q: Hindsight is 20/20. So you agree with him?
Rumsfeld: Sure.
source

[tom_paine]

1. I'll give a KICK fror the ffort in putting this lovely piece together

:kick:

[PurityOfEssence]

2. Splendid! When did Terrence Wilkinson hear Junior demand proof

That's the smoking gun. It shows that Junior knew the information wasn't reliable, and that he raged demanding that someone come forward to lie for his plausible deniability.

[julka]

3. still nothing on google re: wilkinson

not one word on cable today about his story

been to capitol hill blue today?

time to see what they're saying about it, I guess

[NicoleM]

4. who needs a smoking gun?

It's all laid out above. One of three things has happened:
1. The damn "librul media" is just making all this stuff up. It never happened. Shrub never said nothing 'bout no nukular weapons.
2. The CIA is lying to bring * down. They're saying that they told him well before the SoU speech, but it's not true. I find this exceptionally unlikely.
3. *, Cheney, Condi and/or Tenet knew before the SoU. They let it go in the speech anyway. One or all of them needs to lose their job.

At an absolute minimum the CIA director and the NSA need to go. They were there on 9/11, and if we pretend for a moment that * didn't know before the SoU, they let him put bad intel out. Really, really bad intel. If I were *, I'd be looking for a fall guy, and either or both of them would do. Unless, of course, they had something on me.