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Do us a favor and please source your news clips by title/author or link. In this case, too much of what passes as news is based almost entirely on "anonymous" officials and as it happens, political sources, and way too much disinfo has already come from the same sources over and over, some of them regurgitating info which originally came from other news citing the fraudulent "CIA" source known as "T J Wilkinson," and most citing "anonymous" individuals who, judging by the cited language and word choice, are apparently just coming from Wilson or from his associate, Ray McGovern.

It helps to know in this case which reporter wrote what, because in this case, at least one of the journalists deeply involved int he story has a wife involved in the intelligence biz, as well as a very tight relationship with Wilson, and thus there are some severe conflicts of interest in the matter. Because of the political nature of the case, a number of reporters have been pursuing their own agendas and we need to keep track not just of data, but from who the data emerged.

I don't really understand the concern about source. Anyone can do what I do and spend a couple of minutes on the internet. I'm sure reporter's have different motivation's but there are facts about the Niger yellowcake documents which are not in dispute.

Everyone agrees the "Niger" documents originated in Italy. As far as I know, Italian intelligence has not denied this.

Everyone agrees they were very poor forgeries. The IAEA realized they were false almost from the moment they saw them.

Everyone agrees that the signature on one of the documents purported to be that of a person who had not occupied the specific post for ten years.

Everyone agrees the contents of the documents were used by the US to bolster it's case that Iraq intended to build an atomic bomb.

Is there not broad agreement on these points?

What Joe Wilson did or didn't say or do is irrelevant. If he had come home for Niger and said the documents were printed on green cheese it wouldn't have made an iota's worth of difference to their provenance.

I really don't see what all the fuss is about. People seem to want to see a deep dark conspiracy where there isn't one.

The only story not yet told is who forged the documents?

We'll probably never know who that someone was, but we can make an educated guess.

We already have Ahmed Chalabi admitting to manufacturing evidence. Evidence of the mobile weapons labs was presented by an Iraqi intelligence service major made available by the Iraqi National Congress. He was "coached" by the INC, and later failed a polygraph test.

When asked about deliberately misleading US intelligence he shrugged it off saying, "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What we said before is not important."

(You want references for that last bit, here it is - Jack Fairweather in Baghdad, Anton La Guardia in London - published in The Daily Telegraph - reprinted in the National Post February 19, 2004. Just in case you're interested in their provenance, the Daily Telegraph is Conrad Black's flagship newspaper. Black is the guy who employs Richard Perle and David Frum, former speech writer for George Bush.)

There is no conspiracy here. All we have is phony evidence that everyone agrees was phony.

If US intelligence chose to use evidence that was obviously phony that's their problem. If President Bush chose to use the same phony evidence that's his problem.

If they had just ignored the phony evidence and concentrated on the real evidence there would be not story.

Maybe next time they'll be more careful.