Posted on 07/29/2004 1:33:50 PM PDT by texasranger222
Uh oh what?
Niger Uranium. I find that comment offensive. It reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg.
I think he means he is going bye bye.
Ah! A troll!
Someone notify the proper authorities.
I don't know how to do it.
Lie. The forgeries came much later.
Joseph Cirincione is director for non-proliferation and Alexis Orton is a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both are co-authors with Jessica Mathews and George Perkovich of WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications.
Sounds like an objective source to me ... NOT!
Go eat yellowcake, troll-boy.
Are these people serious? No one in the admin ever claimed that Hussein had a nuclear bomb. But apparently there are of a number of people who think he certainly had plans to make one. Just ask the Israelis who bombed his nuclear facility in 1981. Given enough time Hussein certainly would have restarted his chem and bio weapons programs according to David Kay who dismissed assertions that Hussein had new wmds. How can anyone in their right mind not believe that with his past, Hussein certainly would like to have restarted a nuclear program? I mean why the heck was he trying to get yellowcake out of Africa if not for those reasons?
I question the timing of this article released on Thursday, August 28, 2008 mr. time traveler dude.
Oh by the way, are the Clintons behind bars yet?
Hey--are you Joe Wilson?!! You're the guy who talked to a Niger official who'd been approached by the Iraqis to talk about yellow cake. Then you told the CIA one thing and the opposite in the papers and on TV.
So why did you lie?
Too little, too late. Joe Wilson has been torched as a serial liar.
texasranger222 aka maximumsensibility, mostsensible, et al, zotted.
Jim
Hope it was with yellowcake.
Geez...I get to use my favorite quote again...
"That would be the same IAEA that did such a bang-up job keeping tabs on North Korea's nuclear program for the last ten years, right up until 2002 when Pyongyang announced - "Surprise, we have eight nuclear bombs." - Carl Limbacher - Newsmax
There's a John Carpenter movie in this somewhere.
Quoth Marie Antoinette-Kerry: "Let them eat yellowcake."
Hmm. Is this a typo or a satirical comment on the fact that this stupid issue just will never go away? ;-)
A little common sense shows that a Niger uranium sale-even if attempted-was always highly improbable and was never a serious threat.
Uh, so what?
If this is really going to be the argument I'm afraid the entire article becomes one big straw man.
Bush said Saddam sought uranium from Africa. The fact that the author of this article doesn't consider that a "serious threat" is fascinating, but has nothing to do with the truth/falsehood of the claim. The claim can be true, and unimportant in the opinion of this author, at the same time.
Why are leftists (evidently) so arrogant that they seem to think that if they don't consider the uranium claim a serious threat, this (somehow) makes Bush's statement a lie? To disagree with a leftist is to "lie".
Wilson said that he not only found the allegation "bogus and unrealistic,"
On what basis would Joseph Wilson declare such an allegation to be "bogus and unrealistic". His whole attitude has been idiotic from the beginning.
but [Wilson] said that his conclusions were likely forwarded to the vice president,
This, by the way, was a bona fide lie.
But why did the U.S. administration backtrack on the Niger uranium claim in July 2003 if this was true?
To get it out of the damn headlines. Ever heard of something called "politics"?
It is significant that then-Iraq Survey Group (ISG) chief David Kay did not mention the Niger uranium controversy in his October 2 testimony to the Senate and House Select Intelligence Committees.
Why? The uranium claim was about what Saddam "sought", not possessed. This would automatically place it out of Kay's purview.
We have found one other offer of uranium to them from another African country. Not [Niger].
For the record, of course, Bush never said "Niger", he said "Africa".
the claim appears shaky at best, hardly the stuff that should make up presidential decisions.
Um what? There is absolutely nothing here which counters the claim. And who the heck said it "made up" the presidential decision? It was one line in one speech, which was given AFTER the War Powers vote. The President would have made the exact same decision without it (is there any doubt of that?).
The implication here is that Bush went to war "based on" Saddam seeking uranium from Africa, that this is what "made up" his decision to go to war. This is another straw man.
But could Iraqi interest have been converted into an actual deal?
That doesn't matter, as far as the Claim is concerned. For god's sake will these idiots who keep harping on the Claim actually READ THE DAMN THING for once? He said Saddam "sought uranium" and that's ALL he said. Whether that interest (which the author is here CONCEDING, by the way!) "could have been converted into an actual deal" is IRRELEVANT to whether the Claim was true.
But could Iraqi interest have been converted into an actual deal? Three memos from officials on the ground said no
Of course they did! "We have everything under control, all the regulations are in place, and there is no corruption or leakage whatsoever", said the bureaucrats in charge of such things.
What a surprise!
all concluded a deal was highly unlikely
This is what bothered me about Wilson's initial reports from the get-go. So the hell what if a deal is "highly unlikely", that has NOTHING TO DO with debunking Bush's claim! He said "sought" not "got"!
The numbers tell us that Iraq's alleged interest in Niger uranium - even if true - never represented an immediate or significant threat to the United States.
Another straw man. Who said they did?
Once AGAIN,
1. The author is CONCEDING the ACTUAL claim ("sought"), and then
2. Proceeding to say "but so what, no immediate threat".
How the HELL do you get from there to "Bush Lied"?
Simple math and common sense confirm that the claim should never have appeared in administration statements as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapon program.
This is just nonsense. Bush can say anything he likes as far as I'm concerned, it was HIS speech.
As long as the statements are true. Which this one WAS.
I don't know what kind of "math" the author thinks he has performed which enables him to somehow disallow efforts to procure uranium from being called evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Efforts to procure uranium in this way are ipso facto evidence that Iraq wants to re-start, or advance, a nuclear program.
At this point then it's not clear exactly what the author thinks he has proved but it sure ain't "Bush Lied".
In March 2003, Iraq had an inventory of over 500 tons of natural uranium and almost two tons of low-enriched uranium.
An alleged visit? Elbaradei has acknowledged it, and the Iraqi ambassador Zawahie has acknowledged it, although he does not admit that it had anything to do with uranium. It might have been just a get-aquainted social, he doesn't really say.
And it was Wilson who brought up the "businessman" better known as Baghdad Bob who also tried to set up meetings on, well, who knows.
a 1999 discussion during an international meeting
... in which "commodities" were sought. What does it take to get these guys to admit that "commodities were sought" when they admit it themselves in the body of their own denial?
the intelligence on the uranium claim was "inconclusive."
And what would be "conclusive" when you have meetings attested to by Elbaradei and Wilson, and admitted to by Zahawie, backed up by MI6? Now we get to the heart of it. CIA won't back up the claim because CIA can't back up the claim because CIA wasn't there. They didn't witness it therefore they will not say it did or didn't happen. That is what makes it "inconclusive". For anyone prepared to testify in court, that would be the right answer. For an intelligence agency advising the president, the right answer would be that Iraq has had several meetings with Niger officials about an unknown subject. Since Niger has only one industry of any significance you might surmise that it has something to do with uranium, but we can't swear to it.
Oh, and the French are involved. Its hard to imagine they would countenance illegal sales, but they are Iraq's #2 arms supplier and they did build a nuclear power plant there once before. Oh, and we know some of the stuff is going over the border to Libya, but hey. Don't ask us to swear to it in court.
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