Wowie Zahawie Sorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.

Slate ^ | April 10, 2006 | Christopher Hitchens

[VeniVidiVici]

So this proves that Wilson is either a liar or a traitor. Though I guess he could be both.

[driftless]

"swallow this one whole"

Concerning our "beloved "impartial" media, they'll believe any lie foisted on the Bush admin. I'm sure there are many of them that really want to believe Bush either planned or knew about 9/11. In their hearts, if they're honest, I'll bet most of them are rooting for a disaster in Iraq.

Where are the stories about Hussein's docs? Abu Ghraib was shoved down our throats for months, but I haven't seen or read anything about these explosive revelations proving once and for all Bush's case for removing Hussein. Big Media is as much an enemy to us as Al-Qaeda. I wouldn't have said that thirty years ago, but I'm saying it now.

[ravingnutter]

From my files:

Two other names just crept into this...Niger Ambassador Adamou Chekou, who was in charge at the Embassy when the break-in and forgeries occurred and Wissam al-Zahawiah, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See. Seems Italian Intelligence was eavesdropping on these two and discovered their "hotline".

Did you read that carefully. Holy See? As in Vatican? Where Vincent Cannistraro is the security advisor?

And speaking of al Zahawie, he was also apparently clairvoyant:

JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.

"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it." That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play. Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]

I am willing to bet that Vince Cannistraro is up to his neck in this, as is Wilson, as Cannistraro also had a "clairvoyant moment". From my files:

Equally suspicious is the Hersch article, where Cannistraro and another unnamed agent state the exact route the documents took and Cannistraro actually admits that he called the CIA about the documents before they were proven to be false. This begs the question...just how did Cannistraro know about the documents before they were vetted? Sounds a whole lot like Wilson's slip-up about seeing the documents.