NIGERGATE: BUSH TOLD THE TRUTH ……. BUT DID THE LIBERAL MSM ?

Il Foglio ^ | 04/21/2006 | Christian Rocca

[parnasokan]

NIGERGATE: BUSH TOLD THE TRUTH ……. BUT DID THE LIBERAL MSM ?

Another interesting piece today from the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. Following-up on yesterday’s excellent article Il Foglio takes another look at how lies were, and still are, propagated through the anti-3B liberal media. President George W. Bush was correct in stating during his State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” The statement was true, indeed to quote the British Government’s Butler Report “It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.” The key element here is the phrase “It is accepted by all parties ..”, what this means is that not only the British but others, including the French Intelligence service (Dgse) and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (Iaea), accepted the information as factual.

So where’s the problem? The problem lies with the refusal of a certain portion of the international media to admit the truth, the Butler Report affirmed what the British Government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what President Bush said as well. There is no longer any reason to discuss the source of the false Niger documents, as we now know they were fabricated by a Nigerien diplomat and an Italian employee of the Niger embassy in Rome. Why they did it is another issue altogether, it might be that they simply did it in order to make a quick buck. There is, however, another far more sinister explanation: the two forgers may very well have confectioned the false dossier in accordance to precise instructions. The instructions could very well have come from an intelligence service anxious to kick-start a disinformation campaign into motion, for example the intelligence service of a government opposed to the invasion of Iraq, one that knew the truth about Saddam’s attempts to procure uranium in Niger and thus wanted to discredit the facts. So the question is: who at the time was vehemently opposed to the invasion of Iraq, not only opposed to the invasion but perfectly aware of what was happening in Niger and, last but not least, stood to loose, economically for example, to any changes in the Iraqi status-quo. There aren’t many candidates, not many at all. Let’s put all of this into perfectly clear language: the forgeries were necessary in order to ‘cover’ the fact that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium as late as the year 2000. To put it even more precisely the false dossier served the purpose of ‘covering’ the real documents which were the evidence of Iraq’s intentions to acquire uranium. The strategy was to discredit the factual documents via the circulation of forgeries, documents whose false nature would be uncovered and would thus shed doubt and suspicion on the real ones. The false documents had to be blatant forgeries, all of the mistakes in them were made deliberately, the objective was to circulate them and allow the plan to run its course. This, however incredible it may seem, is the truth. The forgeries were no more than a well planned strategy to discredit the truth through lies. In any case the false documents had nothing to do with the famous ’16 words’, the President addressed the American public basing his statements on facts, not false documents but facts. This is important to understand, very important. The basis of a great part of the anti-Bush media campaign has been woven around the hypothesis that the President had led America into a war through lies. Nobody fabricated any ‘false’ evidence in order to favour the White House, no Americans, no foreigners and no Martians. There simply was no need to, the real evidence was there: Saddam had attempted to procure uranium in Niger. Why? The answer is simple, the uranium that he had stockpiled in Iraq was under surveillance by the Iaea. He could not have used it in any form of nuclear program otherwise the United Nations would have caught him within no time whatsoever. Just how far he got is not the issue, the issue is that the desire was there and he was working on it. Period.

Today’s article from Il Foglio can be accessed at the following URL: http://www.ilfoglio.it/uploads/camillo/timesrep.html

IL FOGLIO -- 21/04/2006

The follow-up to the Time’s scoop summarises (and blocks) La Repubblica’s version of Nigergate

Milan. The joke called Nigergate, buried at long last by the precise analysis of a journalist at the Sunday Times of London, is examined in depth in Michael Smith’s blog. We now know that the author of the scoop commented on by Il Foglio yesterday discovered that Bush didn’t lie in his 2003 State of the Union address, Saddam wanted to acquire uranium from Niger and of this there is proof. The French secret services uncovered evidence that was confirmed as factual by the United Nation’s Atomic Energy Agency. The proof is a letter from 2000 a copy of which was given to the British secret services by the French in 2002, the British informed the US and thus the inclusion in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. In addition to this Smith revealed the missing details regarding the false dossier put together in Italy by a Nigerien diplomat and an Italian employee of the Niger embassy, a dossier that was later circulated by an agent working for the French secret services (the dossier is the by now famous collection of forgeries which according to La Repubblica “the Italian Intelligence service Sismi passed to the hawks in Washington in order to justify an unjust and illegal war”).

On Smith’s blog, hosted by the Times, a number of severe judgements are laid down on Italian newspapers and in particular in regards to the investigation carried out by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D’Avanzo of La Repubblica. It’s worth pointing out that Smith is no spin merchant for Bush or Blair, on the contrary he’s firmly against the foreign and domestic policies of the White House. Smith is the journalist who published the Downing Street Memos, a scoop that gave both Bush and Blair a particularly hard time. Returning to the investigation carried out by the two journalists from the Repubblica, Smith writes that “A lot of the information in the articles does not match the evidence I have obtained from very reliable sources, “ adding that “some of whom have a track record of persistently contradicting the pre-war intelligence long before it was discredited”. The Sunday Times journalist declares himself to be certain that Bonini and D’Avanzo acted in good faith, that they faithfully reported information obtained from their sources but, as Smith points out, “all sources have motives and not all of them are well-intentioned”.

On his blog Smith has put together the genesis of the Repubblica’s scoop. In the summer of 2003 the story of the false dossier had been offered to Dina Nascetti, a journalist from L’Espresso, by people who she described to both the Times and Il Foglio as “non-Italian diplomatic sources”. Nascetti went to her editors to ask for the green light to publish the world scoop pointing out that, however, the source wanted ten thousand dollars. The issue is discussed and pondered upon for some time, some inside L’Espresso don’t trust the source, some don’t trust Nascetti. At this point Nascetti, who today no longer works for the weekly magazine and is involved in a legal battle with her ex-employers, passes her “non Italian” source to the two journalists from La Repubblica who at the end of July 2003 publish their first investigation into Nigergate.

Smith puts two and two together and interprets Nascetti’s words as follows: her source couldn’t have been anything other than a member of the French secret services. Speaking to Il Foglio Nascetti denies that the source was Palestinian or Somalian as some have suspected but confirms that they definitely were not Italian. In reply to a precise question regarding the “French interpretation” proposed by the journalist from The Sunday Times Nascetti maintains that she replied “take a look at London”. Smith insists however, and goes as far as to put forward the hypothesis that the French could have orchestrated a disinformation campaign based on the false documents put together in Italy, the objective being to distract attention from the truth: that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Niger.

Smith goes on to explain how the investigations conducted by Bonini and D’Avanzo became the nucleus of their book “Il Mercato della Paura” (The Market in Fear), published by Einaudi without any great fanfares or displays of interest and, to judge from the official sales charts published by Arianna, without ever entering the sales charts at all (thus at best only around one thousand copies can have been sold). Smith also explains how, the Corriere della Sera apart, the Italian press is in no way comparable to the English press, this is due to the fact that “most either write complete rubbish to justify attacks on the intelligence services, or slavishly put in anything their secret service contacts tell them without checking.” Il Foglio doesn’t belong to any of these two categories. Others, who knows.

[jonno]

Bump - for another read...