President Bush doesn't disagree though. That is why he retracted his statement and admitted it should not have been in the State of the Union speech.
The IAEA also concurs that the documetns were forged.
The Butler Review, which is what I assume you speak of, concluded that Iraq must have sought uranium from Nigeria because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999. Their conclusion was based on the fact that 3/4ths of Niger's exports is (was) uranium. The Butler Review admits that the documents were forged, though, instead basing its conclusion on the diplomatic mission alone.
To quote the report directly, "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."
Here is a copy of it for your own reading:
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Butler%20Report.pdf
As for my "asine" defense of Reuters, I stand by it. No one, not a single person, has discredited a word I have said (and have only resorted to ad hominen attacks such as yours). The simple fact of the matter is that once it was discovered that these photographs were doctored, Reuters removed them from their website, issued a retraction, severed all contacts with the free-lance photographer, and deleted all of his photographs from their database.
Had Reuters not done this, most FR would be calling for this very action. But that is excatly what Reuters did. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
No one argues that the docs are forged. We're pointing out that they are irrelevent to the US case that Iraq was making an effort to find uranium suppliers in Africa. Your own post undermines your point:
To quote the report directly, "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."
You can conclude from the above statement in the Butler report that the UK had more than one intelligence source on the Iraqi delegation's visit to Niger. You cannot conclude that any of these sources were the forged Burba docs or that those docs had anything to do with these sources. You can conclude that the intel from the various sources was supported by the fact that the bulk of Niger's exports consist of uranium, in other words, there aren't too many plausible explanations for the Iraq delegation, led by an Iraqi diplomat famous for his very vocal and prolific justifications of an Iraqi right to a nuclear weapons program, to visit Niger to inquire bout trade in anything else Niger might export.
In addition:
A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke. ------ "Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying," http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html
Which also disproves the ludicrous allegation that the forged Burba docs were the selling point on the Iraq invasion, or were part of the intel in the SOTU speech as so many have falsely claimed.
Had Reuters not done this, most FR would be calling for this very action.
I don't think people would demand that Reuters delete its database, In fact, if you had been paying attention to this case on FR, you would know that's not true - people on FR were interested in going through all of this photographer's work to see just how far his "artistic license" had gone. It is not as if we haven't encountered the deleted database thing before. Two occasions come to mind- one, in the case of Capitol Hill Blue's claims they had a CIA source who was in on White House meetings at the highest level. When it was revealed that the source was a fraud the site owner deleted his articles that were "sourced" to the guy, thus limiting scrutiny of the fraud. The other occasion was the hasty deletion of references to Joe Wilson on John Kerry's website when the man was caught lying in front of a Congressional committee. I seem to recall that Kerry's webmaster had done other deletions when certain items were called to question - Sandy Berger and his military records-but I have to defer to others with a better memory than mine.
But that is excatly what Reuters did. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Reuters wouldn't be damned so much if they could simply bring themselves to label a terrorist a terrorist. They brought it on themselves.