Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake

I know, and not to second guess you too badly, but I would have edited, cut and past the article more or less as follows:

A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

A spokesman for the IAEA said the agency did not blame either Britain or the United States for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good faith," he said.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein pursued an ambitious nuclear agenda throughout the 1970s and 1980s and launched a crash program to build a bomb in 1990 following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. ...Iraq never surrendered the blueprints for nuclear weapons, and kept key teams of nuclear scientists intact after U.N. inspectors were forced to leave in 1998. Despite international sanctions intended to block Iraq from obtaining weapons components, Western intelligence agencies and former weapons inspectors were convinced the Iraqi president had resumed his quest for the bomb in the late 1990s, citing defectors' stories and satellite images that showed new construction at facilities that were once part of Iraq's nuclear machinery.

Right now, I think I'll believe Powell over an unnamed U.S. source that claims we fell for it.

Perhaps that is the same person who failed to provide 173 pages of documentation that Iraq is, in fact, STILL in material breach.

You have to ask yourself WHY somebody would withhold THAT information, yet "leak" this.

I'm with you; I'll stick with Powell and Bush and Jack Straw.

FYI:

A spokesman for the IAEA said the agency did not blame either Britain or the United States for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good faith," he said.

What cannot be denied is that Saddam wants nukes. Recall before the last Gulf War when he held a press conference and held up a trigger for such a bomb.

At worst, this is merely one small portion of the case against Saddam. You will have to do better than try to criticise America and Britain over this.

Ivan

. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said.

Sorry, but I'm not buying this. The forgers made crude errors that even the UN weenies could find but American and British intelligence both missed it? Now...when the stakes are so high??

I know the CIA ain't all it's been cracked up to be, but Inspector Clouseau worked for the frogs, not us. I don't believe this for a second.

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