What truth could there be here? Is anyone alleging that some CIA guy in the field made this up out of whole cloth? I don't hear that. Is anyone alleging that somebody in the White House made it up? I don't hear anyone claiming that either.
All I hear is that some guy in the CIA heard that Saddam might be acquiring nuclear material in Africa. This got put in some memo, which flew around for awhile, and some speechwriter got his hands on it and thought it would make a good line in a speech.
OK, who here has never received a memo with something in it that turned out not to be so? Stuff like this happens every day, all over the world, in any place with more than 20 people in it.
We send these guys out to places like Africa to go spy on people and see what they can find out. What do we think, that they were invited to attend the meeting where this deal was arranged (or not arranged)? They find out what they can. They report what they hear. Who knows how much of it is true? They don't know themselves. All they know is that if it is true, somebody in Washington would rather know about it than not.
People act like, "Aha! They lied!" Oh, spare me. Trying to find out what a frigging dictator might be doing in one of his most top secret weapons programs is not an exact science. Let's not pretend it should have been, because it can't be and it never will be.
Only the New York Times, recent employer of Jayson Blair, would have nerve to call somebody else a liar for repeating something they were told by a presumably reputable employee. This story sucks.