Posted on 07/18/2003 8:58:57 AM PDT by Pubbie
One of the mysteries of the recent yellowcake uranium flap is why the White House has been so defensive about an intelligence judgment that we don't yet know is false, and that the British still insist is true. Our puzzlement is even greater now that we've learned what last October's national intelligence estimate really said.
We're reliably told that that now famous NIE, which is meant to be the best summary judgment of the intelligence community, isn't nearly as full of doubt about that yellowcake story as the critics assert or as even CIA director George Tenet has suggested. The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."
Regarding the supposedly discredited Niger story, the NIE says that "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement."
That foreign government service is of course the British, who still stand by their intelligence. In the next paragraph, the NIE goes on to say that "Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." It then adds that "We cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."
This information, by the way, does not come from the White House, which to our mind has handled this story in ham-handed fashion. But we are told that language identical to what was in the NIE is what the CIA presented to the White House last January 24 in preparation for President Bush's State of the Union address.
As we interpret that NIE language, the President was entirely accurate in what he said in that speech about Saddam pursuing uranium in Africa. Mr. Tenet's carefully calibrated statement and disclosure last Friday accepting responsibility for this "mistake" was more tortured than warranted by the assertions in the NIE.
Keep in mind that NIEs are consensus documents. They aren't the view of some Lone Ranger analyst or a policy cabal. Our late great friend, strategist Albert Wohlstetter, disliked NIEs because he felt they often quashed alternative ways of looking at evidence. But faced with an intelligence community judgment like the one last October, what is an American President to do? Is he supposed to wait until we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that some Iraqi agent has actually purchased the stuff?
The larger truth is that it was a deeply held consensus of the U.S. intelligence community that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons program. Multiple U.N. resolutions asserted the same thing. We had proof that Saddam had used chemical weapons in the past. The decision to disarm the Iraqi dictator wasn't based on a single intelligence report but on a mountain of evidence compiled over a dozen years...
In our view, the Committee could do a public service by releasing the entire NIE section on Iraq's uranium hunt, and for that matter on its WMD program, consistent with not compromising sources and methods. Americans could then make their own judgments about whether Mr. Bush was properly looking out for their security.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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