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Posted on 07/10/2004 1:49:22 AM PDT by thoughtomator
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
-------- snip! ----------
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ooops in my #180: "That done did..." should be "That none did..."
It was well known in Washington circles that Richardson hungered for the VP slot on the Kerry ticket. But he took himself out of the running late in the process, just as multiple investigations into the oil-for-food scam really began to bubble. Hmmmmm...
This makes me wonder if the Wilson group at the CIA were deliberately putting forth forged documents to see if the administration would bite at false evidence and use it to justify the war.
Don't hold your breath. Tomorrow's shows will yammer on about Kerry-Edwards, as well as the senate report released yesterday. All but Fox will virtually slobber all over Edwards (Uooooo, isn't he just so cute, sexy, young, vibrant, adorable, yada, yada, yada). They also will spin the senate report in the worst possible way against GWB.
Re your #164, outstanding reasoning! Only one other possibility exists: that he began claiming they were forged only after that information became public. I wonder when he first made this assertion, and how it compares with the earliest public report of the forged documents.
"But he took himself out of the running late in the process, just as multiple investigations into the oil-for-food scam really began to bubble. Hmmmmm..."
Yes, Hmmmmmm... Until then, he seemed to be enjoying the speculation about his possible selection and his stock reply was that he intended to complete his term as governor.
Does anyone ever HAVE to mislead the Washington Post?
Game, Set, Match. Wilson defeated in straight sets.
Actually Wilson never ever mentioned forged documents until after the fact, in an effort like other dems were doing, to use them in retrospect and deceptively insinuate they related to his trip and "findings", not in advance.
BTW, I believe it was very early March 2003--just on the eve of war, that the IAEA announced they had discovered the documents were forged. (They did not appear on the scene at all until showing up in Italy in October 2002, but still weren't in U.S. hands at that time, contrary to the implication of the article. Wilson went to Niger in February 2002). See the Tenet statement at #129 where he states Wilson never mentioned documents.
Freeper marron posted an intriguing theory on why the forged documents were created (marron, I remembered your post and just hunted it up):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1167230/posts?page=28#28
***"I have always heard this, and this is certainly a common practice. But Niger is apparently wide open for uranium smuggling, with mines supposedly abandoned by the official mining company being operated by ostensibly private actors for sale on the black market (that doesn't sound like anything Wilson told us, does it...).
"Contraband uranium could be simply trucked over the frontier into Libya, or it could be shipped out through the same port with the legal stuff... if it had papers. Those papers would by definition be bogus. My understanding is that the papers in question were dismissed as forged because information that should have been typed was handwritten, and a national seal was hand drawn. That doesn't sound like a proper forgery, that sounds like someone making up some paperwork he considers good enough.
"That kind of bogus paperwork would itself be evidence of precisely the kind of smuggling we're talking about. If it was an intel agency's handiwork, it would be right, and it would even have the right signatures.
"At least theoretically. I just think we've been too quick to dismiss this paperwork just because its bogus. Of course its bogus, they're smugglers."
~snip~
End of marron's theory
Governments require money. Services, courts, policing are not free.
No market is ever really "free". Between markets laws must be compatible, for anything resembling the ideals of free trade to occur. Standards of ownership, of quality and measure in one must be respected and understood -- capable of being judged and enforced -- in the other.
We can't have free trade with a nation of theifs and pirates -- our first War as a nation under law was to settle that: the Barbary War, the Barbary Wars.
And in addition we can't long survive trade with a slaver nation or nations. Or STATES. Another war -- our fiercest and bloodiest -- the US Civil War -- settled that.
The reasons are also obivous. Slaver labor costs undercut that of freemen every time. If the North hadn't have bested the Slaver South, the perils of slavery would have eventually spread into the North as well.
And so it is with China. Not only are their laws incompatible with our own, but they are slavers. If we continue with this ridiculous "free trade" with them two results are possible -- both may be had. War and the creation of an enslaved class in the US. Won't be called "slavery" of course -- but will be in all other regards.
Or he was playing a stall, obstruction play. One play in a whole game of plays. Who's the coach?
The October 2002 date was indeed the US getting them--at the embassy in Italy. I do see this article cites late 2001 which would indeed predate the Wilson trip, as the first time the documents surfaced:
FBI looking into forged Iraq-Niger documents
July 16, 2003
excerpt:
The documents, according to officials, were first provided to Italian intelligence in late 2001. The United States did not gain possession of them until nearly a year later, in October 2002, when a journalist turned them over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, U.S. officials said.
Sources told CNN the embassy passed them on to the CIA station chief in Rome and to officials at the State Department. A senior State Department official and another senior administration official told CNN the department did its own reporting on the documents and offered the documents to all the relevant agencies.
Government officials say CIA headquarters received the documents in February 2003, which was after the January State of the Union address in which President Bush claimed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from Africa.
~snip~
I will again place into consideration that the Wilsons were involved in the forgeries for a nefarious purpose.
Thanks for the valuable info, Cyncooper. Everything about the Plame-Wilson saga stinks to high heaven. I hope the grand jury is looking into more than just the narrow question of who may have leaked her name to Novak (if it was, indeed, a bona fide leak as opposed to an innocent mention in passing without thinking of the implications).
JULY 16, 2003 : ("FORGED" LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR SENT TO WASHINGTON TIMES FROM PERSON CLAIMING TO BE US SENIOR DIPLOMAT MINKES)
Isn't this the sort of thing that Valerie Plame was in charge of?
Please explain who "they" are?
I would think so!
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