On the face of it, perhaps. But Bush is the President. He has to take final responsibility, doesn't he?All of these questions proceed from an assumption that I am unwilling to make- namely that the statement in the SOTU was significant to anyone. I have seen no evidence of it.If Bush can truly claim to know absolutely nothing, then don't we have a serious problem - wouldn't that imply that Bush is either incompetent or is simply not paying attention?
I saw no one, after the SOTU speech, crooning to the media that "I support going to war with Iraq because they tried to buy uranium from Niger".
Instead, I recall the Congress voting to authorize the use of force, several weeks prior to the SOTU speech.
As you know, I have serious concerns about the state of our intelligence. But taking responsibility for something that was 100% accurate (Britian had said what Bush said they said, and to this day they are standing by what they said- she Straw's comments today --they are on my blog if you missed them), that while accurate may have been somewhat less than compelling if the entire context was known, about a single point in a significantly larger mosaic, seems to be more deserving of a response of "when are you guys going to actually act like you are serious about our country and not just a bunch of partisan hacks?"
If we are to focus on the Niger/uranium thing, though, I am one thousand times more interested in, and concerned by, how it came to be that Wilson, a diplomat, came to be sent to perform an intelligence verification operation, when he had no expertise in uranium, no experience in field operations, and no experience in detection of forged documents. And why this guy, who didn't even see the documents he is claiming to know are false, is being given such credence. And why just about everyone involved in screaming "there is a coverup here", such as Wilson, turn out to be long time Democrat partisans and far-left activists.
You want a scandal and a Watergate? Let's find out who arranged for Wilson to go to Niger.
I am just starting to work my way through this thread; but I was struck from the beginning by the fact that Wilson asked the Government of Niger, who said there was no sale. Then he asked the mining company, who confirmed that there was no sale. Based essentially on their denials, he rejected the CIA claims out of hand. It couldn't have happened, because had they sold yellow-cake to Saddam, they would have told him so.
Does that not strike anyone else as rather naive for a professional diplomat?
And now, based on Wilson's faith in their denials, we are going to impeach a president? I don't think so. If you were Saddam, and you were out to obtain nuclear materials, you would look to corrupt non-governments, you would look to the Russian mafia, and you would look to your allies. The evidence is that all of these were happening.
There have been a number of high-profile seizures of nuclear materials coming out of the ex-Soviet countries, there have been arrests of uranium smugglers carrying small amounts of uranium with an apparent German source. German nuclear scientists have been convicted of working for Saddam.