WTF Is It Now?!?

Phony Niger Uranium Claim May Be Tip Of Iceberg
Friday 11th July, 2003 (links here and here):

The administration of pResident George W Bush is finding itself increasingly beleaguered, by growing charges by retired intelligence and foreign service officers, that administration hawks exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in order to press Washington into war.

The White House was forced to admit earlier this week, that Bush's assertion during his State of the Union address in late January, regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged attempts to buy uranium in Africa for a supposed nuclear arms program, was based on flawed intelligence and should have been omitted from the speech.

But a growing number of lawmakers and independent analysts are suggesting that the uranium report - which was actually based on crudely forged documents, supposedly provided by an Italian intelligence agency - may be just the tip of the iceberg, of an effort by neo-conservative and right-wing hawks centered primarily in the Pentagon, and around Vice President Dick Cheney, to skew the intelligence to make their case for war.

"The Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture of the military threat with respect to Iraq," according to Gregory Thielmann, who served as the director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), until last September.

.....and.....

Digging for Dirt
From the Asia Times Online, July 11, 2003:

"If the American people conclude that American soldiers have died because the administration has lied, it will be extremely serious," according to Joseph Cirincione, an arms control specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "American public opinion is clearly shifting on this issue."

He said that he didn't see how the Republicans and the administration could avert a major investigation.… Gregory Thielmann was particularly dismissive of some Republican attempts to defend the administration. The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, told reporters on Tuesday in response to the White House admission that the uranium story was false that it was "very easy to pick one little flaw here and one little flaw there".

"A little flaw here, a little flaw there," said Thielmann, "and pretty soon you've fostered a fundamentally flawed view of reality."