how much this topic has been hashed about.
Here are some democracy now segments on the topic.. the first includes an interview with Australian intelligence agents on the beat:
NAME OF SEGMENT IS: Intelligence Agents from the U.S. and Australia & a Top UK Researcher Condemn Gov't Falsehoods that Led to Iraq War. JULY 15, 2003
SNIP FROM SYNAPOSIS:
Bush's position is at odds with those of his own aides, who acknowledged over the weekend that the CIA raised doubts about the claim more than four months before the speech.
Meanwhile the White House had been blaming the CIA for failing to remove the statement from drafts of the speech. On Friday CIA Director George Tenet took blame for the statement in an unusual public apology.
Yet according to the Washington Post, Tenet had personally argued the language not be included in Bush?s October address in Cincinnati.
Defending the broader decision to go to war yesterday, Bush said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
This contradicts the events leading up to war when Saddam Hussein admitted the inspectors into Iraq and Bush subsequently opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the U.S. had no new evidence that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction prior to the attack in March. He insisted the invasion was still justified.
Departing press secretary, Ari Fleischer, used a briefing yesterday to castigate the press for a "media feeding frenzy that misinterprets why America went to war."
Meanwhile in Britain, responding to the controversy over the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw cited evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear bomb. He failed to mention the evidence was 12 years old.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today program, Straw referred to Mahdi Obeidi, an Iraqi scientist, who has handed parts and documents needed to build a gas centrifuge system that enriches uranium to American officials. What Straw did not say was that Obeidi had buried the evidence in his garden as long ago as 1991.
end snip
The synaposis does not do the audio or video segment justice. For those interested it is worth listening or watching the segment itself. It is more indepth than the synapsis.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/15/1423259BELOW IS THE LAST FROM DEMOCRACY NOW ON THE SAME SUBJECT:
Friday, July 18th, 2003
Intelligence Scandal Escalates As Top Bush Aide Blamed For Forcing False Iraq Nuke Claim Into Bush's State of the Union
"Senior intelligence officials say it was a top aide of President Bush's who urged the inclusion of a false line in his State of the Union address that alleged that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Africa.
The man Robert Joseph serves as the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council. He had previously served in the Bush and Reagan White Houses and has been identified as a close ally to neoconservative hawks including Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams
CIA expert Alan Foley says he had warned Joseph and the White House before the State of the Union that the CIA was not certain about the credibility of the evidence connecting Iraq to Niger and recommended that it be removed from the speech.The White House has attempted to place the blame for the misuse of the Iraq intelligence on the CIA. Last week CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for the inclusion of the uranium deal in the State of the Union address. This despite the fact that three months earlier Tenet personally called on the President to remove any references to the uranium transaction from another speech."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/18/1451225
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