Bush* Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation

[kskiska]

Officials Made Uranium Assertions Before and After President's Speech

By Walter Pincus

Since last month, presidential aides have said a questionable allegation, that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium for nuclear weapons, made it into President Bush's State of the Union address because of miscommunication between the CIA and Bush's staff.

But by the time the president gave the speech, on Jan. 28, that same allegation was already part of a public administration campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. In January alone, it was included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by the president's four most senior national security officials.

The White House has acknowledged that it was a mistake to have included the uranium allegation in the State of the Union address. But an examination of how it originated, how it was repeated in January and by whom suggests that the administration was determined to keep the idea before the public as it built its case for war, even though the claim had been excised from a presidential speech the previous October through the direct intervention of CIA Director George J. Tenet.

Dan Bartlett, White House director of communications, said yesterday that the inclusion of the allegation in the president's State of the Union address "made people below feel comfortable using it as well." He said that there was "strategic coordination" and that "we talk broadly about what points to make," but added: "I don't know of any specific talking points to say that this is supposed to be used."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31496-2003Aug7.html

[whathappened]

1. these suckers are

like a well oiled side walk , they just slide right on by the issues and get a free pass on anything they want to fudge up , yes i'm pissed and i won't get over it

[KoKo]

2. The way I read the article it doesn't seem Pincus is giving free pass.....

he lays out all the different versions of the Niger Yellow Cake story and shows how this information was used after some in the Administration have said it shouldn't have been in the SOU speech and that Congress was given this information after they knew that it was flawed. It's a hard article to read.....but since Pincus is supposedly one of the "good guy" reporters.......I think he's making a case that nails the Administration on a number of "falsehoods" they have been putting out about whether Iraq had tried to purchase the yellow cake and whether they even had any capability of using it even if they HAD purchased it. That's kind of a new quirk in the whole story.

[Emboldened Chimp]

3. Ruppert says Pincus is hooked up w/ CIA

Said so in his Beyond Bush pt. 1, I believe. Where the hell's pt. 2?

[NNN0LHI]

4. Why is this guy even still talking about uranium?

All the other journalists are past this and on to the other dozen or so lies Bush and his minions have spewed. This guy is behind the times.

Don

[berry]

5. I don't think so--from the end of the article, it seems clear

that he is reporting what is coming out of Congressional investigations. (Also, maybe from his CIA sources.) I do wonder how he got that quotation out of Bartlett. I DO agree that there are plenty of other lies to follow up, but this could be important. After all, Bush* has already acknowledged that he "takes responsibility" for his words (HAH!). And this article completely demolishes the defense that it was just a slip-up somewhere in the organization. This WAS a talking point.

Also new is the mention of DIA in all this (which may just be a conduit for the OSP junk intelligence, but still...). Up to now, it's been about CIA and State's INS (the dissenting footnote). I find this heartening, and hope for more to come. Just wish it had been on page 1.