Yet another fiasco for the administration. It appears that documents which were meant to show that Iraq was purchasing nuclear materials were forged. The IAEA doesn’t blame the Americans of British for forging the documents but they were clearly fooled as an American official is quoted as acknowledging. The IAEA has also refuted claims by the administration about aluminium tubes being used to build nuclear weapons.
In substantive terms this is important because nuclear weapons are a true “weapon of mass destruction” and far more of a strategic threat than biological or chemical weapons. There is now serious doubt about Iraq having any signficiant nuclear facilities. In terms of image this further undermines the credibility of the administration which is already limited. They may not have been dishonest this time but they were clearly incompetent.
I was listening today to the reports being delivered to the UN, and I remember that the IAEA guy mentioned this and I went, like, “Whaaaaaa?..” He wasn’t specific about who said what as regards to the Iraqi’s shopping for uranium, just that he investigated it thoroughly and it just wasn’t so.
Thanks, Cyber, that was buggin’ me all day but I was too lazy to track it down.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the US made it up, they might have relied on intelligence provided from a Reliable Source. A Reliable Source who has the sophistication and resources to conjure up some stuff that looks like intelligence gold to someone who wants to believe it in the first place. A smart intelligence agency with some reason to urge America to war with Iraq.
Can’t think who that might be. Someone with a very active, very sophisticated intelligence operation. That America would regard as credible, without too much examination. Someone who would find a war between America and Iraq desireable, especially if it meant a long-standing American military presence in the Middle East.
Turkey doesn’t want a war between the US and Iraq.
Anyway I hope there is a public enquiry about who supplied these documents to the US and why the US and the Brits were so gullible. Hopefully it’s frontpage appearance in the WaPo means it’s not going to be brushed under the carpet.
Don’t count on it. My own personal favorite whopper, Bush flaunting the Report That Never Existed, never got explained either. They simply removed it from their talking points and kept on going as if nothing had ever happened. Down the memory hole and poof! gone.
Personally, especially judging from the errors reported in the headings, I think this is more likely to be a stoolie making up false info for money than a concerted effort from a country’s espionage agencies.
If that’s true then the American/British governments were incredibly incompetent in not catching it. Or they just didn’t bother checking it when they found something that suited their case. Either way it doesn’t say much for their reliablity.
I would just remind everyone that the IAEA declared in 1994 that, after, three years of inspections, they were convinced that Iraq’s nuclear program had been completely shut down and destroyed, and Iraq was nuclear free.
The next year, Saddam’s brother in laws defected, bringing with them thousands of pages of documentation about Iraq’s ongoing nuclear program. They had extensive details about how Iraq was using ‘short track’ separation of uranium, which was much less efficient but could be hidden more easily. Not only was Iraq’s nuclear program still alive, it was more advanced than anyone had thought at the time.
The IAEA blew it completely, after having THREE YEARS to continue inspecting.
I would like a source for this but what ,even if true, does this have to do with the issue of forged documents? Let me remind you that American officials have admitted that they were fooled. Only the most die-hard apologists of the administration would deny that they come out of this looking like a bunch of incompetents.
If something like this had occurred during the Clinton administration, the “liberal” media would have screamed bloody murder. Oh well. This is what we can expect from the scared sheep that ask such challenging questions of President Bush as: “How does prayer help you during these difficult times”?:rolleyes:
Turkey doesn’t want a war between the US and Iraq.
Why not? They’re just itching to move troops into Northern Iraq (remember Turkey has been trying for years to get the Kurdish Liberation Army classified as a ‘terrorist group’) and a war between US and Iraq would be the perfect oppurtunity.
Well you know what happened with the vote despite massive US pressure, yes? You know that Turkish public opinion is massively against the war? Moving troops into Northern Iraq isn’t some kind of benefit but a preventive measure (to Kurdish independence) from Turkey’s pov.
No doubt W wanted to believe it just like his Dad wanted to believe that the Iraqis had pulled babies out of incubators in Kuwait. It’s easy to be fooled when the lie is exactly what you are looking for.
Therein lies the classic and perpetual weakness of “intelligence”, Revster. I read quite a good book, called The Second Oldest Profession IIRC with the thesis that intelligence has been historicly useless because no matter how cunning and professional the spy, the info always goes to leaders who believe what they wish. The classic case was Stalin’s refusal to believe that Hitler was going to invade despite tons of intelligence from master espionage agents that it was so.
Sometimes its sheer accident. I was reading a book about Roosevelts use of intelligence and came across this historical nugget: Roosevelt was inclined to discount the testimony of Einstein and others as to the use of nuclear power for an atomic weapon. He was constantly bombarded with plans for “secret weapons” from all manner of crackpots and pretty much thought the atomic bomb was just another one. By sheer accident, he happened to read a report that Germany had embargoed the sale of uranium from Czechoslovakia…and the light went on.
Sounds like a good book 'luc. You might also like The Mitrokhin Archive, described here on Amazon. This book also describes how Stalin misused his intelligence, and how the agents had to “massage” whatever data they discovered to fit in with what Stalin already believed.
CNN.com searches of “Evidence Iraq fabricated” “Evidence Iraq fake” and “Evidence Iraq forge” didn’t come up with anything that seemed relevent, from only looking at the article titles that were returned.
Can anyone who watches evening news regularly say whether this was mentioned?
It’s been mentioned several times on CNN. I included a link in a post of mine above. I also recall it being discussed on one or more of the Sunday talking heads shows.