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washingtonpost.com
Bush Faced Dwindling Data on Iraq Nuclear Bid

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 16, 2003; Page A01


In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion
in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to
buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of
intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was
reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and
former administration officials and intelligence ****ysts, suggests
that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the
case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave
his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had
either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.

By Jan. 28, in fact, the intelligence report concerning Iraqi attempts
to buy uranium from Africa -- although now almost entirely disproved
-- was the only publicly unchallenged element of the administration's
case that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. That may explain why
the administration strived to keep the information in the speech and
attribute it to the British, even though the CIA had challenged it
earlier.

For example, in his Oct. 7 speech, Bush said that "satellite
photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at [past
nuclear] sites." He also cited Hussein's "numerous meetings with Iraqi
nuclear scientists" as further evidence that the program was being
reconstituted, along with Iraq's attempts to buy high-strength
aluminum tubes "needed" for centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

But on Jan. 27 -- the day before the State of the Union address -- the
head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported to the
U.N. Security Council that two months of inspections in Iraq had found
that no prohibited nuclear activities had taken place at former Iraqi
nuclear sites. As for Iraqi nuclear scientists, Mohamed ElBaradei told
the Security Council, U.N. inspectors had "useful" interviews with
some of them, though not in private. And preliminary ****ysis, he
said, suggested that the aluminum tubes, "unless modified, would not
be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges."

The next night, Bush delivered his speech, including the
now-controversial 16-word sentence, "The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa."

Of his October examples, only the aluminum tubes charge remained in
January, but that allegation had a subtle caveat -- he described the
tubes as merely "suitable" for nuclear weapons production. Without the
statement on uranium, the allegation concerning aluminum tubes would
have been the only nuclear-related action ascribed to Hussein since
the early 1990s.

And the tubes had already been questioned not only by IAEA, but also
by ****ysts in U.S. and British intelligence agencies.

The idea that Iraq was acquiring tubes for a nuclear program became
public in September, shortly after the Bush administration began a
campaign to marshal public, congressional and U.N. support for
authority to attack Iraq if it did not disarm.

On Aug. 26, Vice President Cheney, the official most publicly vocal
about Iraq as a nuclear threat, began the campaign when he told a
Veterans of Foreign Wars audience: "Many of us are convinced that
Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon we
cannot gauge."

On Sept. 8, the New York Times disclosed that intelligence showed that
Iraq had "embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic
bomb" by trying to purchase "specially designed aluminum tubes" that
unidentified administration sources believed were for centrifuges to
enrich uranium.

The story referred to Bush "hardliners" who argued that action should
be taken because if they waited for proof that Hussein had a nuclear
weapon, "the first sign of a smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud."

That day, Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on
CNN's "Late Edition" and confirmed the Times story. She said the tubes
"are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge
programs." She also said, "The problem here is that there will always
be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons,
but we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Cheney also confirmed the Times story that day, on NBC's "Meet the
Press," saying that "we don't have all the evidence," but enough of a
picture "that tells us that he [Hussein] is in fact actively and
aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."

What neither Rice nor Cheney said at the time was that Baghdad's first
attempts to purchase the aluminum tubes, more than a year earlier, had
by Sept. 8 led to a fairly open disagreement in the U.S. intelligence
community on whether the tubes were for centrifuges or for artillery
rockets in Iraq's military program.

****ysts from the State and Energy departments said the tubes were too
long and too thick for centrifuges; CIA and Pentagon ****ysts said
they could be cut down and reamed out. Their debate was continuing as
the agencies were putting together the still-classified national
intelligence estimate on Hussein's weapons program.

In July, the United States had intercepted one shipment and obtained a
tube; it was coated with a protective chemical that would have had to
be removed if it were to be put to a nuclear purpose.

The intelligence estimate, completed in mid-September, reflected the
different views, but the final judgment said that "most" ****ysts
leaned toward the view that the tubes had a nuclear purpose. When the
British dossier on Iraq's weapons program was published on Sept. 24,
it referred to the tubes, but noted that "there is no definitive
intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear program."

In his State of the Union address, Bush did not indicate any
disagreement over the use of the tubes. Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell, however, outlined the arguments involved when he spoke eight
days later before the Security Council, where inspectors already had
challenged the U.S. position on them.

On March 7, ElBaradei gave his final report to the Security Council
before his inspectors were removed from Iraq on March 18. His
conclusion was that "the IAEA had found no evidence or plausible
indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." He
also said the do***ents that gave rise to the allegation that Iraq had
tried to buy African uranium were forged.

On March 16, Cheney appeared again on "Meet the Press" and reiterated
his views of the previous August about Hussein's nuclear program. "We
know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear
weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons." The war began three days later.

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starwars

In article <3f14d6f0.2867303@news.io.com>


This Washington Post guy needs to have his head examined. He
goes on and on about nothing, but he doesn't deal with the
critical point of the whole thing: NO ONE IN THE US GOVERNMENT
HAS SEEN THE BRITISH REPORT, a report that the British Prime
Minister stands by. It hasn't been seen by the US government
because it is based on protected intelligence sources. This is
the privilege of the Brits, most likely done at the insistence
of the informant(s) whose safety would be seriously compromised
if their info was passed around like playing cards. The ongoing
failure of our wonderful "journalists" to understand this
fundamental rule of spycraft continues to astound.

At the end of this mess, the Post moron continues to make the
same old mistake with the Cheney statement:
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire
nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted
nuclear weapons." Cheney misspoke here, as a look at the full
transcript will reveal: http://tinyurl.com/h2lg In fact you
don't even have to look at the transcript to know Cheney
misspoke because what is a "reconstituted nuclear weapon"?
Reconstituted or not, it's still a weapon, right? So how come
we didn't see headlines saying "Cheney Says Iraq is a Nuclear
Power"?

The same old mistakes over and over, and the left wonders why it
has NO credibility.