another one bites the dust

The mainstreaming of the Bush lied! meme began about eleven months back, with the controversy over Iraq's procurement, or nonprocurement, of uranium oxide from Niger. The starring role in l’affaire du yellowcake was former ambassador and forever preening narcissist Joseph Wilson, whose claims from last summer seem curiously at odds with what he wrote some months later in his book (coming soon to a remainder bin near you).

These days Wilson is newsworthy mostly for being the husband of a certain CIA operative. But the yellowcake saga continues, and as the Financial Times reports, there may yet be surprises. [registration required]

The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim.

Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.

When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger.

However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq. […]

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the “yellow cake” refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

Of course, one unwelcome lesson of the Iraq war and its aftermath is that our intelligence services are not exactly firing on all cylinders. But those who would capitalize on intelligence failures for political gain ought be careful: Blowback is a bitch.

Not that credibility is that important to the likes of Michael Moore—or Joseph Wilson, for that matter.

(Link via Gregory Djerejian of The Belgravia Dispatch, who has appended a couple of updates well worth the read.)

Interesting comments on the uranium tie between Iraq and Niger. You would have thought that this link was altogether incorrect from everything else you read. I wish mainstream media would follow the facts more closely and to a real completion. It seems this story is not yet over as everyone is lead to believe.