real real gone

A week or so back, I noted an article in Britain's Financial Times which stated that Iraq had, after all, attempted to purchase uranium from Niger during the late 1990s. The sources in that article were unnamed “European intelligence officers,” which rendered the story very interesting indeed, although insufficient to put the matter to rest.

But things have since advanced. The Financial Times again (link may be perishable):

A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.

The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq.

The report will say the claim that Mr Hussein could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes, seized on by UK prime minister Tony Blair to bolster the case for war with Iraq, was inadequately supported by the available intelligence, people familiar with its contents say .

But among Lord Butler's other areas of investigation was the issue of whether Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence.

And with that, the “sixteen words” meme has really, really jumped the shark.

Lord Butler's inquiry into prewar intelligence is not the only such investigation to reach its climax of late. A different article—in Tuesday's New York Times, of all places—summarizes the conclusions of a report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Senate report, intelligence officials say, concludes that the agency and the rest of the intelligence community did a poor job of collecting information about the status of Iraq's weapons programs, and that analysts at the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did an even worse job of writing reports that accurately reflected the information they had.

Among the many problems that contributed to the committee's harsh assessment of the C.I.A.'s prewar performance were instances in which analysts may have misrepresented information, writing reports that distorted evidence in order to bolster their case that Iraq did have chemical, biological and nuclear programs, according to government officials. The Senate found, for example, that an Iraqi defector who supposedly provided evidence of the existence of a biological weapons program had actually said he did not know of any such program. […]

While the Senate panel has concluded that C.I.A. analysts and other intelligence officials overstated the case that Iraq had illicit weapons, the committee has not found any evidence that the analysts changed their reports as a result of political pressure from the White House, according to officials familiar with the report.

The link to the FT article is courtesy Ed Morrissey of The Captain's Quarters, who in the same post notes the recent discoveries of chemical munitions in Iraq, including a number of warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin. Newsworthy? Yes: far more so than the meager press coverage would indicate.

Nonetheless, I must caution my fellow war supporters not to make too much of the chemical weapons discovered thus far. Certainly they are proof that Saddam once had such munitions (although the Kurds and Iranians did not require further evidence). Yet they are not in themselves vindication of prewar intelligence claims. The cyclosarin rounds, for instance, were in poor condition after having been buried in a bunker and could—quite plausibly—have been so interred long ago and forgotten.

Of course, were such bunkers to begin turning up with any frequency, the “accidentally misplaced” scenario would be rendered much less likely. Until such time, however, it is best that we not claim every stray mustard round as vindication. Our intelligence agencies screwed up; we do not yet know just how badly; and for those of us far from the action it is probably best that we settle for pointing up the considerable evidence that prewar intelligence was not misused for political ends.

That, and restating the other reasons why removing Saddam was necessary. The good Captain provides a summary at the end of his post. I wrote up a partial case here.

And if a visual is worth a thousand words, go here. And here. And here.

UPDATE. The Belgravia Dispatch points up today's revelation from the NYT:

The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.

UPDATE 2. If a few moldy old chemical munitions aren't impressive enough, how's nearly two tons of enriched uranium?