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July 7, 2004
Financial Times: Iraq Tried To Get Uranium From Niger

In a further repudiation of the "Bush Lied!" meme, the Financial Times in London reports that Lord Butler's investigation into prewar British intelligence confirms that Iraq did attempt to get uranium from Niger in defiance of cease-fire agreements and UN resolutions:

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 UK government has remained adamant that negotiations over sales did take place and that the fake documents were not part of the intelligence material it had gathered to underpin its claim.

The Financial Times revealed last week that a key part of the UK's intelligence on the uranium came from a European intelligence service that undertook a three-year surveillance of an alleged clandestine uranium-smuggling operation of which Iraq was a part.

Intelligence officials have now confirmed that the results of this operation formed an important part of the conclusions of British intelligence. The same information was passed to the US but US officials did not incorporate it in their assessment.

Let's recap what we've found since the fall of Saddam Hussein. We've discovered WMD that the UN demanded to be destroyed, including more than a dozen shells with sarin and more with mustard gas that dated back before Gulf War I, part of the stockpile for which Saddam never accounted. The CPA has found mass graves with at least 300,000 bodies in them, and even the National Geographic now estimates that as many as 7 million Shi'ites have disappeared over the twelve years the UN sat on its hands and allowed Saddam to defy the sixteen resolutions demanding his verifiable disarmament. Intelligence files discovered by independent sources such as the Los Angeles Times shows that Saddam thwarted the arms embargo that supposedly "contained" him with the active help of UNSC member Syria. ABC reported that Saddam's IIS supplied Abu al-Zarqawi, an al-Qaeda operative, with shelter and weapons.

Now we find out that the Brits correctly reported Saddam's efforts to get his hands on uranium, in defiance to the neat little storyline constructed by the Left that Bush's reliance on that information equates to a lie used to mislead the US into war. And to what purpose would Iraq put that uranium had it successfully concluded that transaction? Does anyone suppose that Saddam simply wanted to make his palaces glow in the dark -- or perhaps make Tel Aviv or DC do so instead?

I'll wait, along with Instapundit and QandO, for the onslaught of media coverage and apologies from the left-wing pundits that have accused the President of everything from fascist falsehoods to selling America out to foreigners.

I just won't hold my breath.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at July 7, 2004 8:06 PM

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» really really gone from andunie.net
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,"... [Read More]

Tracked on July 8, 2004 12:43 AM



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