See, the basic divide right now is this: the Administration’s defenders say it was perfectly reasonable for the president to rely on British intelligence about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa, although the Administration itself now admits that it shouldn’t have included this item in the State of the Union Address due to the conflicting reports coming from the CIA. The critics say, basically, that if American intelligence doubts that it happened, then we should not rely on intelligence provided by our closest ally; if it’s not blessed by American intelligence, it must be no good, right?
Now, who’s being the arrogant unilateralists?
(Of course, as the left-leaning site The Daily Howler has noted, it appears that the British were talking about the Congo, while our analysis was about Niger; apples and oranges).
3 thoughts on “Another Take on Niger”
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Spin, spin, spin…
I’m dissappointed, Crank.
The White House wanted to use something in a US report, the CIA said it couldn’t back it. The White House found the British reporting the same thing, and it passed muster b/c they could attribute it to the Brits.
Either way, the CIA was right to begin with, the data was dubious.
Do you have to be so blind to the right?
I haven’t seen anything that shows that the Brits were wrong, nor that they were necessarily even talking about the same sources of information. Until you have that, all you’re saying is, “if U.S. intel doubts it, to hell with anybody else’s intel.”
If it wasn’t the Niger source, why would Rice, Bush, Tenant or anyone hang anyone else to dry?
The Niger report was used as evidence that the sentence was bogus…the Admin reacted to this evidence by pointing fingers of blame. They did not react by pointing to a different cource of information.
If it was a different piece of evidence that they based their sentence on then they could’ve easily said then “we did not base our sentence regarding Africa on the Niger document that everyone is eviscerating.”
Amazing, you apply this much spin as a Lawyer? I guess you get paid to look past your clients wrongdoings and focus on getting them off the hook…or focus on the defendant’s wrongdoings…and avoid the evidence that goes against you. Nice.
Stick with the argument that there was enough other evidence to get this war on the road…and at least admit the administration pumped up some of its info to get the ball rolling.