Democratic Veteran :: A little Yellowcake, my dear?

A little Yellowcake, my dear?

The more the republi-fascist spin machine kicks up, the more it's worth the time to go back and remember that what they are trying to really protect is not Karl Rove, although Hairy Thunderer preserve us, they don't want to see Karl in Chains (hey, isn't that a rock band?). They want to blur the already shakey, and continually moving rationale for war that was Topic One for Preznit Deserting Fratboy after Chickenhawk One landed in DC on or about 9/12/2001.

So really, what was some of the genesis of this mess? Let's toss a little fuel in the wayback machine and pump up 1.21 gigawatts of power and see:

A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs.

Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war.
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"Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war."

According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk".
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The papers found their way to the CIA and to MI6, and in September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information passed to him by MI6.

The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over the documents' authenticity, however, and in March 2003 declared them false.

The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo".
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American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said.

"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."

So US intelligence officials, who weren't trying to make the intelligence conform the adminstrations' ideas wanted a second opinion, and sent a man familiar with the country and who had a spouse how just happened to have the expertise to brief him on what to look for to head off and see what was up. He did and reported back that there was nothing to the allegations brought forth by the Italians and being trumpeted by the Neo-cons as factual evidence of Saddam's Nuclear weapons program; see: CondiLiar's Mushroom Cloud of Doom...

RICE: You will get different estimates about precisely how close he is. We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance -- into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.
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The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
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It is incumbent on Saddam Hussein, who, after all, signed on to an obligation to disarm, to convince the world that he is not trying to. And every piece of experience with him, all of the available evidence is simply that he continues down this road.

We do not want to be surprised again. History shows that you are always surprised about how quickly someone acquires a terrible weapon. We were surprised that the Soviet program was as far along as it was. We thought it would be 1955, it was 1949. Saddam Hussein was almost six months from acquiring a crude nuclear device in 1991.

The problem is that we can't afford to be surprised. We know he has the infrastructure. We know he as the desire. We know his procurement network has been very, very active. How long are we going to wait to deal with what is clearly a gathering threat against the United States, against our allies and against his own region?

So there was CondiLiar spinning tales of imminent Nuclear Winter, conflating the very-real threat posed by the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal with the threat every PNAC member, and Kool-Aid gulping republican (and Joe Lieberman) wanted to find tucked into Saddam's garage at his palace in Baghdad. Interestingly, this same CNN segment had a couple of rather interesting quotes about any war in Iraq:

BLITZER: All right, Senator Graham, one, we do know that many in the Arab world, certainly as reflected by Amre Moussa, who is the secretary general of the Arab League, they say it would be a disaster if the U.S. were to preemptively strike against Iraq. Listen to what Amre Moussa had to say.

AMRE MOUSSA, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE ARAB LEAGUE: We believe it that will open the gates of hell in the Middle East.

BLITZER: "We believe," he says, "it would open gates of hell in the Middle East," if the U.S. were to strike against Iraq. Do you believe that?

Blitzer was talking with Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Richard Shelby (R-Fucking Turncoat) of Alabama. Here's what Shelby had to say in response:

SHELBY: No, I don't share those concerns. I share some of the concerns of the world we're having to deal with, that is the Islamic world, and the problems there.

But I believe that we will be successful if we go in. I believe we're going to go in. And people like success, and they also know we're not wanting to stay there any longer than we have to.

A caller to the show then asked about concerns over whether Scott Ritter, who was another unfortunate victim of the 1600 Crew's drive-by to war smearing so Junior could get his war on:

CALLER: This is for both senators, what they think of John Ritter's complete turnaround about the Iraq matter?

BLITZER: I think he's referring, Senator Shelby, to Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector who addressed the Iraqi National Assembly earlier today and warned of the dangers that would face the United States, indeed the world, of a preemptive U.S. strike. He says there is no serious threat to the United States coming from Iraq.

SHELBY: I saw his comments on television earlier this morning. I was troubled. I've met Scott Ritter, and I've had a lot of respect for him. I think he's an idealist, which is good, but I think he's way off base here.

Ritter, whose in-country experience and factual knowledge of the situation on the ground was downplayed mercilessly by the all-war all-the-time wing of the 1600 Crew (which is to say all of them), was already talking about the dangers of a preemptive strike, and there's a Kool-Aid drinking mouthpiece, Shelby, patting him on the head and saying he's "way off base".

Toward the end of show, Blitzer trots out a quote from VP Crashcart:

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think they know the same information. I think the fact is that, in terms of the quality of our intelligence operation, I think we're better than anybody else generally in this area.

At what you lying fuckwit, making shit up in your office and then smearing the people who tell the truth about the real intelligence?

Wes Clark at the end of the show...

In order to improve the communications, the administration has got to lay out clearly what is the problem. Is it the weapons of mass destruction? Is it because Saddam is an evil man? What is the specific problem? Has he uttered a threat against America? Or is it the threat to Israel? We've got to get the problem out on the table.

Goddamn it, I wish he was the President instead of the limp-dicked, lying, horse fluffer now occupying the house paid for with my tax dollars.