Well, you can Google "british butler commision"
Here's a synposis from the BBC ( as left politically as our NPR )
"Before the war Iraq wanted to get banned weapons, including a nuclear programme"
"Uranium from Niger
* British intelligence on the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger was "credible". There was not conclusive evidence Iraq actually purchased the material, nor did the government make that claim. "
Re the Senate intelligence committee report and Wilson- just google that as well:
Here's a synopsis:
The best part of the report is the thorough discrediting of former Ambassador Wilson, who duped just about every self-proclaimed "investigative journalist" in America. Wilson is the husband of a CIA officer who was sent by the CIA to Niger to check on an allegation — based at least in part on some documents given to the American embassy in Rome — that Saddam's minions had approached the Nigeriens with a request for uranium. Wilson had told everyone that the Nigeriens had denied it, and he personally told the Washington Post and others that the documents in question were probably forgeries because names and dates were wrong.
Well, the report says that Wilson had not seen the documents, so he couldn't have had any serious basis for claiming that names and dates were wrong. Worse yet, the Nigeriens told him about an Iraqi delegation that had gone there in '99, and that the Niger's prime minister "believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium." As the Wall Street Journal elegantly put it, Iraq asked to expand trade, and Niger had only two exports: uranium and goats.
The Wilson story gets even better. He had sworn that his CIA wife had had nothing to do with his appointment as special emissary, but the report quotes a memo from his wife recommending him for the post. And Wilson had chewed out the vice president for standing by the claim, famously made by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address, that British intelligence had reported Iraqi requests for uranium from Niger. Wilson said, in effect, the veep knew of my report but he just dissed it. Not true. "CIA's briefer did not brief the vice president on the report (that Iraqis had indeed discussed uranium in Niger), despite the vice president's previous question about the issue."
Oh, I see. The vice president of the United States asks for information about the story. The CIA sends this lout to Niger. He hears from the prime minister of the place that the story is true, and reports as much to the CIA (while saying the opposite to the pressies). And the CIA never bothers to tell Cheney. Is this not a scandal? What have I missed? Maybe somebody should tell Senators Rockefeller and Roberts that the CIA is supposed to answer such questions. They often don't, by the way. I can tell you that two senior administration officials asked the CIA, five months ago, about a report that Iraqi officials had arrested two people in the act of transporting a barrel full of uranium from Iraq to Iran. There is still no answer. If we're really interested in the intelligence "process," this sort of silence has to stop.
Anyway, back to Wilson. The whole journalistic universe was in heat over the Niger story, because Wilson had convinced them that it was a hoax, based on forgeries. All kinds of celebrated journalists, from Hersh on up, presented theories about the origin of the forgeries, as if that were the issue. But it wasn't. Throughout it all, the British government continued to say that they had evidence, that they still believed in that evidence, and that they believed the story was true.
The Brits were right: It was true, as Wilson undoubtedly realized. Thanks to a couple of articles in the Financial Times over the past few weeks, we know that several European countries had reason to believe it. The "forgeries" were a total red herring, they had nothing to do with the price of eggs, and thus Seymour Hersh's breathless spasm — in which he theorized that the forgeries were created by a bunch of ex-CIA "old boys" in order to gull Cheney so they could then "expose" him — is idiocy. And Joshua Marshall's narcissistic echo chamber, broadcasting "Bush lied" 24/7, is another. (I am obliged to reveal that I have an intense personal contempt for Mr. Marshall, who slimed me and my wife and my daughter on the basis of lies and suppositions, and has yet to acknowledge it, let alone apologize.)
Please let me know what you think after you'ver read the 2 reports. It can be very enlighteneing to actually read source material rather than knee jerk reactions in the press and blogs
