per Hume: Can WIlson's report be interpreted to support the Niger claims?

[kid a]

Or is HUME a lying sack of shit?

[ewagner]

1. lying sack

always has been always will be ....

[goclark]

2. Yes he is as you described

[Emit]

3. It's been a 'right' winger talking point for some time

And, after reading the convoluted Senate Intelligence Committee's report, I can understand how these things get twisted this way. The report itself is like a reference manual for the 'right' wing talking points, despite the fact that it contains other contradicting info: it really is confusing, to say the least.

I posted on another thread just today how this was all a circuitous web of deceit, where they have conveniently confused and obfuscated through many handlers, with the Senate Committee report being one example of a major whitewash that proved to confuse rather than clarify.

FactCheck.org has an overview. Disregard the title and read it all the way through. It will explain the 'right's' talking points. I do not know the legitimacy of FactCheck.org, nor am I recommending it as a good overview. I merely point it out because it is an example of how conveniently circuitous this whole mess has been made.

http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html

The Senate report said the CIA then asked a "former ambassador" to go to Niger and report. That is a reference to Joseph Wilson -- who later became a vocal critic of the President's 16 words. The Senate report said Wilson brought back denials of any Niger-Iraq uranium sale, and argued that such a sale wasn't likely to happen. But the Intelligence Committee report also reveals that Wilson brought back something else as well -- evidence that Iraq may well have wanted to buy uranium.

Wilson reported that he had met with Niger's former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, who said that in June 1999 he was asked to meet with a delegation from Iraq to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries.

Based on what Wilson told them, CIA analysts wrote an intelligence report saying former Prime Minister Mayki "interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the (Iraqi) delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales." In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that "for most analysts" Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

~snip~

[joemurphy]

5. Which was total horseshit.

The Iraqis were seeking commercial ties with Niger and no more than that. At the time, Iraq was under UN sanctions and wanted African nations to attend a trade fair it was sponsoring to weaken the sanctions and, thereby, allow it back into the concert of nations. Buying yellowcake wasn't the idea behind the visit to Iraq. Iraq already had plenty of unprocessed uranium under lock and key at home that UNSCOM knew about. It had no way to process it. The last thing it needed was more unprocessed uranium from Niger.

<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact>

Also, see the Kamel testimony. Iraq had disassembled its WMD (and its nuclear) program years before.


<http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=8157>

<http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf>

[Emit]

6. Yes. Agreed. Total horse shit.

Everyone should read that Senate Intelligence report just to see how lame it is. In fact, at some points, it reads like an friggin' soap opera--he said, she said, blah, blah. And it does more to obfuscate than to clarify or answer any real questions.

Here's another good summary of why it was total horse shit (this is an informative diary, IMO, for various reasons):

~snip~
... some historical perspective is in order:


* In 1991, Iraq was discovered to have about 500 metric tons (~1 million lbs.) of yellowcake they'd 'forgotten' to mention. George Herbert Walker Bush, his coalition pals, and the International Atomic Energy Agency were so alarmed that Iraq had yellowcake, they decided to leave it in Iraq. The "prudent" course of action as they saw it: put it drums, seal it up, and check the seals once a year. They knew an entire year was not long enough for Hussein to make anything dangerous out of yellowcake. <3, .pdf>


* That yellowcake was inspected and remained untouched until Hussein barred the U.N. inspectors in late 1998.


* On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a fax to the White House that stated "the procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. <4, para. 7, emphasis added>


* During Dec. 9-11, 2002, before Bush's SOTU claim that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa, U.N. Inspectors verified that the yellowcake from 1991 was in Iraq, undisturbed, and still sealed.


~snip~

Repeated claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, initiated and bolstered solely by the CIA's Directorate of Operations were irrelevant. The idea was never credible, never implied Iraq was re-starting their nuclear programs, and never taken seriously. Iraq had all the yellowcake it needed and 4 years to use it ('99-'02) -- they had no facilities to enrich uranium.

~snip~

And finally, yes finally, ask yourself who in the Bush administration during '02-'03 didn't understand the unspannable gap between yellowcake and a nuclear bomb:


* George W. Bush? Who's father left 500 mT of yellowcake in Hussein's possession?
...

~snip~

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/182733/96

[MrBenchley]

4. Even the White House admitted the Niger claim is horseshit

Faux Noise really must be getting desperate....

[thinkingwoman]

7. Well sure it can...

if you completely ignore what it actually says. :evilgrin:

[Emit]

8. Here's where he probably got his talking point

From: Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the
U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq
(July 7, 2004):
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/iraq/documents.html

(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador’s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq. (P. 73, Niger section)

This is from only one small section of the convoluted, lengthy report. It is very easy to take things out of context in this type of report, and they've been doing that for some time. In the main conclusion section of the report, there are even lots more confusing and contradicting statements like the one above.

[joemurphy]

10. There were parts of the Senate Intelligence Report that

the Democrats refused to go along with. Also, Wilson sent the Senate committee a rebuttal to its conclusions regarding his trip.

The Senate Report also failed to mention the Niger ambassador's conclusion that there was nothing to the so-called Iraqi yellowcake purchase. It also failed to mention General Carlton's Fulford Jr.'s
identical conclusion.

Also, if the CIA believed that Wilson's report enhanced, rather than detracted from, the possibility of the Iraqi's buying yellowcake, why did the CIA insist that the White House excise any references to yellowcake purchase attempt from Bush's October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati?

This is all crap. It's all disgusting lies to cover up the fact that Libby and other members of Cheney's OSP manufactured and twisted evidence to persuade the country to go to war.

[Emit]

11. Yes. It was obvious that Roberts

did a great deal to divert and confuse matters. He also refused to support Rockefeller's request for an FBI investigation:

~snip~
Rockefeller has grave concerns about deceptive intelligence, so serious that he pens a formal letter to FBI director Robert Mueller.

Rockefeller urges Mueller to investigate the Niger forgeries as part of what he feared to be "...a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq," writes the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh.

Roberts declines to sign the Rockefeller letter, seeing the involvement of the FBI as inappropriate. As a result, Rockefeller's letter falls on deaf ears.

On July 11, 2003, faced with public pressure to investigate the Niger forgeries, Roberts blames the CIA and defends the White House.

~snip~

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050811-iraq-intell.htm

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. Hume is the King of Lying Sacks of Shit.

[samsingh]

12. he's a lying sack of shit

[ncteechur]

13. Hume= journalistic eunic!

[Gabi Hayes]

14. Great thread! highly recommended....can't believe nobody else has

this does a better job than Larry Johnson of plowing through all the garbage the RW propgandists have been dishing out, and describing what an utterly useless POS both Roberts and his SCCI Report were.

don't forget the addendum, though, which was written solely by Hatch, Roberts and Kit Bond, and to which Wilson specifically referred in his July 04 letter to the Senate

thanks for this....adding to my Wilson/SCCI defense thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5215940

[tom22]

15. I've read that caim about the analysts, but

if you read the actual report, the evidence these 'analysts' rely on is a converstaion an expresident of Niger had with an Iraqi trade mission. He thought the reason why the Iraqis wanted to meet was to discuss a uranium purchase. He added that during the entirety of the meeting with the Iraqis the subject of uranium NEVER came up. Some evidence!

[Gabi Hayes]

16. exactly....and that's just about the ONLY reason the CIA supporters

of Saddam's intent to buy unneeded yellowcake can summon. they must be using their psychic department

NO evidence to support the claim, as you point out. the subject of uranium was NOT EVER broached

the INR's disagreement is, of course, never mentioned by the public liars, and their case against Wilson mirrors the "without a doubt" certainty of mushroom cloud-as-smoking-gun fear mongering spread by Cheney, Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, etal, during the war run up

and super duper media hoes like those four on Russert's show last night completely ignore these aspects of the report while AGREEING that Wilson lied about this aspect of his Niger report

totally disgusting

I watched/taped that show, and their knowledge of this whole episode is DEEP. that makes me almost certain that they're passing on their "mis"information on purpose, not out of ignorance or incompetence

they even went so far as to chuckle over how Wilson was even giving it to people in green rooms about the outing, as he waited to go on various TV shows, Fatboy going so far as to explain to the great unwashed in his audience what a "green room" is. what a pompous asscrater he is.