From Financial Times (UK):
The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.
But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly skeptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim.
Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.
When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger.
However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.
These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.
Matt's Chat
This may yet be an embarassment for Joe Wilson and the Bush haters.Intelligence is a gray area in what has become a black and white world. The Partisan Mediatm seems to demand that Republicans have crystal clear intelligence with no flaws. That is not realistic.
We may never know the real, full story...
Mark's Remarks
While there is good and evil, and that is black and white; intel is a gray field. I still say just think if we would not have taken these documents seriously and a nuke would have been exploded in New York or LA! Then there would have been calls for serious impeachments, etc. When viewed in the prism of 9/11, we cannot be shocked that we took the 'forged' documents seriously, as we were just hit and were worried about more attacks. However, the fact that there were documented discussions, in light of the 'fake' documents, does lend credence that there was some illicit talk going on. This is a continued cause for concern, and we must get better at intel.
