The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.
President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit."
Put aside that Wilson's CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney -- as Wilson implied -- sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.
Bush claimed that Iraq sought uranium, specifically "yellowcake." What is yellowcake, and why would its presence or attempted acquisition corroborate the nearly unanimous assumption that Saddam possessed WMD?
The Associated Press called yellowcake "the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment" and said that it "also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."
"Bush and Iraq: Follow the Yellow Cake Road" headlined a euphoric Time magazine July 2003 piece -- written when the Bush administration began backtracking from the Iraq-sought-uranium-from-Africa claim. Time said no yellowcake equals no WMD equals bogus basis for war.
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14 comments:
I knew it all along.
Obama can handle Wikileak CHANGE?
We NEED transparency for our global society that we created an cannot control.To many crises.
We'd never gone to Iraq if we read the cables first? Can gov. cut own flesh and downsize coldwar min. of foreign aff./CIA that cost as much as public health care. Wars ? Environment ? The public and is needed to get involved to let our global society survive.
How can a few wise leaders alone solve complex global issues pending ?
If democracy fails, the only solution is More democracy. Know It's a hard path, but harder for our totalitarian enemies. E-vote(power), not E-commerce(money) that changes our world, stupid!
9:23 The cables proved Bush was right so the reasoning was already approved.Did you even read the cables or the article for that matter?
anyone remember the iran-contra affair? of course iraq had wmd...THEY ALL HAD "MADE IN THE USA" STICKERS ON THE SIDE!
9:47 The threat was there and that's the bottom line.
Nice try, but old stockpiles of WMD from time frames where Saddam had western support and full blown pursuit of nuclear weapons, like say Iran, or two different things. Not to mention the "mobile chemical weapons" labs claim were debunked long ago.
This is all you got?
10:06, Iraq's little neighbors have long range missles, fully operational nuke facilities, and support from powerful international parties, yet you guys still try to say Saddam was the threat. HA HA
The fact Iraq had WMD's and yellow cake is yes all I got !
10:47, i guess you miss the point. We knew Saddam had some weapons; the west gave them to him. But the idea that there was an organized push to create new weapons is absolute hogwash.
Yes we gave them weapons but they did have yellow cake as proven. The media had made up it's mind to ignore any proof after that point. Personally I'm glad we fought the war on their land instead of ours.
11:57, Bull. The media applauded Bush during the lead up to the war and only jumped on board once things didn't go as easy as planned. Which is the #1 reason conservatives sound dumb when screaming liberal msm. And obviously Bush missed the real threat which was/is Iran.
The real threat is Islam pick and choose which one is worse they all hate us. At the time Iraq made the most sense according to the released cables. You can't play Monday morning quarter back with today's situation which was far different from the date of the events.
1;02, no Mon. morning quarterback. The fact is that a hard look at the facts, not simply cherrypicking to support an ideaology, would have brought out a better choice. Bush failed to ask the hard questions. Meanwhile we knew that Iran supports Hamas/Hezbollah. We knew they were upgrading their missle and overall military technology. We knew they were seeking nuclear know-how. Instead of rocky intelligence, we had hard hitting facts of a buildup in Iran prior to the Iraq war. Face it, your boy took his eye off the ball. Now we've got our hands tied when dealing with these real threats.
Wrong again the intelligence reports from around the world all said the same thing to which Clinton, Gore , Kerry and yes Bush all agreed. These were the same intelligence sources that told us about Iran North Korea and so on. There's more than one rouge nation trying and developing nuclear weapons. Have you ever heard the phrase the fog of war? That means you never have a clear picture of what your enemies are up too but you make the best choice depending on your best information to which Bush did and was vindicated in doing so. We can't attack everybody at once!
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