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George Tenet's Mea Culpa Over Forged Niger Docs Backfires Bush Shot From the Lip Media and Political Response Swift and Merciless Cheney and Rice Move Into the Crosshairs BLOOD IN THE WATER Watergate II by Michael C. Ruppert [© Copyright 2002, From the Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be copied or distributed for non-profit purposes only. MAY NOT be posted in any Internet website without express written authorization.] July 15, 2003, 0100 PDT (FTW) - The speed with which CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility last Friday for clearing George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union Speech containing the bogus Iraq-uranium statement based upon forged documents was matched by the speed with which major news agencies - many of which had already been serving as conduits for CIA leaks - released stories that guaranteed deeper and more hostile probes. The writing appears to be on the wall for a beleaguered and disarrayed presidency, as key administration officials including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice either wittingly or unwittingly line up like chess pieces to take the fall for a doomed King. A multitude of stories appearing within hours of the Bush/Rice statements and Tenet's "confession" disclosed that the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) had successfully and personally argued for the removal of a similar line three months before the State-of-the-Union speech. His admission is not credible. Statements by both Bush and departing press spokesman Ari Fleischer that the matter is now closed will likely go down as wishful and quite possibly delusional thinking. Famous last words. Recalled is the line from Watergate's John Dean, "There is a cancer growing on the Presidency." This is the kind of cancer that eats official after official until there is nothing left between it and the King. The deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of intelligence data about Iraq is much broader than a single line in the President's speech, and the reliance on that lie by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell - both before and after the speech, and after it was known that the intelligence was bogus - is already being dragged into the light. The noose that will ultimately hang George W. Bush is a meticulous and carefully crafted official record compiled by California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) that has been in place since last March of this year. On Sunday July 13, Britain's Independent, signaling a very rough road ahead for Prime Minister Tony Blair published a story titled "Twenty Lies About the War". The top two lies listed were that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and that Iraq had been working with al Qaeda. The entire story is located at: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008. Every British and American assertion about Iraq is now on the table. So is 9/11. And there is no way out for either Blair or Bush. It is critical to understand what last Friday's statement addressed, and what it did not. Tenet's ultimate position on the line in Bush's based-upon-fiction Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium was that "the statement was factually correct because the British government had released a report saying so." This is the same position taken by Rice. Since there is a clear record that George Tenet, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the State Department all knew that the charge was unfounded for months before the speech, this amounts to Tenet, Rice and Bush stating that the line was included after it was known that it was false, only because of a technicality. Six-year-old children deceive better than this. That position is an admission of intent to deceive the American people and the world. Tenet's statement itself begs the question, "Well, if you knew it was false, why did you sign off on it?" Secondly, there is a clear record showing that not only were the documents on which the allegations were based known to be forged well in advance of the speech, it had been demonstrated clearly that there was no other evidence supporting the claims. Tony Blair's assertions that he still believes the allegations "based upon separate intelligence which he has not shared with the US" are ludicrous, especially in light of the fact that the British government was at the time unaware that Vice President Cheney had ordered the dispatch of retired US Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV to personally investigate in February 2002. Wilson's recent statements on Meet The Press, to the New York Times and in TIME make that clear. As TIME reported on July 13, just two days after the Bush gambit, Wilson, with no knowledge of the forged documents which had surfaced through the Italian government in late 2001, returned from Niger in March 2002 after conducting a thorough investigation and concluded that the sales or negotiations had not taken place. Wilson said that, "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there." As retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern has pointed out, it is ludicrous to expect that Cheney sent Wilson to investigate, and then did not want a report when Wilson returned. Yet, that is the Vice President's position. TIME wrote: Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue. When he returned to Washington in early March, Wilson gave an oral report about his trip to both CIA and State Department officials. On March 9 of last year, the CIA circulated a memo on the yellowcake story that was sent to the White House, summarizing Wilson's assessment. Wilson was not the only official looking into the matter. Nine days earlier, the State Department's intelligence arm had sent a memo directly to Secretary of State Colin Powell that also disputed the Italian intelligence. Greg Thielmann, then a high-ranking official at State's intelligence research unit, told TIME that it was not in Niger's self-interest to sell the Iraqis destabilizing ore. 'A whole lot of things told us that the report was bogus.' Shooting from the Lip Contrary to press stories indicating that Friday's African statements by Bush and Rice pointing fingers at Tenet for the crime were well-considered in advance, it is much more likely that an increasingly unstable Bush shot from the lip as he responded (again) to barrages of questions about his allegations that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Niger for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. "I gave my speech to the nation and it was cleared by the intelligence agencies," said Bush. A short time later, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was holding an unusual and hastily arranged press conference aboard Air Force One that many reports later described as a full broadside against DCI Tenet. It was a moment the press had apparently been waiting for. Confronted by official statements that he was responsible for the inclusion of the Niger/uranium references Tenet had but two choices. He could issue a confession that would ultimately not stand, or he could call George W. Bush an out-and-out liar. The latter would have crippled the US government. Tenet's actions have been described as falling on his sword. Such a description is inaccurate because Tenet is far from dead. He has suffered only a flesh wound while the administration itself may be mortally wounded. For saving the government from an immediate and unavoidable constitutional crisis, Tenet, a shrewd political player who had previously served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, will be viewed as a hero by some inside the Beltway. He may have to offer to resign at some point, and may choose to do so with this event as the pretext, rather than face heavy scrutiny for a bothersome list of contradictions about the 9/11 attacks which are now fully back on the table and soon to be under renewed scrutiny. Remember, Tenet holds the secrets to 9/11, which may explain why a post-foot-in-mouth Bush is kissing Tenet's clandestine buttocks in public and reaffirming his confidence in him. Waiting for the Moment It was almost as if the press had been waiting for the moment and had their stories already in the works. In fact, a number of stories preceding Friday's presidential foot-chewing session show that - as described in FTW's two-part series Beyond Bush - the inertia had already turned. July 6 - In an op-ed piece written for The New York Times, Joseph Wilson wrote that the CIA had sent him to Niger at the request of Cheney. Wilson also wrote, (putting British intelligence and Tony Blair on the spot) that, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Niger's uranium industry is run by European, Japanese and Nigerian companies and monitored by agencies like the IAEA. Wilson wrote, "There's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." July 7 - A scathing editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle by Harley Sorenson titled "The Madness of King George" lambasted the president for his statements to Ha'aretz that he received direct instructions from God. Sorenson wrote, "I'm becoming convinced that our president, the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger, is a bona fide nutcase." July 8 - CNN, after the White House admitted that the assertion was inaccurate, wrote "It remains unclear why senior administration officials did not know about Wilson's findings to the CIA that the reports... were bogus... "A British panel also found intelligence on the Iraq allegations was inaccurate, according to reports." Blair was already cooked. "US officials said a report citing Wilson's conclusions was given to the White House and other agencies nearly a year before the president's State of the Union address." July 10 - CBS publishes a lengthy and devastating poll headlined "US Losing Control in Iraq". In it, a wide range of questions showed that the Bush administration is losing support everywhere and on all major issues. Ready, Set, Go! After the fateful statements from Bush and Rice, the reactions came swiftly and unequivocally. July 11 - First out of the gate was MSNBC's Michael Moran who has written some compelling stories since 9/11. "The familiar drip, drip, drip of a brewing political scandal echoes through the power centers of Washington and London these days." Moran quoted a source close to the Bush family as saying, "They have to get by this and they have to do it very soon." Moran then nailed Rice in a lie by quoting her statement that, if George Tenet had any objections about the uranium claim, "he did not make them known." In fact, he had done so three months before and in a variety of methods. Moran then re-emphasized a damning statement from Pentagon Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who stupidly admitted in a May Vanity Fair interview that the WMD issue had been selected (instead of oil) as an issue of convenience on which the war could be sold to the American people. Moran then roasted Blair's goose by pointing out the public defection of former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and his statements that the pretext for the whole war was a concoction. July 12 - CNN in an early follow-up story reported that Senate Intelligence Chairman and Bush loyalist Pat Roberts was criticizing Tenet for "extremely sloppy handling" of the uranium mess and that, "Roberts also accused the agency of orchestrating a 'campaign of press leaks' to discredit the president." The CNN story went on state, "Tenet said top administration officials - including Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - were never briefed on CIA's skepticism... Nor did he tell members of the administration last fall." Now we have Tenet calling Wilson a liar. Then CNN chose to headline the concluding section of the story with a quote from Democratic challenger Howard Dean, This is "beginning to sound a little like Watergate." July 12 - CBS News reported that many members of Congress were not satisfied with Tenet's statement. It then quoted a former National Security Council staff member as saying, "I anticipate that George Tenet... will probably be sacrificed on this one. He has taken the fall, and I think the administration will wait to see whether this flies. I'd doubt (it will)." CBS then quoted former Republican White House staffer David Gergen as saying, "Somebody in the administration, not in the agency, wanted to put this in the speech and got the CIA to sign off on it, even though everybody knew within the US government that there were real doubts about the validity of the report. And that's what constitutes the misleading quality of it." July 12 - The Washington Times of London ran a story titled "Bush Team Split As CIA Becomes The Fall Guy". It said, "The first salvo in what degenerated into open warfare within the Bush Administration was fired by the President himself... It capped one of the worst weeks Mr. Bush has endured since the September 11 attacks and put the... White House on the defensive as it struggled to protect the President from allegations that he may have knowingly lied to the American public... In anonymous briefings to the US media on Thursday CIA officials insisted that the agency explicitly told the White House that the claim was false before the speech." July 12 - In a scathing editorial titled "The Uranium Fiction", The New York Times wrote, "We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program... but the matter will not end there." After pointing to the Wilson investigation and reports the Times wrote, "The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat." July 12 - Eleanor Clift writing in Newsweek titled her story "No Mistakes Were Made". Her lead paragraph bespoke the escalating tone of criticism for Bush et al. "President Bush is certain he did the right thing by going to war in Iraq. Bush never second-guesses himself, a trait that permeates his administration and contains the seeds of his undoing... He can't let cracks appear or the whole edifice could crumble. The moment Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, he was caught in his own hubris." Clift then took apart the administrations boasts that it had a broad international coalition supporting the invasion quoting a democratic lawmaker as saying, "I'm not interested in three Latvians in bio-chem suits." July 12 - The Associated Press, a little more reserved in its reporting, stated, "[Senate Intelligence Chair Pat] Roberts charged that unnamed intelligence officials were telling the press that the CIA warned the White House that the information about Iraq trying to obtain uranium from Africa were unfounded. But as late as ten days before the State of the Union speech, Roberts said the CIA was still saying that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa." That's interesting. Where's the record of that Senator? July 13 - In a page 1 story of the Sunday edition of The Washington Post, veteran reporter and CIA conduit Walter Pincus fired back at Bush. His headline was "CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October." In describing how Tenet had previously successfully intervened to have an October reference to the uranium removed from a Bush speech, Pincus wrote, "Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used... Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged. If Hadley knew, then Condoleezza Rice knew. And her finger pointing is an outright lie. Pincus continued, "It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech... But it is clear from the new disclosure about Tenet's intervention... that the controversy continues to boil, and as new facts emerge a different picture is being presented than the administration has given to date..." "...Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq." Pincus then dropped a bombshell. He reported that a senior administration official had stated, "seeking uranium from Niger was never in the drafts". He then followed it up by stating, "A senior administration official said Bush's chief speechwriter... does not remember who wrote the line that has wound up causing... so much grief." July 13 - The New York Times, calling the matter a "political storm" drew the noose tighter by reporting that "[Tenet's] involvement [in pulling the statement from the October speech] indicates that both he and the White House were aware of the doubts about the intelligence three months before the State of the Union speech. "With the matter threatening to undermine Mr. Bush's support at a time when American soldiers continue to be killed in Iraq...the White House was clearly seeking to put the matter to rest." In a new twist, the Times also reported that, "After CIA officials raised concerns about the wording in an early draft the speech, the White House changed it to make it vaguer and to attribute it to Britain." Then the Times raised the specter that Tenet and Colin Powell might have set the administration up. "Participants in the process note that Mr. Tenet reviewed the same material with Mr. Powell as they prepared the presentation to the United Nations. The two men decided together that the story of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium... could not be supported. But Powell is not off the hook. (See below) July 13 - The Los Angeles Times checked in with a major story that said, "But the administration effort to have Tenet accept responsibility triggered new recriminations on Saturday - including a sharp rebuke from a key Democrat on Capitol Hill - that suggest the issue is far from closed... "...the administration continued to face persistent questions. "Senator John D. 'Jay' Rockefeller IV (D-WVa) vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the White House has yet to explain how discredited claims about Iraqi efforts... made their way into the speech to begin with..." "Tenet and the CIA 'have been made to take the fall to shield the president and his advisers,' Rockefeller said, adding that he believes that the National Security Council pressed to include the allegation even though it 'knew the underlying information was not credible.'" "Rockefeller directed particularly pointed criticism at National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, saying her very public role in pinning the blame on Tenet is 'dishonorable.'" "'Why does this all fall on George Tenet? Because it's convenient,' Rockefeller said. 'My guess is [Rice] had a lot more to do with this mistake than Tenet did.'" July 13 - TIME Magazine took the unraveling process further in a story titled, "A Question of Trust". In questioning whether Bush's credibility has taken a major hit, the article by Michael Duffy and James Carney pointed out that before the Friday statements by Bush and Rice the admission of the "error" in the speech had "instead sparked a bewildering four days of changing explanations and unusually nasty finger pointing by the normally disciplined Bush team." In a statement that suggests to this writer that the original forged documents might have been planted by the CIA or the National Security Council (remember Iran-Contra?), TIME wrote, "Finally, in late 2001 [just after 9/11], the Italian government came into possession of evidence suggesting that Iraq was again trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger. Rome's source provided half a dozen letters and other documents alleged to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale. The Italians' evidence was shared with both Britain and the US. "When it got to Washington, the Iraq-Niger uranium report caught the eye of someone important: Vice President Dick Cheney." Then TIME began the process of naming names by listing top CIA analyst Alan Foley and presidential aide Robert Joseph as playing key roles in the battle over whether to use the information or not. When the hearings start, just as with Watergate, these men will be among the first to testify, and their testimony will begin the long and excruciating death of the Bush presidency. THE BRICK WALL The brick wall against which all of the administration's chess pieces will be crushed was outlined in an unanswered March 17 letter from California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) to President Bush. The record laid out by Waxman also makes it perfectly clear that Secretary of State Colin Powell is as implicated as any member of the Bush administration. Before presenting Waxman's irrefutable record, it is important to ask one question: Who or what is capable of orchestrating events to remove the Bush presidency and yet leave the US with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, a National Security Strategy calling for pre-emptive attacks on foreign powers, Total Information Awareness, and, above all, Iraqi oil and the proceeds of Afghan heroin sales flowing through US banks? It isn't Henry Waxman, that's for sure. To view the original letter, please visit: http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_nuclear_evidence.htm A portion of Waxman's letter reads: Use of the Evidence by U.S. Officials The evidence that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from an African country was first revealed by the British government on September 24, 2002, when Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 50-page report on Iraqi efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As the New York Times reported in a front-page article, one of the two "chief new elements" in the report was the claim that Iraq had "sought to acquire uranium in Africa that could be used to make nuclear weapons."1 This evidence subsequently became a significant part of the U.S. case against Iraq. On December 7, Iraq filed its weapons declaration with the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. response relied heavily on the evidence that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa. For example, this is how the New York Times began its front-page article on December 13 describing the U.S. response: American intelligence agencies have reached a preliminary conclusion that Iraq's 12,000 page declaration of its weapons program fails to account for chemical and biological agents missing when inspectors left Iraq four years ago, American officials and United Nations diplomats said today. In addition, Iraq's declaration on its nuclear program, they say, leaves open a host of questions. Among them is why Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa in recent years.2 The official U.S. response was provided on December 19, when Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the Security Council. As the Los Angeles Times reported, "A one‑page State Department fact sheet... lists what Washington considers the key omissions and deceptions in Baghdad's Dec. 7 weapons declaration."3 One of the eight "key omissions and deceptions" was the failure to explain Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Specifically, the State Department fact sheet contains the following points under the heading "Nuclear Weapons": "The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" A copy of this fact sheet is enclosed with this letter. The Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Africa were deemed significant enough to be included in your State of the Union address to Congress. You stated: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."4 As the Washington Post reported the next day, "the president seemed quite specific as he ticked off the allegations last night, including the news that Iraq had secured uranium from Africa for the purpose of making nuclear bombs."5 A day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at a news briefing that Iraq "recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."6 Knowledge of the Unreliability of the Evidence The world first learned that the evidence linking Iraq to attempts to purchase uranium from Africa was forged from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei. On March 7, Director El Baradei reported to the U.N. Security Council: Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents-which formed the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger-are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.7 Recent accounts in the news media have provided additional details. According to the Washington Post, the faked evidence included "a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger."8 The article stated that the forgers "made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written."9 CNN reported: one of the documents purports to be a letter signed by Tandjia Mamadou, the president of Niger, talking about the uranium deal with Iraq. On it [is] a childlike signature that is clearly not his. Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger for 14 years.10 U.S. intelligence officials had doubts about the veracity of the evidence long before Director El Baradei's report. The Los Angeles Times reported on March 15 that "the CIA first heard allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in late 2001" when "the existence of the documents was reported to [the CIA] second-or third-hand." The Los Angeles Times quotes one CIA official as saying: "We included that in some of our reporting, although it was all caveated because we had concerns about the accuracy of that information."11 The Washington Post reported on March 13: "The CIA... had questions about 'whether they were accurate,' said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction."12 There have been suggestions by some Administration officials that there may be other evidence besides the forged documents that shows Iraq tried to obtain uranium from an African country. For instance, CIA officials recently stated that "U.S. concerns regarding a possible uranium agreement between Niger and Iraq were not based solely on the documents which are now known to be fraudulent." The CIA provided this other information to the IAEA along with the forged documents. After reviewing this complete body of evidence, the IAEA stated: "we have found to date no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.13 Ultimately, the IAEA concluded that "these specific allegations are unfounded."14 Questions These facts raise troubling questions. It appears that at the same time that you, Secretary Rumsfeld, and State Department officials were citing Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa as a crucial part of the case against Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials regarded this very same evidence as unreliable. If true, this is deeply disturbing: it would mean that your Administration asked the U.N. Security Council, the Congress, and the American people to rely on information that your own experts knew was not credible. Your statement to Congress during the State of the Union, in particular, raises a host of questions. The statement is worded in a way that suggests it was carefully crafted to be both literally true and deliberately misleading at the same time. The statement itself -"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" -may be technically accurate, since this appears to be the British position. But given what the CIA knew at the time, the implication you intended -that there was credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa -was simply false. To date, the White House has avoided explaining why the Administration relied on this forged evidence in building its case against Iraq. The first Administration response, which was provided to the Washington Post, was "we fell for it."15 But this is no longer credible in light of the information from the CIA. Your spokesman, Ari Fleischer, was asked about this issue at a White House news briefing on March 14, but as the following transcript reveals, he claimed ignorance and avoided the question: Q: Ari, as the president said in his State of the Union address, the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. And since then, the IAEA said that those were forged documents- Mr. Fleischer: I'm sorry, whose statement was that? Q: The President, in his State of the Union address. Since then, the IAEA has said those were forged documents. Was the administration aware of any doubts about these documents, the authenticity of the documents, from any government agency or department before it was submitted to the IAEA? Mr. Fleisher: These are matters that are always reviewed with an eye toward the various information that comes in and is analyzed by a variety of different people. The President's concerns about Iraq come from multiple places, involving multiple threats that Iraq can possess, and these are matters that remain discussed. Thank you [end of briefing].18 Plainly, more explanation is needed. I urge you to provide to me and to the relevant committees of Congress a full accounting of what you knew about the reliability of the evidence linking Iraq to uranium in Africa, when you knew this, and why you and senior officials in the Administration presented the evidence to the U.N. Security Council, the Congress, and the American people without disclosing the doubts of the CIA. In particular, I urge you to address: 1. Whether CIA officials communicated their doubts about the credibility of the forged evidence to other Administration officials, including officials in the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the White House; 2. Whether the CIA had any input into the "Fact Sheet" distributed by the State Department on December 19, 2002; and 3. Whether the CIA reviewed your statement in the State of the Union address regarding Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa and, if so, what the CIA said about the statement. Given the urgency of the situation, I would appreciate an expeditious response to these questions. Sincerely, Henry A. Waxman Ranking Minority Member Endnotes 1Blair Says Iraqis Could Launch Chemical Warheads in Minutes, New York Times (Sept. 25, 2002). 2Threats and Responses: Report by Iraq, Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say, New York Times (Dec. 13, 2002) (emphasis added). 3U.S. Issues a List of the Shortcomings in Iraqi Arms Declaration, Los Angeles Times (Dec. 20, 2002) (emphasis added). 4The President, State of the Union Address (Jan. 28, 2003) (online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html ) (emphasis added). 5A War Cry Tempered by Eloquence, Washington Post (Jan. 29, 2003). 6Press Conference with Donald Rumsfeld, General Richard Myers, Cable News Network (Jan. 29, 2003) (emphasis added). 7IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update (Mar. 7, 2002) (online at www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/ 2003/ebsp2003n006.shtm1). 8Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake; UN. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged, Washington Post (Mar. 8, 2003). 9 id. 10UN. Saying Documents Were Faked, CNN American Morning with Paula Zahn (Mar. 14, 2003). 11Italy May Have Been Misled by Fake Iraq Arms Papers, US. Says, Los Angeles Times (Mar. 15, 2003). 12FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans, Washington Post (Mar. 13, 2003). 13IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, supra note 7 (emphasis added). 14Id. (emphasis added). 15Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake, supra note 8. Did you like this story? Become a member of From The Wilderness today. Support FTW and Independent Media and STAY INFORMED!
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