by antiaristo » Sat Oct 15, 2005 5:42 pm
My favourite hobbyhorse is finally coming into focus over there. I just hope this leads to some questions about how, exactly, Britain is governed.<br><br>========================<br><br>The heart of the matter<br>By Swopa<br>Oct 15 2005 - 9:12am<br><br>Atrios muses this morning about Plamemania:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'm struck by something -- exactly why was it so necessary to "get" Wilson? It can't simply be the simply be about the "sixteen words" in the SOTU speech. It must be what all that pointed to - where those obviously forged documents came from...<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Anyone with an almost-photographic recall of what I've posted at Needlenose for the past year and a half would know that I made this point long ago. But, uh, since that definition likely doesn't include anyone besides me, let's refresh some memories.<br><br>As other observers have long since noted, what turned the Niger uranium story into a feeding frenzy in July 2003 wasn't that Joseph Wilson accused Dubya of saying something that wasn't true in his State of the Union speech -- it was that the Orwell Bush administration admitted it, something they had never done before and promptly decided never to do again.<br><br>So what prompted that isolated (and promptly orphaned) lapse of apparent honesty? The place to start looking is the precise moment it occurred, in a July 7th Ari Fleischer press briefing helpfully preserved by Joshua Marshall. Ari starts off in typically positive fashion, endorsing the State of the Union claim about uranium:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Q: Do you hold that the President -- when you look at the totality of the sentence that the President uttered that day on the subject, are you confident that he was correct?<br><br>FLEISCHER: Yes, I see nothing that goes broader that would indicate that there was no basis to the President's broader statement. But specifically on the yellow cake, the yellow cake for Niger, we've acknowledged that that information did turn out to be a forgery.<br><br>Q: The President's statement was accurate?<br><br>FLEISCHER: We see nothing that would dissuade us from the President's broader statement.<br><br>Q: Ari, that means that, indeed, you all believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from an African nation; is that correct?<br><br>FLEISCHER: <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>What the President said in his statement was that according to a British report they were trying to obtain uranium</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. When I answered the question it was, again, specifically about the Niger piece involving yellow cake.<br><br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:small;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Q: So you believe the British report that he was trying to obtain uranium from an African nation is true?<br><br>FLEISCHER: I'm sorry?</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>(Note: Insert sound effect of screeching brakes here, followed by car slamming into a brick wall.)<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Q: If you're hanging on the British report, you believe that that British report was true, you have no reason to believe --<br><br>FLEISCHER: I'm sorry, I see what David is asking. Let me back up on that and explain the President's statement again, or the answer to it.<br><br>The President's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake from Niger. The President made a broad statement. So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the President's broader statement, David. So, yes, the President' broader statement was based and predicated on the yellow cake from Niger.<br><br>Q: So it was wrong?<br><br>FLEISCHER: That's what we've acknowledged with the information on --<br><br>Q: The President's statement at the State of the Union was incorrect?<br><br>FLEISCHER: Because it was based on the yellow cake from Niger.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>You can tell how stunned the reporters are Ari's sudden change. Eventually, the one leading the questioning (David Sanger of the New York Times) all but pleads in disbelief for him to get back on the script:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Q: But, Ari, even if you said that the Niger thing was wrong, the next line has usually been that the President's statement was deliberately broader than Niger, it referred to all of Africa. The national intelligence estimate discusses other countries in Africa that there were attempts to purchase yellow cake from, or other sources of uranium --<br><br>FLEISCHER: Let me do this, David. On your specific question I'm going to come back and post the specific answer on the broader statement on the speech<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END-->.<br><br>The "specific answer" that was posted later, as Josh Marshall's subsequent post explained, was the admission that the uranium sentence "should not have been included in the State of the Union speech."<br><br>I wrote in June 2004 about the question that stopped Ari cold, asking if the U.S. believed the British intelligence:<br><br>The stonewalling answer to give here would have been "yes" -- <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>but apparently Fleischer knew that was a line he couldn't cross</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. And this wasn't just a momentary slip-up in the press briefing; Fleischer eventually escaped the subject by saying he'd check with his superiors and respond later. The result of that consultation (which, again, could have been a stonewalling "We stand by our statements") was the admission that the uranium claim shouldn't have been in the State of the Union speech Dubya gave in 2003.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>So, why were the Bushites so terrified of anyone taking a close look at "the British report" . . . would discovering the source of the British information be even more damaging -- in terms of revealing the intentional let's-go-to-war scam -- than the "sixteen words" admission was?</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>That's still the question. Giving in to Wilson's criticism started a media firestorm about how the sentence got into the speech in the first place -- but apparently the Bushites preferred that to having people take a closer look at the "British report."<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Maybe, then, you'd think that we ought to browbeat the press into going ahead and taking a closer look at it anyway.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2097">www.needlenose.com/node/view/2097</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>==================<br><br>What's so terrifying?<br>I'll tell you what's so terrifying. That the British Government will be found to have laundered the "intelligence" on behalf of the Bush administration.<br><br>Bush said that "The British Government has learned...". We all know he was referring to the first "dossier" published in September, which did indeed cover so called efforts by Iraq to obtain uranium.<br><br>That dossier was written by Alastair Campbell. They'll tell you it was written by John Scarlett but that's not true. Campbell even chaired the crucial meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee on 9 September 2002*. And don't forget that Campbell was vested with royal prerogative powers, which gave him the legal right to order around all government employees in the name of Her Majesty.<br><br>But look at what was happening that summer. Propaganda units were set up on both sides of the Atlantic, headed by Rove and Campbell. The co-ordination between the two was intense. Is it really surprising that Campbell put into the British dossier was what was required over the other side of the pond? In other words, the WHIG knew EXACTLY what was the provenance of the uranium information in that document.<br><br>So when they were checked by the CIA they simply did an end run around them WITH EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION, by citing the "British Government". Same data; TWO authorities; one authority (United States) taken down by the CIA; one authority (British Government) remains standing; British Government cited in SOTU.<br>It's so obvious.<br><br>*There is lots of contemporary data in my letters in data dump. See especially what I wrote to Andrew Gilligan ("Brian Hutton's Phoney Circus") and to Janice Kelly, David's widow. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=antiaristo>antiaristo</A> at: 10/15/05 3:45 pm<br></i>