YELLOWCAKE & THE HALF BAKED CASE FOR WAR (Vanity Fair on NIGER DOCS & WH)

[kpete]

The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed
The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links to the White House
By CRAIG UNGER

It's a crisp, clear winter morning in Rome. In the neighborhood between the Vatican and the Olympic Stadium, a phalanx of motor scooters is parked outside a graffiti-scarred 10-story apartment building. No. 10 Via Antonio Baiamonte is home to scores of middle-class families, and to the embassy for the Republic of Niger, the impoverished West African nation that was once a French colony.

Though it may be unprepossessing, the Niger Embassy is the site of one of the great mysteries of our times. On January 2, 2001, an embassy official returned there after New Year's Day and discovered that the offices had been robbed. Little of value was missing—a wristwatch, perfume, worthless documents, embassy stationery, and some official stamps bearing the seal of the Republic of Niger. Nevertheless, the consequences of the robbery were so great that the Watergate break-in pales by comparison.

A few months after the robbery, Western intelligence analysts began hearing that Saddam Hussein had sought yellowcake—a concentrated form of uranium which, if enriched, can be used in nuclear weapons—from Niger. Next came a dossier purporting to document the attempted purchase of hundreds of tons of uranium by Iraq. Information from the dossier and, later, the papers themselves made their way from Italian intelligence to, at various times, the C.I.A., other Western intelligence agencies, the U.S. Embassy in Rome, the State Department, and the White House, as well as several media outlets. Finally, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, George W. Bush told the world, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Two months later, the United States invaded Iraq, starting a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and has irrevocably de-stabilized the strategically vital Middle East. Since then, the world has learned not just that Bush's 16-word casus belli was apparently based on the Niger documents but also that the documents were forged.

much more:
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060606fege02

[jazzjunkysue]

1. K&R

This is the point: They'll fake anything to fake their reasons for their fake governing.

It's all about the power and money, and how to look like they're really legitimate.

Wake up, sheeples. They'll do anything. Anything.

[faithnotgreed]

2. there is not a single thing that is too outrageous

for me to believe that they did for gain

not a single thing

[Raster]

6. from forging evidence to aiding and abetting terrorists...

I'm with you. I put nothing past these bastards. Absolutely nothing.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. how bout this?

only thing that makes me wonder is WTF happened to the passengers, cause there was apparently almost NO debris, including titanium engine bits

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flight77.htm

I have no idea how the stuff on this site holds up, and I know lots of people feel Griffin is nuts, but, as has been said here, does anyone doubt that they're capable of ANYthing?

lookit the freakin WAR they started, and the NEXT one looming on the horizon....

[Gabi Hayes]

9. and why isn't there an outcry for THIS?

1 release the missing frames of the pentagon's cctv video

2 release the cctv video of the "mysterious hotel" (the Sheraton National ?)

3 release the NEXCOMM/CITGO-gas station video

4 release other videos or photos like the Virginia department of transports,
or from the sites over which flight 77 flew on 9/11

5 ask the BBC, public media of the United Kingdom, USA ally, to release the images shown during Ehud Barak's interview on sept. 11

6 allow independent experts to examine the debris of the crash on the pentagon, with witnesses having gathered these debris to identicate them

7 make some holes in the newly brought materials on the pentagon helicopter field, down to the original soil, and verify that there is no uranium on it.

[Hoping4Change]

20. I have never heard about the Barak interview. How would it

pertain to 9-11?

[symbolman]

21. You haven't seen the pics with the debris?

I saw them finally and decided, Yep, it was a plane.. since before I never saw suitcases, wheel housings, engines.. then I DID see those photos so it makes it extremely possible that a plane DID smack into that building..

I did 4 years in the Air Force and have seen crash sites, don't see any problem with the story as it stands.

NO jets being scrambled on the other hand is very bothersome to me, no one is going to make me believe the entire eastern seaboard was unguarded by the USAF..

[kpete]

11. An you are absolutely right!

[tinrobot]

3. Jan 2, 2001?

Hmmmm... Clinton was technically still in charge when the robbery took place.

So, does that mean that the Bushbots were actively working on invading Iraq before he even took office? What scum.

[Tin Man]

4. very interesting...

It might be that the January 1, 2001 robbery was unrelated to the forged document(s) purporting the existance of an Iraq-Niger yellowcake link.

If I remember correctly, the forgeries were ridiculously flawed - at the time the docs first came to light, it was possible to google the names of the signators and determine that their dates of office didn't correlate to the date of the docs.

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. As soon as the Selection was guaranteed

the PNAC went into high gear.

They had been planning for this for years, if not decades.

[Spazito]

5. Thanks for posting, have saved to read later! n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

7. House of Bush, House of Saud guy?

remember the big argument about who let whom escape from the US right after 911? He said we let the entire Saudi royal family go, but Richard Clarke, IIRC, did a 180 on that, defending a pal of his in the FBI

[lala_rawraw]

15. Yes

[kpete]

12. re: this article-

Niewert at Orcinus has written a good article about the Unger article in VF on “black psy-ops” http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/06/targets-of-psy-war.html

[H2O Man]

13. It's interesting

to note that you posted a WSJ article attacking Mr. Fitzgerald earlier; in this article, Ledeen's connections with the WSJ are well documented. Small world!

[kpete]

14. Ledeen's name

seems to come up everywhere I look, under every dust bunny...

[yellerpup]

16. This gave me a shiver...

"And you build in subtle, nuanced errors so you can say, 'We would never misspell that.' If it's very cleverly done, it's a chess game, not checkers." I flashed on the anthrax attack on Democratic legislators and The Liberal Media.

[NastyDiaper]

17. Michael A. Ledeen

These AEI freaks are the ones who put shrub on his strings. Can Ledeen be flipped?

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1261

[lala_rawraw]

19. You need to check his history more, then

you will have the answer:)

[npincus]

18. is it on the newstands yet?