war resolution justified on grounds bush was told were false

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

___

Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889



...... Forwarded Message .......
From: Gordon Cook <cook () cookreport com>
To: dave () farber net, dewayne () warpspeed com, jock () jockgill com
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 15:54:15 -0400
Subj: war resolution justified on grounds bush was told were false

For IP or dewayne net

An extraordinary 10,300 word article from tomorrow's New York Times  

  Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq
By DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JEFF GERTH  

  This article was reported by David Barstow, William J. Broad and 
Jeff Gerth, and was written by Mr.
Barstow.  

   

  In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of 
the Bush administration gave a
series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam 
Hussein was rebuilding his
nuclear weapons program. In a speech to veterans that August, Vice 
President Dick Cheney said Mr.
Hussein could have an atomic bomb "fairly soon." President Bush, 
addressing the United Nations the
next month, said there was "little doubt" about Mr. Hussein's 
appetite for nuclear arms.  

   

  The United States intelligence community had not yet concluded that 
Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear
weapons program. But as the vice president told a group of Wyoming 
Republicans that September, the
United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of 
high-strength aluminum, tubes
that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi 
uranium centrifuges, before some
were seized at the behest of the United States.  

   

  The tubes quickly became a critical exhibit in the administration's 
brief against Iraq. As the only
physical evidence the United States of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear 
ambitions, they gave credibility to
the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. 
The tubes were "only really suited
for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's 
national security adviser, asserted
on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a 
mushroom cloud."  

  But before Ms. Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the 
government's foremost nuclear
experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear 
weapons at all, an examination
by The New York Times has found. As early as 2001, her staff had been 
told that these experts, at the
Energy Department, believed the tubes were probably intended for 
small artillery rockets, according to
four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and a senior 
administration official, all of whom spoke
on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the 
information.  

http://nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?
hp=&pagewanted=print&position=  

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