Reading notes

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document — now known to be a crude forgery — that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.

What is startling in Wilson’s account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president’s office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this “evidence” of Iraq’s revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax.

Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war. …

This is not some minor dispute over a footnote to history but rather raises the possibility of one of the most egregious misrepresentations by a U.S. administration. What could be more cynical and impeachable than fabricating a threat of rogue nations or terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using that to sell a war?

[via comment to Daily Kos]

2003-09-28 update: Article now archived for a fee ($2.50) at LA Times archives and for free at Salon, The Nation, AlterNet, and Truthout.