Buying Uranium in Africa

After the 2003 State of the Union, the Bush team came under pressure because of the President's reference to the Niger uranium claim (the President actually said "Africa", not Niger).

Well, the British have concluded that the intelligence was sound {this link will self-destruct in 60 secs} and that Iraq was part of a uranium smuggling operation in Niger.

So, the Bush team is off the hook on this one, yes?

No!!!

There are still BIG questions regarding this matter. Such as

• Why didn't they consider that someone might circulate a forgery in order to create confusion to cover-up their smuggling?
• How are we dealing with intelligence that comes from our "allies" such as the British, Italians or even the French?
• Why did they send that guy Wilson to investigate this claim? He obviously wasn't that reliable?

I think this revelation supports Blair. Sure, it's easy now to say that Saddam (apparently) had no nuke program, but in early 2003 we didn't know Libya had one nor did we know that Iran's was so advanced. Look at S. Korea, the Clinton admin thought that they had resolved that one in 1994.

So, erring on the side of caution - that is, Saddam is a bad guy, he wants nukes and he'll eventually get & use them even if only as a threat - seems reasonable to me. But blowing off your allies, falling for a 11 year-old's trick (don't these guys have children, if they did they'd really understand duplicitousness) and sending an ambassador to do a spy's job is nearly dereliction of duty.