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July 11, 2003
Sixteen Words
I enjoy being an amatuer geopolitical pundit as much as the next guy, but you've really got to wonder what kind of thought goes into the headlines these days. I suggested the other day that some open source intelligence would be a good thing and as of yet Cryptome doesn't have the unclassified docs. But even from Tenet's statement, it's clear that a lot of the spew going on about this African Uranium is a bit out of perspective.
According to the CIA, Iraq had 550 tons of yellowcake just before the war. This is about double what it had a dozen years ago. Recall the Matrix-Churchill scandal. Back then Time reported:
After the Osirak attack, Iraq tried to realize its ambitions by buying bomb- grade material from underground suppliers. In 1982 Iraqi agents paid $60 million to a team of Italian-based smugglers who claimed to have access to stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. According to U.S. officials, the smugglers' offer was a fraud, and the Iraqis walked away from it empty- handed. Stung by those setbacks, Baghdad turned to a third means of joining the nuclear club: the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade level in gas centrifuges. The centrifuges take uranium-bearing ore or a mixture called yellowcake and separate out the 3% of uranium 235, which is fissionable, from the 97% of uranium 238, which is not. Iraq is known to possess 250 tons of yellowcake, most of it purchased in the 1970s from Brazil, China and Niger. In recent years the country has also begun producing its own yellowcake from mines in northern Iraq.
Tenet says clearly that the thrust of intelligence findings on Iraq was not on what they might do with Niger. That emphasis falls to a speechwriter in the West Wing.
In October, the Intelligence Community (IC) produced a classified, 90 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD programs. There is a lengthy section in which most agencies of the Intelligence Community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Let me emphasize, the NIE’s Key Judgments cited six reasons for this assessment; the African uranium issue was not one of them.
It's clear to me that Tenet has done his duty and that some Congressmen may be doubling over themselves at this late date, sniffing the wind. But they were informed and can't pretend that they were out of the loop either. The CIA no doubt will have documents to prove it themselves adequate to the task of vetting intelligence, but not of presidential speechwriting. Why should they be?
Bush himself needs to take responsibility for this. It was his speech. It is absolutely ridiculous to place blame anywhere but on his head. Now we all know he's the picture of mediocrity when it comes to the spoken word, and his writing is probably no better. My nickel says Rumsfeld made him say it. But Bush's puppet factor is already discounted into the net present value of his presidency. Fudge all you want, he said the words. They are his sixteen words. He takes the blame or he's a weasel.
But quite frankly there's not much blame to go around. Iraq was in material breach. The substance of the intelligence from the CIA, Blix' inspectors and international opinion are all in agreement. Pacifists are reaching mighty low to suggest that the absence of a Nigerien connection mitigates the substance of that breach.
I wonder, as an aside, if any of the people complaining about Halliburton and other fastracked federal contractors have any idea what it takes to dispose of 550 tons of uranium ore?
Update: William Saletan Agrees
Posted by mbowen at July 11, 2003 08:44 PM
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