statements that Iraq was not attempting to acquire uranium from Niger, as Bush erroneously claimed in his 2003 State of the Union Address.

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

At this point the CIA also had received "several intelligence reports" alleging that Iraq wanted to buy uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and from Somalia, as well as from Niger. The Intelligence Committee concluded that "it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency reporting and other available intelligence."

I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention.

The CIA's DO gave the former ambassador's information a grade of "good," which means that it added to the IC's body of understanding on the issue,................................ ..... He said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting.

After you have noted that the Niger uranium connection was in fact based on intelligence that has turned out to be sound, you may also note that this heated moral tone ("thuggish," "gang") is now quite absent from the story. It turns out that the person who put Valerie Plame's identity into circulation was a staunch foe of regime change in Iraq. Oh, that's all right, then. But you have to laugh at the way Corn now so neutrally describes his own initial delusion as one that was "seized on by administration critics."

I have speculated for a while that Armitage is the person Patrick Fitzgerald refers to in pleadings as "the innocent accused." [Again here.]

The Brits say they believe SH sought uranium ore in Africa. Are they wrong? If not, what about quoting them is wrong? And if they are wrong but don't know it, saying this is they believe to be true is correct. They believe it. The crux of this is that the Brits still believe it and Bush said they do. You'd have to prove the Brits didn't say it. And it wasn't the adminstration, TL. It was the CIA, Tenet, to be specific.

Uranium from Niger British intelligence on the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger was "credible". There was not conclusive evidence Iraq actually purchased the material, nor did the government make that claim.

There were plenty of people (State Department and others) who expressed serious doubts about the Niger uranium story, but Bush chose to ignore them.

If you want to hang your hat on semantics to make the point that Bush didn't technically lie (he just mislead) during the SOTU, that's fine - whatever gets you through the night.

But what's plain is the fact that Bush and his administration engaged in some pretty serious intelligence cherrypicking, thereby misleading the American public (by providing them with an incomplete, biased view of the situation) and hyping the threat Iraq posed to the US.

I hardly see this as any vindication of Bush.

This revelation doesn't put an end to the story. It increases the likelihood that there was a conspiracy to out Plame and to cover it up. The 800 lb gorilla in the corner of the room is that if Armitage immediately went to State, and then to the FBI and truthfully disclosed his role, there would - in effect - be no there here - and that would have been the end of it. But rather, the investigation deepened and became more serious. Ashcroft recused himself and Comey brought in Fitzgerald. And he has so far spent all this time investigating the issue when the "initial leaker" was known? Lets again hearken back to Comey's letter to Fitzgerald on February 6, 2004: "...and includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; ... Serious stuff, espescially if Fitzgerald & the FBI already knew the initial leaker. This one is far from done.

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

British intelligence on the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger was "credible".

Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki .. said, however, that in June 1999,( ) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more. "[P]laying the case by the book" is, to phrase it mildly, not the way in which Isikoff and Corn customarily describe the conduct of the White House.

Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken. The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself?

Libby says he didn't lie.

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. ... The Bush administration made other false charges about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.)--that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuges, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaeda, that he had mobile weapons labs, and so forth. But the Niger claim, unlike other allegations, can't be dismissed as an innocent error or blamed on ambiguous data. "This wasn't an accident," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year C.I.A. veteran who was a station chief in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, and Germany, and the head of the Soviet-East European division. "This wasn't 15 monkeys in a room with typewriters."

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

SH already had yellowcake. Remember how y'all sneered when it was looted? Links please.

would have been as useful to the Iraqis as a screen door on a submarine.