That 8 million tons of bombs we dropped on Viet Nam, does that include Cambodia and Laos?

to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year --in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there"

And actually, that is not correct as this shows. And therein hangs a most interesting tale.

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.

This clearly states that in Feb or Mar of 2002, Wilson's information supported the belief that Iraq had attemped to purchase yellowcake.

 You also quote Rice, yet I find this from David Corn's puff piece on 7/12/03, just 4 days after Wilson's article:

"Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions."

The Nation

And this is from your WP link:

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet."

That appears to support Rice's claim. And we have this puzzling comment:

After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not?

Notice the "discuss."

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless

Now the date that this supposedly went to the White House is a foggy "January" and supported by 4 undentified officals.

Nothing like the center piece of an obvious hit piece using unidentifed officals without an exact date. Yes indeed. That gives me great confidence

Now. What story was baseless? That Iraq had purchased? Or that Iraq had tried?

Remember, Wilson's article makes great show of saying that Iraq had not puchased, yet the question was "attempt to purchase."

And then we see.

Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus.

So what evidence was the council's reply using in the Dec/Jan report?

I ask because even Wilson made mistakes in his article.

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

Read that carefully. Because what it says is that Wilson's report to the CIA, which the CIA has said confirmed that Iraq had tried to puchase, was believed by Wilson. And would not have changed unless someone gave him additional information.

In otherwords, he had no knowledge of the information in the IAEA report until after the report was released in March of '03.

We now need to look at what he claimed to have done. This is from is his NYT arricle

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.

Now the "next day" would have been 1/29/03. More than a month before the IAEA report in 3/03

Now, since he admits that he was confused, couldn't have known about the IAEA report, and since what information he had given the CIA supported the claim that Iraq had tried, his written words appear strange. Note the:

by the facts as I understood them.

Either Wilson has totally misspoke himself, or he has been given information from the 1/03 Council report (above). He, of course, says he misspoke himself in his information for the 6/12/03 WP article. He dramatically miswrote himself in the 7/6/03 NYT article.

In fact, he described doing something specifcally. He reminded a friend that the information was...

Now. Did he actually speak to someone at state? And if he said what he writes he said, what was his basis?

It is one thing to misspeak to a reporter over names and dates. It is another to say you spoke to a friend and claim that the story was baseless when, in fact, you had verified the report as accurate and supposedly had no contact since.

In fact, he wrote in the NYT article

I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life..... September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper"..

But wait, the "white paper" supported his claim to the CIA. Now, that might be of interest to him. Did he speak to anyone about it? And if so, who and when, and what did they tell him? Would that be the reason he "knew" the claim as baseless?
And wouldn't that make his claim that he went to his friend on 1/29 correct???

I wonder if WIlson's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee was under oath. I wonder if anyone has asked him if he spoke to anyone within the government, or out, about this matter between say 11/01/02 and 1/28/03.

So anyway you slice it, this all comes back to Wilson's NYT's article. About which we now know was inaccurate as to what he told his friend at State about his knowledge that the claims were baseless.... or else someone had given him what was undoubtedly classified information...

Your comment is just another ad hominem attack.

My comment re Johnson was followed with a ;-) That was meant to indicate that I was making a joke.

My respose re Mrs. Wilson indicated that I didn't think I had attacked her, but invited you to prove me wrong.

I closed with a link to a very long and detailed comment in a past thread that was supported by several writers.

Today, I have just posted a long comment, complete with links, detailing some intresting points regarding Wilson's statements in response to another writer. (See above.)

So I really don't understand your comments.

I have long noted that I have seen time after time the use of the words "purchase" and "attempted to purchase" ised interchangeably when they are not the same.

The former wasn't used by Bush, and I have never said that Iraq purchsed yellow cake.

You speak of being human. I am human enough to know that during the time involved there were many conflicting reports, and many conflicting stories. So what Bush actually knew versus the many stories he was told is apparent. He knew nothing for sure.

So he made his best judgement, as I, and anyone in a decision making position would have. And given the other information available to me I would have said the same. When if comes to the defense of the country, all errors must be made on the side of safety.

BTW - From Wikipedia:

The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. [citation needed]

The Sunday Times of London dated August 1, 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source describing his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence. [2]

Although the claims made in the British intelligence report regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the CIA and Department of State could not verify them and are said to have thought the claims were "highly dubious." [3]

I just hope that other "folks" with similar passions don't/haven't done similar things.

What's really telling is this:

State prosecutors on Wednesday charged a San Joaquin, Calif., private investigator with forging and falsifying documents to help four death row inmates in what authorities called one of the largest frauds on the justice system in California history.

And that's just one city in CA.