William Safire:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."—
George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 28, 2003 Those were "the 16 words" in a momentous message to a joint session of Congress that were pounced on by the wrong-war left to become the simple centerpiece of its angry accusation that "Bush lied to us" — or, as
John Kerry more delicately puts it — "misled" us into thinking that Saddam's Iraq posed a danger to the U.S. The he-lied-to-us charge was led by Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat sent in early 2002 by the C.I.A. to Niger to check out reports by several European intelligence services that Iraq had secretly tried to buy that African nation's only major export, "yellowcake" uranium ore.
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But when word leaked about the fake documents — which were not the basis of the previous reporting by our allies — Wilson launched his publicity campaign, acting as if he had known earlier about the forgeries. The Senate reports that in his misleading anonymous leak to The Washington Post, "He said he may have misspoken . . . he said he may have become confused about his own recollection. . . ." The subsequent firestorm caused the White House to retreat prematurely with: "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."
That apology was a mistake; Bush had spoken the plain truth. Did Saddam seek uranium from Africa, evidence of his continuing illegal interest in a nuclear weapon? Here is Lord Butler's nonpartisan panel, which closely examined the basis of the British intelligence:
". . . we conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
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