Ed Morrissey takes the New York Times to task for their dishonest report in today's paper about the Administration's own recently-declassified 2002 conclusion that Saddam probably could not have procured uranium ore from Niger.
Reporter Eric Lichtblau does the same thing that all the President's opponents do: associate the supposedly infamous "sixteen words" (from Bush's 2003 State of the Union address) with the apparent impossibility that such a sale could have ever taken place.
But it was never claimed that Saddam had succeeded in procuring yellowcake; only that he had made an attempt. Why does that point not come through for some? That Saddam attempted to make the deal is all Bush ever claimed.
Morrissey writes (emphasis his):
Once again, the Times conflates two different questions and in doing so misrepresents the intelligence that both the British and Wilson himself found. The first question, which prompted this release of material, is whether the Nigeriens were likely to sell and transport uranium to Iraq. The second question is whether Saddam Hussein was still making the attempt to buy uranium at all, from Niger as well as anywhere else. All of Iraq's uranium had been sealed by the UNSCOM team and was out of Saddam's reach, at least while UNSCOM remained in Iraq. Had Saddam sought uranium from any other source, it would prove that Saddam intended to rebuild his WMD nuclear program.The anti-war Left can concede that much, can't they?
Bush, in fact, turned out to be correct in his "sixteen words," a fact not lost on British intelligence, who have all along insisted that Saddam had tried to buy uranium, and not just from Niger. The SSCI report makes this dodge very transparent, but the Paper of Record never bothers to research its findings whenever reporting on this subject.