Eric the Red

My earlier Wilson piece prompted an interesting barrage of email. Writers either based Bush in some pre-canned manner or tried to argue that I was somehow “anti-war and un-American”. One or two went so far as to tell me I was a disgrace. Despite all I could write about these fine folks, I’m going to stick to something more meaningful.

Some people have written about the difference between a mistake and a lie, as far as the Wilson/Plame/pre-war intel is concerned. I don’t like dealing with quotes of quotes, so I’ll stick to facts. Namely, those contained in the findings of the Silbermann-Robb Commission.

The two key issues presented are the sale of yellowcake uranium by Niger and the purchase of aluminum tubes for use in gas centrifuge production. For those who don’t know, a gas centrifuge is used to concentration certain uranium isotopes, primarily from yellowcake.

According to the Robb Commission, the CIA and other intelligence agencies identified the Aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge production. The Department of Energy disagreed, instead finding that that the tubes were more suited for producing rockets. DOE concedes that the tubes could be used for producing centrifuge rotors. In his campus address, Wilson states that since the tubes were anodized, they were completely useless for centrifuge use.

The intelligence community goes on to list other dual use technology as evidence of a reconstituted nuclear program in Iraq. These include:

The report also indicates that intelligence analysts interpreted information that contradicted the views of their peers as “deception” on the part of the Iraqi government. From the text:

“[the NGIC] characterized the Iraqi claim that the tubes were for use in tactical rockets as “a poorly disguised cover story,” reasoning that Iraq was claiming such an end-use for the tubes because Iraq was aware that its intentions to use the tubes in a nuclear centrifuge application “have been compromised.”

The report goes further:

In some quarters, then, the thesis that the tubes were destined for centrifuges took on the quality of a hypothesis that literally could not be disproved: both confirming and contradictory facts were construed as supporting evidence.

And what of the sale of yellowcake by Niger? In his UMD address, Wilson stated that he was sent to Niger to verify a British report that such a deal was in the works. According the the Robb report, the British memo was released in September 2002, while the Wilson trip occured in March of that year.

Now here is the fun part: in lieu of this apparent disagreement, why was Wilson sent to Niger in the first place?

The Robb commission indicates that the only information available to justify Wilson’s trip to Iraq were three reports including information that Iraqi officials were arranging a visit to Niger through representatives at the Vatican. The Commission indicated that these three reports were retracted by the CIA in April of 2003.

There is some mention of the famous forged documents, but these were received by the US in October, months after Wilsons visit to Niger. Furthermore, those documents were not reviewed by intelligence analysts for several months.

Wilson suggests that his trip was at the urging of Vice President Cheney, but there is no information as to how Cheney became aware of any uranium issues relating to Niger and Iraq.

The Silbermann-Robb report tells me that the intelligence community was cherry-picking evidence that Iraq was re-vamping its nuclear programs. All of this evidence was either shaky in the beginning or disproved around the end of the war in 2003.

Ultimately, a concrete, factual basis to conclude that Iraq was developing a nuclear program never existed. Indications that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium ore from Niger were either disproved by Wilson or recanted by the intelligence agencies pushing this hypothesis.

The reasons for the aluminum tube purchase was doubted by Department of Energy (DOE) experts, but the reasons for those doubts were construed by analysts to be evidence of deception. The same goes for the magnet production facilities.

There is also no evidence that the objections posed by Wilson or DOE experts were passed to higher authorities.

So where does the cherry-picking begin, and where does it end? Were intelligence officials on a mission to find a reason for war? If so, who was ultimately behind the mission? Who pulled the strings that led to war?