Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium

[Submariner]

Well lookee lookee here. What an interesting story to all of a sudden pop up. Why do I feel they are making shit up?

Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium

By Mark Huband in Rome
Published: June 27 2004 21:56 | Last Updated: June 27 2004 21:56

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

snip >

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373295002&p=1012571727085

[mike_c]

1. didn't Joe Wilson come back from Niger and say...

...that uranium mining and sales is VERY tightly controlled by the gov't? Wasn't that his first clue that the forged documents were bogus?

[struggle4progress]

10. If memory serves, a major clue was the fact that the Bushista morons, ...

... who forged the document, signed the name of an official who they remembered from their previous time in power; unfortunately, he no longer held the office on the date alleged by the memo.

[kikiek]

2. Sounds like they were actively trying to sell it..not that Saddam

was actively seeking it. Funny how these anonymous sources are suddenly popping up, and how they never have any proof. You will never convince me our motives were pure in this war.

[shraby]

4. Here's the kicker in the last part:

However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made.


Looks like smugglers were trying to find some buyers and were contacting various countries.

[kikiek]

5. Aren't all these European sources precious.

Has to be anonymous sources overseas..create more doubt that maybe there just is something there we don't know. I don't care if they did. Bush lied. Inspectors were in Iraq. Saddam was being contained. He just wanted him out of power. No real concern for the 10s of thousands lives it will cost to fulfill his fantasy. Talk about narcissistic. The book "Bush on the Couch" talks about how he cannot change his views on things. He is such a dangerous person to be president. After reading that I wonder how the hell he got there even with daddy Bush helping.

[Mnemosyne]

3. Why would they need to buy uranium?

We've given them and the entire world a shitload of it since the first Gulf war.

Wait, that's only depleted uranium, not so bad, only has half-life of 4.3 million? years.

http://www.iacenter.org/iraq.htm

We've been nuked already folks, by the US gov. under Poppy, Clinton and shrub, it's just been more subtle than Japan.

[KoKo]

6. It's coming from Rome, isn't that where the story came from before and

was debunked as a "plant." And Isn't Berlosconi, Shrub's buddy?

I know the original Niger Yellow Cake story was debunked in several threads here on DU. Tracing the story back to someone planting it in Rome newspaper and then it traveled back here to newspapers in US. I think there was a stop in between. This sounds like a desperate Administration trying to pass off the same story they did before for a new go round until it's debunked once again..

I don't believe anything they say and especially quoting un-named foreign intelligence officers.

And, aren't folks thinking that Plame story will break this week? Suspicious!

[struggle4progress]

7. Wow! Same old piece of shit, but a new coat of paint! I'm impressed! eom

[OldCurmudgeon]

8. it just goes on and on and on

the game of "Iraq Whack-a-mole!"

We cam expect a story about "aluminum tubes" any day now. Then another about how they found a "really really big" ant colony living in those "mobile bio-warfare trailers", so Saddam was planning on mutating ants to make an unstoppable army of giant ants.

[struggle4progress]

9. Perhaps it is a good sign for us:

the Bushistas are under such pressure, and in such denial about American realities, that they must act but lack time to craft new nonsense and therefore spout the old once more, as if it were a magical incantation that would again have the galvanizing effect it had the first time.