The White House is admitting to a “blunder” in claiming that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons via African uranium.
This 4-paragraph wire service version is from the notoriously right-wing Washington Times, where it is not front page news:
WASHINGTON, July 8 (UPI) — The Bush administration has conceded a blunder in statements about Iraq’s nuclear aims, a report said Tuesday.
The statement acknowledged for the first time President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
Here’s the 21-paragraph story on page 1 in the left-leaning (except for Iraq coverage) Washington Post:
The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
The statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report, which raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program were a threat to U.S. security.
The British panel said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a “bald claim” that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa. It noted that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence, and questioned why an official British government intelligence dossier published four months before Bush’s speech included the allegation as part of an effort to make the case for going to war against Iraq.
The findings by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee undercut one of the Bush administration’s main defenses for including the allegation in the president’s speech — namely that despite the CIA’s questions about the assertion, British intelligence was still maintaining that Iraq had indeed sought to buy uranium in Africa.
Amazing how the right-wing Times can’t be bothered to even write about this important news. Or am I being naive? ::grin:: See how the rest of the world reports it.
