The New York Times has put out a really amazingly detailed and worthwhile article, if you can credit that. It's about those aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy, back in the day. Remember them? The ones the Administration insisted were for uranium-enriching centrifuges?
Well...
It turns out that almost every single expert and nuclear scientist ever consulted about these tubes concluded that they were almost totally useless for centrifuge work, and it turns out that the tubes were in fact exact matches for tubes Iraq had purchased in the past to make short-range rockets. Let's be clear: the experts almost unanimously agreed that there was almost zero chance these tubes were for centrifuges, and they did this before 2002. Apparently no-one bothered mentioning this to George Tenet, though. That wacky CIA...What egregious blunders will they commit next? Ho ho.
Meanwhile, at the Energy Department, scientists were startled to find senior White House officials embracing a view of the tubes they considered thoroughly discredited. "I was really shocked in 2002 when I saw it was still there," Dr. Wood, the Oak Ridge adviser, said of the centrifuge claim. "I thought it had been put to bed."
...
The reports got little attention, partly because reporters did not realize they had been done with the cooperation of top Energy Department experts. The Washington Post ran a brief article about the findings on Page A18. Many major newspapers, including The Times, ran nothing at all.
Read the whole thing. It's really appalling. Bush and Cheney and Rice et alia flat-out deceived the public about a potential nuclear threat. Are these the kind of hot cherry ass-clowns you want rubbing their greasy members over our national security?
UPDATE: Here's a great couple of lines...
On Oct. 2, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution, the new National Intelligence Estimate was delivered to the Intelligence Committee. The most significant change from past estimates dealt with nuclear weapons; the new one agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was in aggressive pursuit of the atomic bomb.
...
Today, the Intelligence Committee's report makes clear, that 93-page estimate stands as one of the most flawed documents in the history of American intelligence.
Indeed.
Posted by aloysius at October 03, 2004 12:33 PM | TrackBack |