Saddam and yellowcake

Saddam tried to get yellowcake (Uranium) from Niger. Joe Wilson wrote articles for NYT on that and got it wrong. Saddam tried to get yellowcake (Uranium) from Niger. Joe Wilson wrote articles for NYT about that: but his spin was that since Saddam failed, it proved Bush was wrong to think Saddam had WMD's. The CIA's position was that it proved he had an active program. But these articles got reporters looking into Joe Wilson's wife (Valerie Plame). ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2022-01-04

Context

• In late 2002, the Bush administration was soliciting support for a policy of military force to Saddam to comply with U.N. regulations once and for all, or else.
• In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush did a 5,400 word speech, laying out an ultimatum to Saddam and a justification for war. It included dozens of reasons for the war, from WMD's to failing to comply with various U.N. resolutions, and so on -- but it also contained the following 16 words (vetted by the CIA), "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".
• The anti-Bush fanatics locked on to those 16 words, and ignored the rest. And in a logic-defying move, seemed to figure that if they could prove that the Brits or Americans were wrong on Saddam trying to get yellowcake, that it meant Bush was wrong for listening to the CIA and world's intelligence on everything else. It doesn't, but that's part of why Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame is such a big deal.

Yellowcake

🗒️ Note:

The Italians had documents that "proved it". Those later turned out to be forged, and FakeNews pretended it mattered ("see, it was all based on a forgery"). However, while the French and Italians believed those docs, the Brits and Americans did not consider it trustworthy, so they were not in the U.S./British assessments behind the 2003 State of the Union address. The people that bring up the Italian doc forgery are distracting either by ignorance or malicious obfuscation.

🗒️ Note:

The British later had the Butler Report that did an investigation and concluded that the British intelligence was right, Saddam had sought the Uranium, and this had NOT been based on the forged documents. The U.S. had similar investigations (Senate, FBI, etc.), that all came to the same conclusions, and agreed that Wilson's editorials were wrong. In 2004, The Financial Times did a full report that concluded the same thing as everyone else; multiple European intelligence services were independently aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001 (which was not based on the forged Italian papers).

Bush had understated things as it wasn't just the British that thought Saddam was going after Uranium. The British, American, French, Italian, and other intelligence agencies all had some evidence (mostly circumstantial and hearsay) that Iraq / Saddam had been negotiating to buy yellowcake (unprocessed Uranium-ore) from Niger.

They all agreed that Saddam was seeking WMD's, and the Uranium, but for different reasons and sources.

One of those smear merchants was Joseph C. Wilson (Valarie Plame's man-wife).

Joe had gone on a "fact finding mission to Africa" and penned a series of critical op-eds starting in The New York Times in March 2003 which he explained the nature of these documents and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war, then implied this was why we'd gone to war.

Everything about that was wrong: the U.S. had not based the war on the falsified Italian documents, they'd based it on our own intelligence as well as the Brits.

On top of that Wilson's mission confirmed to the CIA that Saddam had gone after Uranium, and he would only do that if he had an active WMD program. So Joe's belief was that Iraq failing to get the deal for Uranium proved that there was no WMD program. But the CIA (and thus the Bush administration), believed it proved the exact opposite.

As one British foreign official explained it to the Independent: “Niger has two main exports—uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens.” So the CIA didn't care if one diplomat (Joe Wilson) didn't think they could get the uranium out, they saw confirmation that they were still trying to get it.

FJW

People forget that this whole mess was because Wilson's articles drew attention to him... and his wife. In reporters investigating Joe Wilson, they stumbled on Valerie's name. But she was not active, so no crime was committed, no matter who leaked it, and it was not Bush revenge (as the leftist media and their tools repeated), it was Joe's incompetence that got the ball rolling.

Oh, and Joe's analysis in the NYT was wrong all along, meaning all their readers were misinformed tools of far left. And that Joe Wilson (or Valerie's) claim that the Bush administration outted his wife as retaliation for his dissent, have both been proven completely false.

Since Wilson's erroneous article was part of a larger smear campaign by the media against Bush/Blair, it put pressure on the Administrations to release (declassify) more evidence/documents to support their points. But it was a losing battle, anything they didn't declassify was part of a conspiracy, and since all intelligence assessments have evidence for and against, the media could report the against (ignore the for case, or the conclusions) and mislead their readership. The left also attacked Bush at the time for declassifying things and being too open. (Seriously).

Robert Novak

🗒️ Note:

The 1982 "Intelligence Identities Protection Act" is the law makes it a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a CIA agent who has conducted covert roles overseas within five years of the disclosure. To violate this law, the person who disclosed the agent’s identity must have been aware that the agent was “covert” at the time of the disclosure. Valerie had not been active within 5 years, she wasn't a field agent, and know one suspected she was. Valerie and Joe lied that she was outted and that it was a crime. They mislabeled Scooter Libby as the leak. And the far left media repeated it so often, that many of their readers believe she was wronged.

Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, Robert Novak revealed the identity of Wilson's wife (CIA analyst Valerie Plame) in an article "Mission to Niger". The "Plame affair" or "CIA leak scandal" ensued as a result of the "unauthorized disclosure" of her identity. This became another spun scandal by the anti-Bush left; "The Administration leaked her name as retaliation against Joe Wilson for his honest Whistle-Blowing". Only all this is demonstrably false.

It wasn't a scandal and no crime was actually committed by outting her.

• Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA Officer was not a secret.
• She was an officer and not an active field agent.
• Since she was not active, and no one knew, the law against naming field agents didn't apply.
• And Novak had found out about Valarie through the book "Who's who in America"
• Novak had gotten details of her role from the CIA and others, and was asked not to mention her name.
• Novak had gotten confirmation of her from Scooter Libby by asking something along the lines of, "I heard Wilson's wife is in the CIA, and that's how he got to go to Niger in the first place", and Libby said "oh, you know about that". and "that's what he'd heard too". Since neither knew she had once been agent, this was not a crime. Scooter hadn't leaked the info, he accidentally confirmed it. But for it to have been a crime, she would have had to have been an active agent, on an assignment, which she was not.
• The only reason she was outted at all, was because her nitwit Husband drew attention to her, by going to Niger, writing an erroneous report, and drawing that attention.

Novak detailed all this at the time, as NOT being a scandal, and his sources and what happened -- but the myth of some big scandal continued to grow, along with independent investigation by the Democrats to find the source of this non-existent leak, over a non-existent crime.

Conclusion

What often gets lost is how discredited and incompetent Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame was.

If you're a covert agent, you probably shouldn't use your pull to get your husband onto a public investigation, and have him co-write stories for the New York Times (and books) which bash the current administration, at least not if you care about anonymity.

Worse than that, Plame has gone on to write a book and sensationalize the lie that this was a conspiracy to get her, and the anti-Bush crowd gobbles that crap down without knowing better or reading up on what happened: they're called rubes.

And if course when the Obama administration did what the Bush administration was accused of (but never did), the Press generally glossed over it.

Not to mention that the Press fails to bring home the messages that:

• (a) Wilson's claims were all proven wrong
• (b) the faux scandal was not a scandal at all (no crimes committed)
• (c) the media memes that consist today, that Bush administration committed crimes by leaking her name for retaliation against Joe's whistle-blowing have all been proven false.

And any news agency that implies that last one, (and there are many), are Fake News sites. The bigger scandal wasn't what the administration did, but what the anti-Bush people and the media did, and the mental gymnastics they went through to misinform the public.

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🔗 More

Iraq Republic of Iraq, in Western Asia, borders Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria.

Valerie Plame Ex-CIA agent lies that she was outted by Bush Admin. Media perpetuates the lies for years.

George W. Bush Bush was a moderate "Compassionate Conservative" who believed in Democracy for all.

🔗 Links

• Wikipedia:Aluminum_tubes
• Wikipedia:Yellowcake_Forgery
• Wikipedia:Downing_Street_memo

Tags: Iraq  Valerie Plame/all  GWB