BBSNews 2003

BBSNews - 2003-07-13 -- We reported a US State Department release about the Iraq-Niger uranium forgery on March 14th, 2003 that related a press pool question about that topic asked during a regular State Department briefing and answered later in a statement released to the press: "Did we send anyone to Niger to explore this issue?"

Answer: "We did not send State Department personnel to Niger for the specific purpose of discussing this matter. However, our Embassy in Niamey raised the issue with Nigerien officials on several occasions and we were satisfactorily assured that they did not sell uranium to Iraq."

Almost four months later, Democrats are belatedly questioning the currently stunning denials by the Bush administration, maybe the most spectacular of which appeared in NPR on Sunday. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said "I cannot believe that Condi Rice... directly, from Africa, pointed the finger at George Tenet, when she had known -- had to have known -- a year before the State of the Union."

"The entire intelligence community has been very skeptical about this from the very beginning," Rockefeller says. "And she has her own director of intelligence, she has her own Iraq and Africa specialists, and it's just beyond me that she didn't know about this, and that she has decided to make George Tenet the fall person. I think it's dishonorable."

Photo at left by an unknown photographer, August 3, 1965 "Da Nang, Vietnam...A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing" 1998 print. Records of the U. S. Marine Corps. Photo to the right shows Private First Class Heather Cosby, Marine Attack Squadron-211, tightens a bolt to secure an inert practice bomb to an AV-8B Harrier, March 2003. Photo by: Sgt. Molly C. King. US Marines. BBSNews March 16th, 2003. "Not a Dimes Worth of Difference."

"On the 16th of March 2003, BBSNews opined prior to the war: [There's] "Not a Dime's Worth of Difference" between what's gonna happen in Iraq and another good old fashioned guerilla war we had thought we left behind us, Vietnam. At least 79 US troops have been killed in Iraq since President Bush claimed the US-Iraq war over. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has revealed that the monthly cost of the continuing US presence in Iraq will be double earlier estimates. US troops have pulled out of Fallujah according to the Washington Post. Citing rising tensions and repeated attacks troops have been pulled back to give more control of the city to Iraqi's who may or may not be well trained enough to control the city.

No weapons of mass destruction have yet been found. Many Americans that supported the "pre-emptive" attack on Iraq by the United States, who are used to X-Files type US government technology as being all seeing and all knowing, may now start to question the very basis of the US-Iraq war. And they may start questioning the value of such technology and all the other foreign and domestic policy decisions that are based upon "intelligence" from such sources.

A State Department release at the onset of the US-Iraq war stated "in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), that:

"Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations."

Two days before, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press: "We are now faced with a situation, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, where the threat to the United States is increasing, and over time, given Saddam's posture there, given the fact that he has a significant flow of cash as a result of the oil production of Iraq, it's only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons. In light of that, we have to be prepared I think to take the action that is being contemplated, to insist that he disarm. And if the U.N. won't do it, then the United States and other partners of the coalition will have to do that."

According to Time Magazine today, Vice President Cheney's interest in the Niger-Iraq uranium claim was investigated by a former US diplomat sent expressly for that purpose: "Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue. Wilson never had access to the Italian documents and never filed a written report, he told TIME. When he returned to Washington in early March[2002], Wilson gave an oral report about his trip to both CIA and State Department officials. On March 9 of last year, the CIA circulated a memo on the yellowcake story that was sent to the White House, summarizing Wilson's assessment. Wilson was not the only official looking into the matter. Nine days earlier, the State Department's intelligence arm had sent a memo directly to Secretary of State Colin Powell that also disputed the Italian intelligence. Greg Thielmann, then a high-ranking official at State's research unit, told TIME that it was not in Niger's self-interest to sell the Iraqis the destabilizing ore. "A whole lot of things told us that the report was bogus," Thielmann said later. "This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down."

Not on the eve of war it wasn't.

As the editor of BBSNews I can truthfully say that this publication has been anti-war from the start. We opined that sanctions and inspections in Iraq under an international coalition should continue. But I personally watched Tim Russert with Dick Cheney on television as countless others did. This drumbeat of nuclear pretensions on the part of Iraq put forth by the highest of George W. Bush administration officials started having an effect on my own personal thoughts on the possible war.

I underwent the under the school desk drills common to aging baby boomers who remember the Cold War readiness preparation taught in public schools throughout the nation. Further I was born a military brat. I was steeped in preparation for the worst and the nuclear scenario has long been the worst fear of the United States and the rest of the world.

BBSNews did not and has not changed its editorial position on the US led war in Iraq, it was wrong. Yes Hussein was a despicable despot that the world would be better off without; but was he worth the United States throwing away all that made it great?

I was fearful of what Vice President Dick Cheney articulated. His words made my personal resolve against the war waver. I believed in the vaunted and extremely accurate "intelligence" that most Americans and indeed most world inhabitants believe in. When Cheney played the nuclear card I too got the Cold War chill, the memories of the movies shown in school for emergency preparation, the drills, the very real possible consequences of horrible and quick death from an unleashed nuclear weapon came flooding back and I hoped fervently that these terrible weapons did not exist in Iraqs purported arsenal and would not be unleashed.

It is now very clear though that this whole nuclear pretense was simply made up. George Tenet "falling on his sword" cannot deflect this glaring deficiency in truth, in one of the most sacred of American traditions, the State of the Union Address. All the statements and press releases are "out there." Elementary schoolchildren could easily gather enough material from the internet to do a report on this subject. The Niger-Iraq uranium claim was based upon some dubious forgeries originally surfacing in Italy early in 2002. They were fairly quickly debunked many months before an October 2002 presidential speech in Ohio where George Tenet got the unsubstantiated reference removed. President George W. Bush's State of the Union Address January 28th, 2003 inexplicably included this untrue claim. Indeed long before the clamorous and climactic drumbeat for war ended in attack the US and Britain painted Iraq as a nuclear threat right up to the day when the first US fired missile struck Baghdad.

Perhaps the most compelling question is where is Osama Bin Laden?