http://hnn.us/articles/900.html#07090302

NEW WHITE HOUSE SPIN ON NIGER DOCUMENTS RAISES EVEN MORE QUESTIONS 07-09-03

And so, I would argue, we may be seeing the firestorm around this
truth-challenged administration begin. The White House has been forced to
admit that one of the central allegations that was used to sell the war was
bogus. I suspect this is the beginning of a hell of a mess.

As the war that never ended (despite what W said) gets nastier, the more
weeks and months that go by without WMDs discoveries, and, especially if the
economy stays in doldrums, there could be quite a train wreck coming for
this administration in the coming months.

Despite the snide overconfidence in the voice of Faux News's Tony Snow's
last night in his interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show about how
"everyone was trying to get onto the George W. Bush bandwagon," I think it's
safe to say that W is in trouble folks. As I've said a few times, if the end
is coming for this administration in 2004, it's going to be incredible to
watch.

Josh Marshall is also starting to dig into the Niger uranium story (here and
here). We all know what that means by now, don't we? He's getting the tip
from his friends in the media in Washington, D.C. that there's something
there. Josh is beginning to raise questions and many of them are like what I
said in the (admittedly very speculative) post below about the prima facie
case for Cheney's impeachment:


This was always one of the most intriguing elements of the White House's
defense. Because they seemed to be referring to intelligence so top-secret
and rarefied that they couldn't even share it with the CIA or other members
of the intelligence community. It was so top-secret that only the
president's speech writers had sufficiently high security clearances to see
it. That was the story on some days. On others, the other intelligence
seemed to be the 'dossier' published by the British -- which of course was
based on the same bogus Niger documents.
Whatever the case, the 'other intelligence' line no longer seems to be
operative.

According to the White House's statement last night, quoted in the Times:
"There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from
Africa. However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us
to be certain that attempts were in fact made." A "senior administration
official" told the Post that there were "possible attempts" by Iraqis to buy
uranium in Namibia and Gabon but that those reports "were all somewhat
sketchy."

(I translate this roughly as: "It's not true that we had no other
information. We had some. But it was information so fragmentary,
questionable and meaningless that we'd really just as soon not go into it."
Further translation: according to the distinct recollection of Ahmed
Chalabi's brother's butler ...)

The new White House line leaves just as many unanswered questions as before.
Did the White House know the CIA had reported that the story was bogus or
not? If they didn't know there were problems with the Niger documents, why
the big fuss about hanging the allegations on what the Brits said? And if
they did know about the problems with the Niger documents, why use the
Brits' report as a fig leaf, when their claims were based on the same Niger
documents the CIA -- i.e., our lead intelligence agency -- had already
decided were bogus? Who approved putting it in the speech in the first place
and was that line run by intelligence officials or not?

And Josh is also quite an excellent journalist as well. I suspect he's
starting to look into this as well. Since Josh is one of the guys most
responsible for bringing down Trent Lott, that's not a minor development.
As a historian, I try to beware of the dangers of telling the future. A lot
of people thought Clinton would go down when the Lewinsky story began to
break in 1998 if you recall. However, at the risk of making a similar
mistake, let me say that this very well may be the beginning of the end for
W -- if the scribes in the press corps will actually pursue this story where
it logically leads, to Dick Cheney's office. This is also a scandal that is
directly-related to the office, not some private matter like the Lewinsky
story was. Unfortunately, since I haven't been very impressed with the
effort of our press corps in pursuing such things since about 1998, I'm not
holding my breath.

Regardless, don't blow off what happened yesterday. The White House armor
has cracked -- and their admission that W lied in a presidential address is
a major development. And they acknowledged how big a deal it was when they
admitted it in such a chickenshit and evasive fashion -- by releasing a
statement from the White House after the president had left for Africa.

Stay tuned folks. This could get interesting.



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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

"Feels Good!"
---George W. Bush on the Brink of Declaring War on Iraq.