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CIA Work 'Darn Good'
Bush defends intelligence used in State of the Union




By Ken Fireman
Washington Bureau

July 15, 2003

Washington -- Stung by criticism that the case for war in Iraq was based on
bad intelligence, President George W. Bush Monday defended the information
that reached his desk as "darn good" and insisted that a now-discredited
claim about Iraqi uranium-shopping in Africa was "relevant" at the time.

The comments were part of an administration effort to move past the
controversy, which erupted last week when the White House admitted that Bush
should not have made the assertion about African uranium in his January
State of the Union speech and blamed the mistake on the CIA.

"I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence," the president
said. "And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I
am absolutely convinced Wednesday, like I was convinced when I gave the
speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass
destruction and that our country made the right decision."

But some of Bush's comments during a brief session with reporters may
actually fuel the controversy by clashing with the statements of other
officials. For example, Bush said the CIA did not raise doubts about the
African uranium assertion until after his speech; CIA Director George Tenet
said last week that his agency was expressing reservations about it months
before the address, although the White House says it was unaware of those
doubts.

Similarly, Bush's comment that the African assertion was relevant at the
time was out of tune with the efforts of White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
to portray it as peripheral to the main case for military action against
Iraq.

"Nobody, but nobody thinks the United States went to war with Iraq because
Saddam Hussein may or may not have pursued uranium from Africa," Fleischer
said in his final briefing before stepping down as presidential press
secretary. "That's in the scheme of things a minor element in the judgment
that was made in the events that led up to war."

Fleischer, who is leaving to write a book and eventually take a job in the
private sector, said the administration still maintains that Hussein was
seeking to reconstitute his nuclear weapons development program "whether
they got the uranium from Africa or somewhere else." And he insisted the
assertion about African uranium may yet prove true, saying no one has as yet
demonstrated it is false.

The original assertion about Iraqi uranium-shopping in the West African
country of Niger turned out to be based on forged documents. But British
officials, who first made the assertion, insist that they have other sources
to support it.

Fleischer confirmed that Bush had deleted a reference to a Niger uranium
deal from a speech given in Cincinnati in October because of CIA concerns
that the charge could not be sustantiated. He said that was different from
the State of the Union speech reference because the excised line from the
October address had named a specific country and amount of uranium.

In his session with journalists after a meeting with United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Bush asserted incorrectly that "we gave him a
chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And
therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power
.... "

In fact, Hussein allowed UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq last fall
after a four-year absence; Bush launched the war after claiming that the
inspections were ineffectual.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.


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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.