http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial...15/1002664.asp

Clinton suggests intelligence was tailored
By DOUGLAS TURNER
News Washington Bureau Chief
7/15/2003


"We don't know if it's true, but nobody - but nobody - can say it was wrong.
That is not known." Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary


WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., on Monday called for an
independent investigation into the reliability of President Bush's claims
that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime was building a nuclear bomb.

Clinton suggested the White House may have tailored its intelligence "for a
pre-ordained political outcome."

The president's use of flawed information when the country is on the brink
of war, she said, "goes to the very heart of the power of the presidency to
lead the nation."

Clinton predicted the White House probably would resist attempts to
investigate the source of the information and charged the White House with
dragging its feet on an investigation into the run-up to the terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Clinton joined a rising chorus of Democratic criticisms following White
House admissions that a claim that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials
in the West African county of Niger was unproven and should not have been in
Bush's State of the Union address.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said in the January
speech.

The president Monday maintained that the United States made the right
decision to invade Iraq and that the intelligence on which he relied was
"darn good" - even though some of it now is in question.

"I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence," Bush said. "And
the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence.


"And I am absolutely convinced today, 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."


Bush said the United States was reviewing documents and interviewing Iraqis
in an intensive effort to support the administration's still unproven claim
that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.


"When it's all said and done," Bush insisted, "the people of the United
States and the world will realize that Saddam Hussein had a weapons
program."


Bush spoke in the Oval Office alongside U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
who opposed the U.S.-led war. The two met to discuss Iraq, the Middle East
and peacekeeping in Liberia.


The episode forced the administration to concede it did not know the source
of the British intelligence - and, in fact, was not trying to determine the
source.


"We don't know if it's true, but nobody - but nobody - can say it was
wrong," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. "That is not known."


Administration officials said Bush's statement was technically correct since
he was simply saying that British intelligence said something was true.


Fleischer said the information about uranium played no role in the decision
to attack Iraq.


"This revisionist notion that somehow this is now the core of why we went to
war, a central issue of why we went to war, a fundamental underpinning of
the president's decisions, is a bunch of bull," Fleischer said.


Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., who is seeking the Democratic nomination
for president, said the information in the speech was "false" and "misled
the American people."


Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, also a candidate for the Democratic nomination,
accused Bush of deception. "He deceived the American people by allowing into
a State of the Union speech - at a critical point when he was making the
case for war with Iraq - a statement that he either knew was wrong or should
have known was wrong."


Dismissing administration claims, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said, "These
officials should be reminded that what is at stake is not just the
credibility of one man or even the credibility of the office of the
president of the United States. What we place in the balance is the
credibility of the United States as a nation and as leader of the free
world."


Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., stopped short of calling for an
investigation. But through spokesman Phil Singer, he said "the credibility
of the U.S. is a vital commodity and not to be trifled with in the post-9/11
world."


The uranium furor erupted after Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat whom
the CIA sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate the allegation, said last week
that he had been unable to substantiate intelligence reports that Iraq tried
to buy uranium from Niger. Documents on which those reports were based
subsequently had been determined to be crude forgeries.


CIA Director George J. Tenet took the blame for allowing the reference to
stay in the president's speech. However, other CIA operatives cautioned Vice
President Cheney months before that the documents claiming Iraq tried to buy
materials from Niger were forged.


Britain on Monday stood by its contention that it had evidence other than
the forged Niger documents that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa.


"This information on which we relied, which was completely separate from the
now-notorious forged documents, came from foreign intelligence sources,"
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Radio.


Asked whether she regretted voting for the war resolution, Clinton said "I'm
going to reserve judgment until I see some evidence." Schumer also voted for
the resolution.




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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.