On July 11, 2003, “the CIA sent its statement [regarding intelligence of Niger selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq]–written in [CIA Director George] Tenet’s name–to the White House. …The statement was hedged and more equivocal than Bush officials had anticipated–and it even undercut the White House’s claim that the whole Niger mess had been the CIA’s […]
7/11/2003
On July 11, 2003, President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice commented on Bush’s mentioning of Iraq buying yellowcake from Niger in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address. Rice said: ” ‘I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of central intelligence [George Tenet], had said, *Take this out of […]
7/11/2003
“In a July 11 [2003] briefing with the traveling press pool aboard Air Force One on the way to Uganda, [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice was peppered with questions–forty in all–about the infamous ‘sixteen words [in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, which claimed Iraq sought uranium from Niger].’ …Was it true, Rice […]
7/10/2003
“On July 10 [2003], when asked by Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor at an Armed Services Committee hearing when he had learned that the reports of Iraq seeking uranium from Africa ‘were bogus,’ [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld responded, ‘Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available.’ ([Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency […]
7/10/2003
On July 10, 2003, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, regarding the Niger/Iraq yellowcake incident: ” ‘I can tell you, if the Director of Central Intelligence [George Tenet] had said, ‘Take this out of the [2003 State of the Union] speech,’ it would have been gone, without question. …It would not have been in the […]
7/10/2003
“On July 10 [2003], when John Cochran of ABC News asked [Secretary of State Colin] Powell in Pretoria [South Africa] if the [Bush] administration owed the world an apology for having used the yellowcake claim, Powell dismissed the whole to-do: ‘This is very overwrought and overblown and overdrawn. …You get information, you analyze it. Sometimes, […]
7/9/2003
Director of the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment Joseph Cirincione wrote, on July 9, 2003: ” ‘In the light of the past three months of fruitless searches by U.S., British, and Australian experts, the UNMOVIC [UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission] inspection process in Iraq now looks much better than critics at the time […]
7/9/2003
“A former director of the strategic, proliferation and military affairs office in the U.S. Department of State, Greg Thielmann, said in July [9] 2003 that ‘this [Bush] administration…has had a faith-based intelligence attitude [in] its top-down use of intelligence: we know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers.’ “ – Hans Blix, […]
7/9/2003
In testimony before the 9/11 Commission on July 9, 2003, “A commission member, former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, raised the Iraq-al Qaeda issue with Judith Yaphe, a veteran CIA Iraq expert. Yaphe spoke of the ‘unwillingness of Saddam and Osama to consider cooperation’ and testified that while the Iraqi regime used Islamic extremists, […]
7/9/2003
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, then-Commander of the ground forces in Iraq, wrote: “On July 9 [2003], the Iranian army seized a disputed southern border post inside Iraq and, from a diplomatic standpoint, all hell broke loose. We had to be prepared to reestablish the recognized international boundaries of Iraq. …After securing an agreement to maintain […]