More Evidence for the Prosecution

French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence "More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation. The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002. The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigated at the CIA's request". ...And the German Intelligence Told Them too "It was not the first time a foreign government tried to warn U.S. officials off of dubious prewar intelligence. In the notorious "Curveball" case, an Iraqi who defected to Germany claimed to have knowledge of Iraqi biological weapons. Bush and other U.S. officials repeatedly cited Curveball's claims even as German intelligence officials argued that he was unstable and might be a fabricator".

Bush knew he was lying when he stated in his 2003 SOTU address, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". George Tenet had told him that rumor was unverified in October of 2002 and Bush removed it from a major speech he gave in Cincinnati. France, Germany and Joe Wilson were telling the Bush administration the Niger documents were forged. So, you state, but Bush said "the British government" said it, not the French, Germans or Wilson, and why shouldn't he believe the British over those three? Well, that's simple enough to answer. Because our CIA intelligence was telling the British that the information wasn't credible. Proof that Bush quoted the British when our own intelligence had told him, and the British, that it wasn't true. Sixty percent of Americans know now Bush 'intentionally misled' the country in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Where I come from, 'intentionally misleading' is not a phrase used too often. We generally call a lie, a lie here.