Who Lied about Iraq and Niger Uranium?

All this nonsense about Karl Rove serves to hide the real issue here. Iraq WAS trying to buy Uranium in Niger and DID have a nuclear WMD program. No amount of purposeful misstatements of law and fact can cover that up.

Not that I expect reality to intrude on the looney left... but for everyone else, have a read:

From William Safire July 19, 2004:"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

-George W. Bush, State
of the Union address, Jan. 28, 2003

Those were 'the 16 words' in a momentous message to a joint session of Congress that were pounced on by the wrong-war left to become the simple centerpiece of its angry accusation that 'Bush lied to us' - or, as John Kerry more delicately puts it - 'misled' us into thinking that Saddam's Iraq posed a danger to the U.S.

The he-lied-to-us charge was led by Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat sent in early 2002 by the C.I.A. to Niger to check out reports by several European intelligence services that Iraq had secretly tried to buy that African nation's only major export,
"yellowcake" uranium ore.

Wilson testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had assured U.S. officials back in 2002 that "there was nothing to the story." When columnist Robert Novak raised the question of nepotism by reporting that he got the assignment at the urging of his C.I.A. wife, Wilson denied that heatedly and denounced her "outing," triggering an investigation. The skilled self-promoter was then embraced as an antiwar martyr, sold a book with "truth" in its title, appeared on the cover of Time and every TV talk show denouncing Bush.

Two exhaustive government reports came out last week showing that it is the president's lionized accuser, and not Mr. Bush, who has been having trouble with the truth. Contrary to his indignant claim that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter" of selecting him for the African trip, the Senate published testimony that his C.I.A. wife had "offered up his name" and printed her memo to her boss that "my husband has good relations" with Niger officials and "lots of French contacts." Further destroying his credibility, Wilson now insists this strong pitch did not constitute a recommendation.

More important, it now turns out that senators believe his report to the C.I.A. after visiting Niger actually bolstered the case that Saddam sought - Bush's truthful verb was "sought" - yellowcake, the stuff of nuclear bombs. The C.I.A. gave Wilson's report a "good" grade because "the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999 and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium" - confirming what the British and Italian intelligence services had told us from their own sources.

But a C.I.A. analyst opined "the Brits have exaggerated this issue" because "the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."
...

Isn't it amazing that those who screech loudest about "lying" seem to be the biggest liars?