Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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Leroy
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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

Post by Leroy »

docellis wrote:
Jocephus wrote:
docellis wrote:Wasn't the leak in retaliation to something? About invading Iraq or something?
i believe her husband, joe something?, wrote an article about how the war was about lies, etc...they didn't like that so they released her name....

sneaky bastards

but i could have the facts wrong
I thought it was something like - Bush was going to give a speech announcing that there was intelligence that proved there were WMD's in Iraq despite knowing the intelligence was not good intelligence - so someone - I guess her husband - wrote an article about it...

I wonder how something like this affects CIA operatives...
Actually, Joe was sent to Niger to investigate the yellow cake angle. It is believed that his appointment was arranged by his wife. The story he came back with did not agree with the administration's belief. That's where things blew up.

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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I didn't know what you were talking about so I wikki'd that:
The Niger uranium forgeries refers to falsified classified documents initially revealed by Italian intelligence. These documents depict an attempt by the regime of Iraq's Saddam Hussein to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis.

On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq had attempted to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating what they called weapons of mass destruction, referred to as WMD, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

Yellowcake, a mixture of different uranium oxides and other uranium compounds, is a product of an intermediary stage in the production of enriched uranium for use in a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon.

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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mmm... yellow cake

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

Post by Leroy »

docellis wrote:
Leroy wrote:I believe Armitage was the original leaker, but that's just a fact that gets in the way.

Yeah whatever happened to him? Is he in jail?
Nope, nothing has happened to him.

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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Was it ever reported who actually falsified the documents (country or person)?

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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I'll answer my own question:
Experts said the suspects include the intelligence services of Iraq's neighbors, other pro-war nations, Iraqi opposition groups or simply con men.

Most rule out the United States, Great Britain or Israel because they said those countries' intelligence services would have been able to make much more convincing forgeries if they had chosen to do so.

President Bush even highlighted the documents in his State of the Union address on January 28.

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

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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I'm quite sure Karl Rove did it, and the guy from the grassy knoll.

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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I don't know how accurate this is but:
An August 2004 Financial Times article indicated French officials may have had a role in the forged documents coming to light. The article states:

According to senior European officials, in 1999 [Rocco Martino] provided French officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been planning to expand 'trade' with Niger. This trade was assumed to be in uranium, which is Niger's main export. It was then that Mr Martino first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger's uranium exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing 'market' in documents. He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency by US diplomats.
The Times article also stated that "French officials have not said whether they know Mr Martino, and are unlikely to either confirm or deny that he is a source."[17]

It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the U.S. In 2005, Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians: "The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein ...." [18]

According to a 2003 article in The New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, the forgery may have been a deliberate entrapment by current and former CIA officers to settle a score against Cheney and other neoconservatives. Hersh recounts how a former officer told him that "somebody deliberately let something false get in there." [19] Hersh continues:

He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.
"The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney", the former officer said. "They said, 'O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.'" My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. "Everyone was bragging about it—'Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.'" These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.


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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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Yikes I didn't know this either:
In September 2004, the CBS News program 60 Minutes decided to delay a major story on the forgeries because such a broadcast might influence the 2004 U.S. presidential election. A CBS spokesman stated, "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election."[10]

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Re: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence

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Leroy wrote:Actually, Joe was sent to Niger to investigate the yellow cake angle. It is believed that his appointment was arranged by his wife. The story he came back with did not agree with the administration's belief. That's where things blew up.
The key is that he was sent to Niger to investigate whether it was true that Iraq could get Uranium from Niger. Wilson, the former ambassador to Niger, was sent to investigate, and found the story was bogus. This was reported back to the White House. Even after they knew the story was bogus, Bush continued to use the claim in his speeches because it was just too useful to drop. In response, Joesph Wilson went public to expose the lie and was promptly targeted by a smear campaign which included efforts to ruin his wife's career.

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