Playing Hot Potato with the Blame

It's been kind of fun to watch the CIA, the White House, and Tony Blair play hot potato with each other as to who's at fault for the whole "Yellowcakegate" situation.

ENTEBBE, Uganda July 11 —
President Bush and his national security adviser on Friday put responsibility squarely on the CIA for the president's erroneous claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa.

"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush told reporters in Uganda.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice was more direct, saying, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."

If CIA Director George Tenet had concerns about the information, "these doubts were not communicated to the president," Rice said.

Aww, the poor innocent misguided White House. They couldn't possibly have known that information was false, what with all the CIA's chicanery. And yet, even Colin Powell felt weird about the Niger claim.

(CIA Director George) Tenet has been further isolated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said Thursday that he had reservations about the information used in the speech and thus did not use it Feb. 5 in a speech to the U.N. Security Council in which he offered a detailed catalogue of alleged Iraqi transgressions.

So if even the Secretary of State had reservations about the information, why was it used by the President in the State of the Union address? And did the White House know the assertion that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium was, let's say, suspiciously dubious, a year before Bush asserted it was true?

WASHINGTON -- An envoy sent by the CIA to Africa to investigate allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program contends the Bush administration manipulated his findings, possibly to strengthen the rationale for war.

That conclusion came on Sunday from Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to the West African nation of Gabon, who was dispatched in February 2002 to explore whether Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.

..."The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there," said Wilson.

Yet nearly a year after he had returned and briefed CIA officials, the assertion that President Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Africa was included in President Bush's State of the Union address as the nation marched toward war with Saddam's Iraq.

Well, George W. Bush may have lied to go to war, possibly even under oath, costing the nation billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, but at least he's not having affairs with interns.