Save hours of time and your hard—earned money. When you see a newspaper article which like this one begins with demonstrably false facts, pitch the entire paper away and demand a refund of the purchase price. The Los Angeles Times carries a piece today which begins:
WASHINGTON —— The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre—Iraq war intelligence fiasco: How the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion. The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war —— and they led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger...
Here's the problem with that lede.
(a) We never relied on the forged documents. As is well known, we relied on independent intelligence from the UK of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium in AFRICA and the Butler Commission established that the British intelligence did not rely on the forged documents or a PURPORTED SALE FROM NIGER TO IRAQ of uranium.
(2) The documents did not inspire us "to send a former ambassador to the nation of Niger." As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence observed we never received those documents until EIGHT MONTHS AFTER the Wilson trip to Niger.
These are not minor errors and they involve well—known facts long on the public record. The misreporting is so bad as to constitute journalistic malpractice.
Clarice Feldman 12 03 05
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