Walter Pincus: Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31496-2003Aug7.html

Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation

Officials Made Uranium Assertions Before and After President's Speech

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A10


Since last month, presidential aides have said a questionable allegation, that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium for nuclear weapons, made it into President Bush's State of the Union address because of miscommunication between the CIA and Bush's staff.

But by the time the president gave the speech, on Jan. 28, that same allegation was already part of an administration campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. In January alone, it was included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by the president's four most senior national security officials.

The White House has acknowledged that it was a mistake to have included the uranium allegation in the State of the Union address. But an examination of how it originated, how it was repeated in January and by whom suggests that the administration was determined to keep the idea before the public as it built its case for war, even though the claim had been excised from a presidential speech the previous October through the direct intervention of CIA Director George J. Tenet.

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Yet in the days before and after the president's State of the Union address, the allegation was repeated by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and in at least two documents sent out by the White House.

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Walter Pincus again smacks down the BFEE/PNAC lies ......

Im shocked this hadnt been posted yet ..