alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 23, 2006

Compare and Contrast: Niger Uranium Edition

by AltHippo @ 9:18 pm. Filed under hacks, Wilson/Plame

Christopher Hitchens on Hugh Hewitt’s show discussing Joe Wilson’s adventure in Niger: (emphasis mine)

CH: Let’s bring it on. He lied about whether his wife, who works for the CIA, nominated him for the trip, which he did, on the grounds that he was, of all things, friendly with the Niger minister of mines, who had been in the 80’s the supplier of Saddam Hussein’s uranium. So they send a friend who has no curiosity, who doesn’t discover that Saddam’s point man on nukes has come calling a few months before, in fact. So I mean, it’s astonishing, and I don’t think, even though he’s been so far hugely overpraised in the media, I don’t think that his reputation can last very much longer. I think he’s through.

Former top CIA official, Tyler Drumheller on 60 Minutes, via TPM, discussing the same Niger adventure: (emphasis mine)

Drumheller was the CIA’s top man in Europe, the head of covert operations there, until he retired a year ago. He says he saw firsthand how the White House promoted intelligence it liked and ignored intelligence it didn’t:

“The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other,” says Drumheller.

Drumheller says he doesn’t think it mattered very much to the administration what the intelligence community had to say. “I think it mattered it if verified. This basic belief that had taken hold in the U.S. government that now is the time, we had the means, all we needed was the will,” he says.

The road to war in Iraq took some strange turns — none stranger than a detour to the West African country of Niger. In late 2001, a month after 9/11, the United States got a report from the Italian intelligence service that Saddam Hussein had bought 500 tons of so-called yellowcake uranium in order to build a nuclear bomb.

But Drumheller says many CIA analysts were skeptical. “Most people came to the opinion that there was something questionable about it,” he says.

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