Did Berlusconi forge the Niger documents?

**Adrian II** · 10-26-2005, 14:13

Hmm, interesting piece in The American Prospect about the (badly) forged documents on a Iraqi-Niger uranium deal that were used to justify the U.S. invasion. Did Berlusconi attempt to do his transatlantic friends a favour?

If so, issa baddest meatteball ever produced by Sismi.

**Hurin_Rules** · 10-26-2005, 17:03

Wow, that's fascinating.

I'd be interested to see what comes of all of this.

**Gawain of Orkeny** · 10-26-2005, 17:28

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless. Wilson has been proven a liar and a hack.

**Byzantine Prince** · 10-26-2005, 20:27

Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless. Wilson has been proven a liar and a hack.

I've never heard about this. There's a lot of talk about him being right though.

**Red Harvest** · 10-26-2005, 21:11

Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless. Wilson has been proven a liar and a hack.

So has everyone in the Bush administration.

So, yes, it does matter.

**Tribesman** · 10-26-2005, 21:16

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless. Wilson has been proven a liar and a hack.
I've never heard about this. There's a lot of talk about him being right though.
Try some right wing blogs and lunatic media shows for the above version Prince

But Gawain you are not a republican and you have never voted for a republican , so why are you getting all defensive about the republicans being caught lying

**Gawain of Orkeny** · 10-26-2005, 22:39

Their all liars it comes with the turff. Like I said I dont like republicans but I hate democrats.

As to never having heard this I suggest you check the records of congress. I suppose thats just another rightwing blog to tribesman though.

**Tribesman** · 10-27-2005, 01:01

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless.
Oh but it does matter Gawain .
You may not think so , but lying isn't very nice , lying to start a war is even less nice , breaking the law is a big no-no , attacking people who expose lies is the action of a petulant child .
And apparently 90% of Americans surveyed think it is not nice .....so are you sticking up for the very vocal minority who think it is nothing and it doesn't matter ?

Like I said I dont like republicans but I hate democrats.

Relax , smoke some of your drugs and learn not to hate , a strong dislike is quite sufficient .

**Gawain of Orkeny** · 10-27-2005, 01:30

You may not think so , but lying isn't very nice

Here we go with the lying again. Thats a lie.

Relax , smoke some of your drugs and learn not to hate , a strong dislike is quite sufficient

Again I hate no one . But I do hate some peoples politics. Yours comes to mind as coming under that heading .

Im sure the feeling is mutual.

**Aurelian** · 10-27-2005, 06:15

It doesnt matter. This is meanngless. Wilson has been proven a liar and a hack.

Wilson's honesty or dishonesty isn't relevant to this particular story.

What the story does indicate is that the American and British administrations relied on forged documents as the basis of their belief that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Those forgeries now seem to have come from within Italian intelligence (SISMI) and were shopped directly up the neocon food chain to the White House.

The story also indicates that the CIA never fell for the story or the documents. It was not the CIA's intelligence failure. They were correct in their negative evaluation of the documents and their sources, but the administration continued to use them despite CIA reservations.

My personal belief is that the administration used the documents because they had already made the decision to invade and they needed to use any and all justifications to make the case for war. The alternative explanation is that the neocons are gullible rubes who fell for bad forgeries, and clung to them because they fit what they expected to see, despite the fact that the documents had been clearly rejected by the intelligence community.

So, either the White House and its minions were clearly evil in this matter and used known forgeries as part of their campaign to 'manufacture consent' for their pre-planned invasion... or they were simply incompetent and blinded by their preconceptions. Or both.

**Aurelian** · 10-27-2005, 22:20

Last night, I ran across a good English translation of the Italian investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica that started this brouhaha. Definitely worth a read. Here are the links:

Part I: Berlusconi Behind Fake Yellowcake Dossier
Part II: Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA
Part III: Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam

I found the following section about the "aluminum tubes" controversy (from part III) interesting:

So on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller portrays the aluminum tubes as “a smoking gun.” The next day, Pollari is seated in front of Stephen Hadley. So what does he tell him? Pollari keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t reveal what he knows about the aluminum tubes, which are the source of so much concern (or even enthusiasm) for the Bush Administration. The shame is that those 7075-T6 tubes, 900 millimeters long, 81 millimeters in diameter, 3.3 millimeters thick, are well-known hardware to the Italian Army. They are 81-mm rocket artillery shells used in the Medusa air-to-ground missile system installed on Italian Army and Navy helicopters. In reality, the Iraqis are merely attempting to reproduce weaponry with which they became familiar during the long years of economic, military and nuclear cooperation between Rome and Baghdad. (Iraq’s top army and air force officers trained in Italy during the 1980’s). Saddam’s General Staff needs to duplicate them, so to speak, because their inventory is stockpiled outdoors and is now corroded. That was the reason behind the new anodized aluminum tube purchases.

That was a new one to me. I realized that it had been determined that the tubes were inadequate for use in a nuclear centrifuge program, and that they were really meant for making artillery shells, but I hadn't heard the details about the specific system they were presumably meant to produce.

At the time, of course, the administration (and Judy Miller) were pushing the aluminum tubes purchase as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The IAEA, State Department, and CIA thought otherwise; but it was one of the few "leads" the administration had about Iraqi WMDs... so they ran with it.

Anyway, it's a good series and worth a read.