Where did you find a picture of Cheney without a sneer on his face?

Photoshop.

Thanks for clarifying that Wilson’s report wasn’t a factor in either the 2002 NIE or the SOTU. I see now that his report gets sheep-dipped – after the SOTU – to become the ‘Second Stream’ that ’seals the deal’ on the invasion; BushCo ‘twists’ Wilson’s intel to keep the Invasion alive.

I take it the ‘cherrypicked’ intelligence charge is related to the February 2003 ‘WINPAC’ Analysis Memo, and the March 8, 2003 DIA Memo where Wilson’s report is characterized for the first, and only, time as supporting the Uranium claim in the Niger Dossier?

So, the sequence goes:

Jan. 2003: 16-Words (Uranium Claim) in SOTU backed by (fake) Niger Dossier

Feb. 2003: IAEA challenges the Niger Dossier

Feb. 2003: BushCo ‘develops’ probable WINPAC Analysis Memo that ’shape-shifts’ Wilson’s Report into INDEPENDENT SUPPORT for the Uranium Claim in the Niger Dossier that Wilson originally DEBUNKED – the ‘Second Stream’ of Intel.

Mar. 2003: Niger Dossier declared to be FAKE by IAEA

Mar. 8, 2003: DIA Memo that, alone amongst all other DIA documents, claims that Wilson’s Report(DEBUNKING the Uranium Claim in the Niger Dossier) presents SUPPORT for the Uranium Claim in the Niger Dossier.

Mar. 20, 2003: US invades Iraq.

Who has their hands on the CIA/’WINPAC’ and 3/8/03 DIA Memos? That DIA Memo, in particular, has some serious smoking gun potential!

The Second Stream of Intel is obviously ‘cooking the books’ for War at Wilson’s expense. Who DROVE THE RE-INTERPRETATION ENGINE used in these memos?

Who forced the ‘FIX?’

Probably someone else has said this already but these issues also go a long way to answering the question of why John Bolton visited Judy judy in jail. I think he wanted to make sure that she would not talk.

eRiposte: Yet, faced with the need to provide the IAEA some “proof”, someone in the US IC (likely from WINPAC – since WINPAC was the entity that sent out some documents to the IAEA per paragraph 24 of the DX64 memo) dug up the Wilson trip report and falsely portrayed it as if it was a piece of supporting evidence for the Bush administration’s allegation.

…Just one thing. To be more precise, it should probably be something along the lines that – in the effort to sell the war to the US public, this piece of evidence was provided as “neither confirming or denying the allegations”. By suggesting “it can be read either way”.

However, it’s obvious that this wouldn’t fly initially – you can’t suggest a report denying that cats run around on the rings of Saturn “can be read either way” – so the question had to be asked in a different way. Therefore the claim was reintroduced through rehashed and unsourced intel to lend credibility to the idea that the exports in fact were possible. (And this happens long after the actual trip occurred).

The Bush- administration then wrote the context for the trip in retrospective: Wilson was sent to check whether Niger had ever had contact with Iraqi ambassadors. Not, as was the case, to check out the likelyhood of the Uranium story – the well- known story – to be true. And which Wilson in fact reported on, and as anyone else who knows a damn thing about Uranium exports know – the exports were not possible, and had not been for years. Smuggling them is out of the question. As well as that the rest of the options in “Africa” for Uranium exports were physically unavailable, not merely controlled by entities under IAEA authority.

And the Bush- administration did this in response to the fact that the intel did not check out, as you rightly point out. It also explains the numerous trips to Niger by different officials coming to the same conclusion, since the issue would always be flagged as “unresolved”.

Furthermore, it explains the behaviour of the VP’s office – i.e, they would lash out at anything competing with their narrative. And this is what Wilson did: challenge their narrative, and so risking that the WH would lose control over the message. And it is at that point their response comes.

Incidentally, this is the same as what’s going on with the prisons, the unitary excecutive, etc. The assertion is that there’s a semantic ambiguity, and – they say – therefore the issues are ambiguous as well, and should not be confronted by serious&responsible people. For this purpose, different narratives are given out in retrospective.

And not cutting throught kind of crap is what brought you a war based on lies. As well as what still enables several of you to blur the line between possibilities and probable scenarios through semantical analysis. And therefore allow these narratives to live on. Such as: “yes, Iraq had uranium in country already, but they were trying to circumvent the IAEA, so that doesn’t matter – it’s inconclusive”. This is not founded in facts or knowledge about the situation, but a semantical construction of the little info included in the given sentence.

But any, and I mean any, actual research would disprove this narrative instantly.

No offense, you understand, but please – get smarter soon.

thanks, e’R for organizing and sharing your detailed knowledge with us.

Thanks again for the elucidation, eRiposte.

Since the last paragraph in that chronological 32-paragraph background paper (DX64) references a March 11, 2003 date, I think it’s safe to assume that this CIA/IC background report was finished between mid- and late-March, 2003, prior to delivery to Congress on April 3rd as Larry Johnson pointed out above.

Good point…thanks!

7) Bush and Cheney need a ‘Second Stream’ of Intel!

8) What do they do? They go back to the archives and find Joe Wilson’s Feb 2002 CIA Report on the Niger Uranium Claims.

9) One problem though – Wilson’s report DEBUNKS the Niger Dossier. Bush and Cheney need SUPPORT for the Niger Dossier.

10) No Problem. Bush and Cheney dust-off Joe’s report (masked now as a ’sensitive source’) and ’swallow’ it with a highly-biased analytical piece that ‘fixes the facts to fit the Policy’ and now the Wilson Report SUPPORTS the Niger Dossier (which it originally debunked – how crazy is this?), but disguised as the ‘verbatim text’ – a ‘Second Stream’ of Intel.

11) And Viola! The Second Stream was added to the First Stream and Bush and Cheney JAMMED THOSE 16 WORDS ON THE TELEPROMPTER GRINNING FROM EAR TO EAR.

So, to summarize – Running out of time to ‘Sell the War’ before the SOTU Speech, Bush and Cheney needed more support for their Niger claim to get it into the speech. For the support, they dusted-off Wilson’s Report DEBUNKING the very Niger claim Bush and Blair were using to beat the War Drum – DOCTORED it with Analysis to SUPPORT the Niger Dossier, calling it the ‘verbatim report’ – and stampeded us to War.

Actually, what I’m saying is that at the time of the SOTU, they did NOT use Joe Wilson’s report. All they had was the Niger forgeries to base their uranium allegation on. It is only when they had to prove their allegation to the IAEA shortly after the SOTU that the Wilson report was added to the “mix” – clearly because the US IC knew that the forgeries were a pile of fraudulent junk.

It’s pretty complicated.

It should be enough that they didn’t use Wilson’s trip report, or ~any~ of the Niger forgeries.

The CIA had been warning them against it and so they (voila) simply attributed the whole pack of lies to the British government instead.

This despite the fact the CIA had warned against that too!

This has to be the highest of high crimes and misdemeanors!

Amen, brother!

Sleep well in the happy knowledge that many of the central players won’t be sleeping as well as some of us for a while. The meat grinder has momentum. :)