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Apr. 30, 2007 Then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and then-Deputy Nacional Security Advisor, Stephen J. Hadleyy, merely forgot memoranda addressed by the CIA to them in October of 2002, according to Rice herself. These memoranda raised serious doubts about the evidence supporting allegations of Saddam Hussein’s supposed attempts to buy uranium in Africa, a charge that would be made by George W. Bush in his January 27, 2003 State of the Union address. Naturally, Condoleezza
Rice and Stephen Hadley, like I. Lewis Libby, are busy people, and you cannot expect them to remember every little communication that comes their way. That’s why they have a large staff and all sorts of sophisticated technology to help them. Can it be concluded that only Rice and Hadley saw the memoranda? Or can it be that everybody in the department who did see the memoranda forgot them in unison with their superiors? Could anyone possibly have cared whether Hussein was actually seeking uranium in Africa or whether it was merely in the realm of the possible that such an idea might occur to him sooner or later? They were busy people; they were not brokering in
such trifles as Hussein’s WMD. Anyway, they had the evidence prepared by M16, the British Secret Intelligence Service, to which Rice also referred in a recent interview conducted by ABC. On the strength of that carefully elaborated dossier, Rice, Hadley and their subordinates had every justification to support Bush in his now-debunked claims, said Rice. This scenario in itself taxes the credulity of any sensible individual who followed the sequence of events in the run-up
to the invasion of Iraq . Without receiving any further information, a perspicacious person would view Rice’s excuses and explanations with a lot of skepticism. Let us give Rice the benefit of the doubt though, and assume that she and Hadley were the only ones who saw the memoranda and that they completely forgot about them. However, on February 5, 2003, nine days after Bush delivered his State of the Union address, Colin Powell, then-Secretary of State, delivered an address before the UN General Assembly, painting a lurid picture of what could happen in Iraq , thanks to Hussein’s WMD-backed megalomania. In his speech, Powell praised the British intelligence dossier fulsomely. On February 6, 2003, ten days after Bush’s address and the very next day after Powell’s, parts of the British intelligence dossier was shown to be plagiarized from a thesis written by an American post-graduate student. To see this in perspective, let us turn the tables and suppose that the CIA, claiming to have conducted careful intelligence on Iraq and summarizing it in a report, had been found later merely to have borrowed much of the report from a thesis written by a student at Oxford University and posted by him online. This would be a major scandal and the whole report would be suspect. The CIA would not be able merely to say, “Well, yes, we admit we lifted a few pages from a thesis we found on Internet, but the rest of the report is the result of good, sound intelligence.” Admittedly, this plagiarism was turned up after the speeches that Bush and Powell gave, and allowing the possibility that Rice and Hadley simply forgot their memoranda, it could, with a most charitable stretch of the imagination, be supposed that Bush and Powell still thought they knew what they were talking about when they gave their speeches. However, on February 6, fully 6 weeks before the invasion, the news was out that the evidence relied upon by Bush and Powell was flawed. This could not possibly have escaped the notice of the White House, with its staff of hundreds or thousands. But where was the recantation? Where was the retraction? Where was the pause in the plans for war? Bush, Powell, Rice and Hadley should have stopped dead in their tracks, upon hearing of the fraudulent dossier, and said to one another, “We’d better reexamine our position on Iraq in view of this highly significant irregularity.” As far as I know, even till this day, April 30, 2007, no one in authority in the White House has acknowledged or explained their acquiescence in the fraud. One can suppose only that, even if they didn’t know about the fraud, they certainly couldn’t have cared less when they did find out. Their intent was to go to war, with or without justification. This was to be
a war for Israel , and had nothing to do with what Hussein was doing or thinking. But that isn’t all. The plagiarism is only secondary to the revelation by the International Atomic Energy Agency on March 7, 2003 that the documents purporting to pertain to an attempt by Hussein to buy uranium in Niger were forgeries. Quoth the report of the IAEA, “Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents which formed the basis
for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. However, we will continue to follow up any additional evidence if it emerges relevant to efforts by Iraq to illicitly import nuclear materials.” CNN’s whole article can be seen here.
Of course, it was not only CNN that carried news of the report, and in no way is it conceivable that all four of the abovesaid individuals remained ignorant of the
report. The news would have created a sensation in the White House, if it had not been already known that the documents were forged or if it had not been a matter of indifference whether they were. Authentic or not. This denunciation took place 13 days before the invasion, just in time to give the White House time to pause and reconsider. Obviously, their minds were made up and they weren’t about to be deterred by the truth.
Where was Rice at this time? What did she have to say about the plagiarism? What did she have to say about the forgeries? The plans for war just went ahead full-steam. Hardly a mention of the forgeries was made until midsummer of 2003, long after the war had been waged and George W. Bush had declared victory. Nothing that Rice can possibly say will exonerate her of her complicity in the conspiracy to invade Iraq . Saying that she forgot a memorandum simply is not enough. No other conclusion will fit the facts but that Rice didn’t give a damn whether she was acting in good faith or not. She sought only to pleaser her master, and her master’s masters, the Zionist crowd that was pushing
the war for Israel ’s sake.
Now, Rice has refused to testify before Henry Waxman’s Senate committee investigating the “intelligence failures”. She claims that she has already told the whole story many times. Well, why not tell it one more time under oath? Waxman may seek a rule for contempt, but Rice has been invoking the doctrine of separation of powers.
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