The Truth About Hillary Clinton

[fundingfather]

<p>Yes, I read that he proudly broke the embargo. I don’t think we will see Matt Lauer calling anytime soon, however. What did you think of the interview? I have read that some of the salacious allegations that were supposed to be in the book actually are not even in it. Was that addressed?</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>Of the mistakes, errors, missing information, etc:</p>

<p>Here are some examples, with page #s cited:</p>

<p><a href=“http://mediamatters.org/items/200506200004[/url]”>http://mediamatters.org/items/200506200004&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://mediamatters.org/items/200506240007[/url]”>http://mediamatters.org/items/200506240007&lt;/a&gt; this is an interview with the author himself</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>And by the way, some of the falsehoods were ones picked up and used as headlines were done so by some righties…Drudgereport for one</p>

<p>And if the author admits his sources are third fourth hand, that he gets peoples names wrong, that he uses other books as his sources and doesn’t really check out rumors for himself, that he gives half the facts, leaves out important parts of quotes, and then says, well, oops? And somehow we are supposed to take the rest of what he rights as fact? </p>

<p>When he does make assumptions and uses “quotes” to bolster an argument, he leaves out pertinent details. Or when he claims someone was accused of something and makes a big deal out of it, yet, an investigation proved that accusation was unfounded, he leaves that little bit out. Then he blaims others for talking about something from 1993, yet it was he himself who discussed it first in the book. </p>

<p>Somehow this is okay with some people, but if you were Dan Rather, you would be drawn and quartered.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

but if you were Dan Rather, you would be drawn and quartered.

Ed Klein is not the anchor of a major television news organization. I’m sure you understand the difference.</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>Nor is he Secretary of State- who used BAD inteiigence in front of the UN. But, heck, that bad intelligence don’t matter none.</p>

[ariesathena]

<p>CGM: I would rather try to verify the authenticity of a document (reportedly typed in the 1970s) than try to verify the authenticity of military intelligence. IMO, one is a lot more straightforward and simpler than the other. With the military document, if I recall correctly, there was a raised “th” or similar on a numeral - clearly, something typed with the aid of a word processor, not a typewriter! Ergo, some important questions for that: could this have been typed on a typewriter (Same size “font;” nothing like Times New Roman; no justification)? I could hardly imagine that military intelligence lends itself to such straightforward and simple enquiries.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

Nor is he Secretary of State- who used BAD inteiigence in front of the UN. But, heck, that bad intelligence don’t matter none.

Based on the amount of concurring evidence from multiple sources/governments/administrations over a period of years, it was absolutley the right call from a Decision Analysis perspective. Besides, even as John Kerry admitted, if he knew then what was found out afterward about the lack of WMD, he still would have voted to authorize war.</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>Do you hold a journalist to a higher standard than the Secretary of State?</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>So you do, you expect private citizens to be more accruate than the United State Goverment? That is pretty damn scary</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>"Powell’s speech before the Security Council on February, 5, 2003 --detailing possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – was a major event in the Bush administration’s effort to justify a war and win international support. </p>

<p>Powell said Friday his testimony about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs was based on the best intelligence available, but “now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid,” Powell said. "</p>

<p>Oh my…and yet, Rather was pillored for using counting on a false piece of paper…he missed the font difference…okay he did a really bad job</p>

<p>But:</p>

<p>A week later, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the U.N. Security Council that Iraq also was trying to acquire aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. But several experts - including some in Powell’s own department - had concluded the tubes were the wrong type for a nuclear program and instead were intended for use in conventional rockets.</p>

<p>I guess we do have to hold those that report this stuff to higher standards than those that actually do this stuff</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>“A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector said [March 6] in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq’s secret nuclear ambitions.”
“Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed “not authentic” after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.”
And the Administration’s response?
“’We fell for it,’ said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.”</p>

<p>I guess journalist are held to higher standards than the US Government</p>

[yulsie]

<p>This administration has made a virture out of distorting reality and manipulating the public’s perception of world affairs by jerking and jerking the choke chain of FEAR of EVIL TERRORISTS who will MURDER you in your BEDS! Karl Rove “We invent reality.” Is that the epitome of megalomanicial or what?</p>

<p>Half a block from my office building today, by contrast, there was a major gas leak at a construction site - fire trucks everywhere and police moving people away. Luckily, there were no smokers walking past and we did not have a major explosion (4 blocks from the White House - ironic, isn’t it).</p>

[An0nym0u5]

<p>i cant believe this thread has gone on this long. the book is clearly trash, im not sure why it warrants so much attention.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

I guess journalist are held to higher standards than the US Government

</p>

<p>not so fast … this whole Niger situation was evaluated by the British Butler report. This is what he found out and reported:</p>

<p>

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:</p>

<p>The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa </p>

<p>was well-founded.

But, your glorious press never seems to mention the fact that Bush has been exonerated from claims that he either reported erroneous information or in fact lied. In fact, to this day, this is the centerpiece of the “Bush lied” mantra. Not only did he not lie (definition: a deliberate telling of a known falsehood) but what he said was accurate. Ironically, anyone who knows of the Butler report and who continues to spread the “Bush lied” about Niger storyline is the one who is guilty of lying. This includes your wonderful press, who certainly must know about the Butler Report and now you if you persist in spreading this falsehood.</p>

<p>P.S. I thought that you said you read all of these documents? If you did, and you knew about this exoneration from the Butler report then shame on you.</p>

[TheDad]

<p>An excerpt from The New Yorker regarding the “Niger uranium.”</p>

<p>

Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said.</p>

<p>One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.”</p>

<p>The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.</p>

<p>It took Baute’s team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that “they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.”</p>

<p>The large quantity of uranium involved should have been another warning sign. Niger’s “yellow cake” comes from two uranium mines controlled by a French company, with its entire output presold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. “Five hundred tons can’t be siphoned off without anyone noticing,” another I.A.E.A. official told me. Emphasis mine. </p>

<p>This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. “It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just don’t know,” the official said. “Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted.” Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador’s return to Rome.</p>

<p>Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, “confronted the United States with the forgery: ‘What do you have to say?’ They had nothing to say.”</p>

<p>ElBaradei’s disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei’s report, dismissed the subject by saying, “If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved.” A few days later, at a House hearing, he denied that anyone in the United States government had anything to do with the forgery. “It came from other sources,” Powell testified. “It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.”</p>

<p>The forgery became the object of widespread, and bitter, questions in Europe about the credibility of the United States. But it initially provoked only a few news stories in America, and little sustained questioning about how the White House could endorse such an obvious fake. On March 8th, an American official who had reviewed the documents was quoted in the Washington Post as explaining, simply, “We fell for it.”

</p>

<p>The fact that the Butler report is a political document sticks up for an intelligence assessment that would be embarrassing to back off from. No, nay, never.</p>

<p>The Niger yellowcake is in the same bit of wishful thinking as the famed “aluminum tubes for centrifuges,” though you can find credence in both still percolating through the wingnut blogosphere. (Note the leftwing blogosphere is not immune from its own nuttery, e.g., massive concealment of U.S. casualities, the war being for oil, etc. Though the latter is actually easier to swallow than Bush wanting to wave his willy around the Middle East and out-do his father.)</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>The only problem with this whole line of reasoning (and I use that term “reasoning” loosely) is that the British intelligence did not rely on these fake documents. That has been the red herring in this whole issue - the presumption that the evidenced hinged on the veracity of what turned out to be fake documents. The British had other sources for their information as looked into by the Butler commission. Just because you don’t like the facts doesn’t make them bogus. Rather, it points to your unwillingness to accept any information other than that which supports your view of reality.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know the reeeest of the story”</p>

<p>

Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium
By Mark Huband in Rome</p>

<p>Published: June 27, 2004</p>

<p>Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.
Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.</p>

<p>These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.
The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales - apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein’s regime - were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be forgeries. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its earlier claim.
But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.
Officials said the fake documents, which emerged in October 2002 and have been traced to an Italian with a record for extortion and deception, added little to the picture gathered from human intelligence and were only given weight by the Bush administration.
According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, thereby circumventing official export controls. “The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources,” an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said.
The UK government used the details in its Iraq weapons dossier, which it used to justify war with Iraq after concluding that it corresponded with other information it possessed, including evidence gathered by GCHQ, the UK eavesdropping centre, of a visit to Niger by an Iraqi official.
However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made.

</p>

[driver]

<p>TheDad:
No one who cites a two-year-old Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker magazine as an authoritative reference should be making cracks about anyone else’s sources. What other research nuggets did you turn up in your doctor’s waiting room?</p>

[TheDad]

<p>Driver, nice try but no sale. It was the quickest reference to the IAEC report. There are any number of places I could have picked up the citation but responding to True Believer Texts Written on Tinfoil isn’t my full-time job. The facts don’t change depending on where it was reported…well, check that, I guess you expect that with Faux News. </p>

<p>You gotta beef? Take it up with the IAEA.</p>

<p>I happen to be doing some research that otherwise takes me into the wingnut blogosphere right now. It’s fascinating to read the stuff passed off as Gospel in the echo chamber that doesn’t make it into even nominally friendly MSM venues. After visting a few of these sites, though, I need to go through de-tox, take off the the biohazard suit, and all of that.</p>

[citygirlsmom]

<p>I find it facsinating that our government used foriegn intelligence over our own…so we trusted the Brits over our own CIA? </p>

<p>Washington - The White House has acknowledged for the first time that President George W Bush should not have claimed in his state-of-the-union address that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. </p>

<p>The newspaper said the statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report that raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince congress that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programme was a threat to United States security. </p>

<p>The Central Intelligence Agency had dispatched a former senior diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate the claim and received a report from him saying the allegations were false, according to the paper. "</p>

<p>But suddenly, another BRITISH report comes out and we are to believe them again?</p>