<p>The White House blew it by caving so fast. Had they waited for the British investigation they would have concluded that they were right all along. </p>
<p>I thought you guys were big on getting help from other countries?</p>
<p>By the way, the Senate Intelligence Report shows that Wilson’s report from Niger actually buttressed the possibility of an Iraqi connection. But you already knew that since you claimed to have read it.</p>
<p>'The phrase in question was 16-words long: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” </p>
<p>There remains no evidence that Iraq actually did try to buy uranium. But the recent reports suggest it was reasonable for Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to believe that Iraq may have tried to do so. </p>
<p>The recent British report by Lord Butler while finding that the intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons was “seriously flawed” concluded that Mr. Bush’s statement and a similar one by Blair were “well-founded.” </p>
<p>The Senate Intelligence Committee report which said most of the pre-war claims were not supported cited various reports that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Thus, although Mr. Bush cited only British evidence that was determined to have been inconclusive, other intelligence files clearly contained other inconclusive evidence of the truth of the claim. </p>
<p>The committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, said he believed last year that the White House was correct in repudiating the uranium claim. “Now I don’t know whether it’s accurate or not. That’s the whole question,” Roberts, a Republican, said in an interview…But the Senate committee disclosed other intelligence suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium. It cited separate reports received from foreign intelligence services on Oct. 15, 2001, and Feb. 5, 2002, and March 25, 2002. The State Department doubted the accuracy of the reports, but the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had more confidence in them. </p>
<p>The Senate committee also described various reports about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from French, British and unidentified foreign governments. Some of the reports went beyond Niger, to address claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo. </p>
<p>But how much credibility these reports had was not clear. The Senate committee criticized the CIA for “inconsistent and at times contradictory” reports to policy-makers on the uranium issue "</p>
<p>So no body really knows…</p>