The AP Strikes Again

Yesterday, I read Pete Yost's AP article about Patrick Fitzgerald's most recent filing. Here's the most telling part of the article:

Cheney's notes "support the proposition that publication of the Wilson op-ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant, his chief of staff, on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions," according to the file.

In the column, Wilson recounted how he had been sent by the CIA in 2002 to the Niger to assess intelligence that Iraq had an agreement to acquire uranium yellowcake from the African country. His conclusion: It was highly doubtful that such a deal existed. A year later, the intelligence about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal was still being given credence by the administration as it made the case for invading Iraq.

This is another instance of the Agenda Media carrying the Wilsons' water. Wilson wasn't sent to Niger to find out if a deal had been reached. He was sent to see if there was anything to British intelligence that Saddam was attempting to buy uranium. Mr.Yost knows about Factcheck.org's analysis of Bush's infamous "Sixteen Words". Here's what FactCheck.org included in their analysis:

Bush said then, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.

• A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush's 16 words "well founded."
• A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from "a number of intelligence reports," a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
• Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush's 16 words a "lie," supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.
• Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

Notice that President Bush didn't say "British intelligence shows that Saddam Hussein bought uranium from Niger." He said that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Here's what the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation said about Wilson's findings:

Based on what Wilson told them, CIA analysts wrote an intelligence report saying former Prime Minister Mayki "interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the (Iraqi) delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales." In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that "for most analysts" Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

The subject of uranium sales never actually came up in the meeting, according to what Wilson later told the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. He quoted Mayaki as saying that when he met with the Iraqis he was wary of discussing any trade issues at all because Iraq remained under United Nations sanctions. According to Wilson, Mayaki steered the conversation away from any discussion of trade.

This information also blows out of the water the moonbats' charges that Iraq's 'ambassador' to the Vatican visited Niger to get them to not obey the sanctions and fly into Iraq. The purpose of the trip, according to Mayaki, was to look into buying yellowcake uranium.

In other words, the AP, which is a prominent member of the Agenda Media, is willfully misleading its readers. Simply shameful.

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Posted Monday, May 15, 2006 3:59 PM

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