Is it important to know if the Bush admin was informed the Uranium doc was a forgery, BEOFRE the STU?

Question

If not does that help to clear his war motives?
If so should he be charged with a crime and/or impeached?

arcangel (below) and others. You don't care if the president knowingly used a forged document concerning nukes to start a war???? seriously???

Answer 1

It is very important the timing of when he was infromed of the forge documents. It may not clear up his motives though. there will always be public spin control and the many political factions bringing up their own theories and ideas on motive. If however Bush was clearly proven to have prior knowledge it would affect his credibility. The problem is there will always be people who strongly believe him and not wish to see the truth no matter what it is just as there will be people who will never believe he did anything right.. This one particular matter will most likely never lead to criminal prosecution or impeachment. Currently the bills in Congress moving to bring troops home are essentially a vote of no confidence of the President by Congress. Bush is more apt to face prosecution over the recent federal prosecutor firings, illegal spying, Valerie Plame outing,lying to prosecutors and or Congress. He probably deserves impeachment more then Clinton ever did. I believe it is not likely though we will ever see him prosecuted and my opinion is Congress is unlikely to move toward impeachment. The political reasons for this is members of congress heard loud and clear in the last election people are tired of extreme partisan politics and there is a move among both Republicans and Democrats to move more to the middle. Impeachment though possible warranted would do more to inflame the deep divisions and the public. I believe most Americans have reached the conclusion though that the president went to war under false pretenses. Some will justify this though as acceptable. Many of us do not.

Answer 2

Chi Guy,

It's clear to me, from the responses and the voting for best response (thumbs up), that you have been targeted. In all likelyhood some of these *responders* are part of some conservative organization. They have orchestrated a way to silence you, bro.

Your question is valid. American sentiment has slowly drifted to Iraq was/is a huge mistake, but it's now grown to about 70% to 30%. Either the fellow liberals are just too busy for Yahoo! Answers, or conservatives are doing their best to cloud the issue. I'm betting it's more a case of the latter.

Don't know what would work best. Taking a break from posting questions? Posting under a different name? Or continuing as you've been posting.

It's a shame, because this forum had been getting interesting.

These clowns are only kidding themselves when they say it doesn't matter.

Answer 3

No. The reasons for the war are many. The importance of that document is only to the far-Left, and their motives are probably more suspect. I think it would be impossible to prove what he (or Congress) KNEW before they voted to go to Iraq. Someone coming out of the wood-work and claiming they said something, how pure are those motives?

I have people tell me they told me things that I have no recollection of ever hearing. Are they lying? Or is my brain already full of an agenda? Or is their information non-memorable. And does it even matter by the time they tell me they told me. It's usually too late to do much but play the blame-game.

I think what I'm saying is that I do not even care what you guys do with Bush after he's done. But we are in a war. One which is possibly being prolonged, due to our own Liberals, who are against the war.

Where's the pragmatism? Where's the "let's get it done and come home?"

Answer 4

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html

Well, that should clear everything up. Thanks.

Answer 5

Yes,
What other crime against this country would be any way near this one? Treason at the very least. Starting a war on lies.
George W Bush knew that this piece of info that he sold the war to Congress and the American people was debunked and found to be false days before he spat it out at the State of the Union Address.
This is exactly why Colin Powell quit and has since distanced himself from this regime and politics
And doesnt' the "go for it lib" attitude remind you of the
"Bring it on" idiocy of this president
Fortunately his own party is jumping on the impeachment wagon and we will bring it on
BUSH SHOULD and hopefully WILL BE IMPEACHED

Answer 6

I would like to know what information, and how accurate the information was that was presented to the Bush administration and congress before the war started. Clearly we citizens were fed bad information, were they as well? If not, why did they pass this on to us?

It's not just Bush, it's the majority of the government. Democrats approved the war too.

Answer 7

Ever wonder of an old saying "Children are to be seen and not to be heard" which does not change with time but stay in time in planet of apes?
Ever wonder how the mess on Iraq was created by the children going for the glory of the executive suites and life styles in making a mess in planet of apes?
Ever wonder how the mess was created with ghostly stories in planet of apes?
Ever wonder how the dirty old men in office got themselves all get kick on the butts with the mess out there in planet of apes?

Answer 8

there's nothing about his war motives he can be impeached for.

Congress had ALL of the intelligence in front of them, including the dissenting intelligence. Many have claimed "they didn't read the whole thing" to excuse their vote.

There's nothing to impeach him for, because it's impossible to lie when giving all of the information, in writing, to those you are supposedly lying to.

Answer 9

The CIA vetted the SOTU speach and they definitely told the White House that the evidence was in question.and should be taken out of the speech.

The WH disregarded this advice.

Answer 10

The FBI is investigating the origin of forged documents indicating that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, and one candidate for the forgeries is an Iraqi opposition group, U.S. officials said.
The documents, obtained first by Italy's intelligence service, ended up fooling the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies into believing Baghdad was trying to buy uranium ore from the African nation, U.S. officials say.
The documents ended up "tainting" other reliable intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs and undermining the credibility of U.S. intelligence reports, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One official said that the documents were provided first to the Italians and then to journalists before they ended up in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which dismissed them as fakes.
FBI spokesman Bill Carter said in an interview that a preliminary inquiry into the documents was undertaken after recent meetings between senior FBI officials and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Mr. Carter declined to comment further, citing a policy of not discussing FBI investigative matters.
Other officials said the FBI has sent agents to Italy and other nations to find out the origin of the documents, and the bureau's counterintelligence agents also are questioning officials at the CIA and State Department. The probe was first reported by Newsweek magazine.
Other intelligence obtained by Britain is considered reliable and indicates Niger had tried to sell uranium ore to Saddam Hussein's government, said officials familiar with U.S. intelligence reports.
President Bush chastised senior advisers, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and outgoing press spokesman Ari Fleischer, about the uranium intelligence flap and the White House's handling of it several times during the recent trip to Africa.
Spokesmen at the time initially said the White House was provided with bad intelligence from the CIA, only to reverse course a day later and claim the intelligence may still be valid although it should not have been included in a presidential speech.
"The president wanted the matter settled," one official said of Mr. Bush's harsh words for his advisers.
Although it received intelligence from the documents earlier, the CIA did not obtain copies of the forged documents until February 2003 — months after the Italians first obtained them and after the president's State of the Union address.
A U.S. official said the Italians initially only described the documents to the CIA. Then the State Department obtained a set from a journalist and that led to an investigative trip to Niger by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Mr. Wilson said Niger's government told him that the country would not sell uranium to Iraq, but also informed him that Iraqis were in the country discussing unspecified commercial transactions, which could have included uranium-ore purchases, the U.S. official said.
CIA Director George J. Tenet testified before a closed hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday to explain how the tainted intelligence ended up in a major U.S. intelligence-community report and the president's State of the Union speech.
An official said the documents included a letter about the purchase of some 500 tons of uranium ore, supposedly signed by Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja. The signature was found to have been faked.
Another document was described as an October 2000 Niger military document signed by a former foreign minister of Niger.
Besides Iraqi opposition, investigators also say the documents could have been produced by criminals, con men, or a foreign intelligence service.
The six main anti-Saddam groups before the war were the Iraqi National Congress, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Accord and the Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
In London on Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended British intelligence on the Niger-Iraq uranium deal before the Parliament.
"The intelligence on which we based this was not the so-called 'forged documents' that have been put to the IAEA, and the IAEA have accepted that they got no such forged documents from British intelligence," Mr. Blair said.
"We had independent intelligence to the effect," the prime minister added.
U.S. intelligence officials suspect the bogus documents were created to exaggerate Iraq's nuclear-arms program as part of an effort to garner international opposition to Baghdad.
The forged documents undermined one element of a National Intelligence Estimate, a major interagency report, that became the basis for part of the president's January speech to Congress.
Officials familiar with the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction said it included one passage about efforts by Baghdad to buy yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.
However, the passage in the highly classified report did not have a "footnote" or objection attached to it, indicating it represented a consensus view of all intelligence agencies, including the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Only later in another section of the 90-page classified report did the State Department intelligence office indicate that it doubted the attempted Niger uranium purchases.
"There was no opposition to the main reference to Niger," said one official who has seen the estimate.
According to U.S. officials, the State Department's opposition to the intelligence on Niger uranium in the report was related to the department's doubts about Iraq's purchase of special alloy tubes that were believed to be for building gas centrifuges.