King of Fools

State of the Analysis

One lefty blogger who was an early responder to the Wilson story is Joshua Micah Marshall. I thought about his comments yesterday and was going to post about them until I happened upon a very solid response to his spin here. You should read both.

One very interesting quote Marshall pulls from the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (very large PDF; registration required) is this one:

Although the NSC had already removed the uranium reference from the speech, later on October 6th, 2002 the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, "more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine city by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British.

I don't find this quote particularly condemning toward Bush, but I do find it rather alarming for other reasons. It disturbs me because the arguments against the evidence are so weak. I'm just your basic software engineer but even I can see the stupidity behind the three points.

1. The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine city by the source is under the control of the French authorities.

This point attempts to address the availability issue by pointing out the status of the mines. This is relevant information but it creates far more questions than it answers.

Mine #1 was flooded. How long had it been flooded? What would it have taken to get it operational again? Was it completely ruined? Would a good contract (like the Iraq offer) have provided enough capital to pump it out and start mining uranium again?

Mine #2 was controlled by the French. Define what you mean by 'controlled'? Would the French have been open to selling the proceeds of the mine to Iraq? (Think about that one.) What if the deal was under the table? Would it have been possible to deceive the French by going through a middle-man?

If uranium could not have been taken from either mine, might there have been previously mined uranium available? Finally, if there was absolutely no availability of uranium, is it still not possible that Iraq attempted to buy uranium not knowing there was not any to be purchased? Anyone who has ever placed an order and received a letter stating "I'm sorry, that item is no longer available" would know the answer to that question.

2. The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory.

They had stocks of uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is only used for nuclear power or nuclear weapons. They did not have a nuclear power plant (thanks to Israel) and then they tried to purchase more. But, this was not a significant development because they already had some. So next time I'm playing Unreal Tournament and I see my opponent picking up extra rockets for his rocket launcher, I don't need to be alarmed. After all, the procurement is not particularly significant because he already had some rockets.

Although I'm usually quite wary of people who see demons in every shadow, I always thought that intelligence specialists should have a healthy dose of paranoia when evaluating risks. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

3. We have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British.

I like this one. There is no need to believe that Iraq attempted to purchased uranium because of these two really lame reasons, plus this really compelling third reason: we already told the two lame reasons to your political adversaries. Oh, and even though we don't believe this information (for the lame reasons stated above), the British do.

Which might be why Bush indicated in his speech that it was the British Government who learned about the attempt to purchase yellowcake.

Oh, and the British have been involved their own pre-war intelligence examination. The results indicate that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence behind them.

Perhaps I'm missing the key which unlocks the whole mystery behind what was wrong with the intelligence which indicated that Saddam attempted to purchase uranium. I know we have some of the best and brightest working for our intelligence services, but frankly, this kind of output looks like bureacratic excrement.

King of Fools | 07/12/04 - 08:05 AM
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