On July 5, 2008, the Associated Press (AP) released a story titled: Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq. The opening paragraph is as follows:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
See anything wrong with this picture? We have been hearing from the far-left for more than five years how, “Bush lied.” Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that 550 metric tons of Saddam’s yellowcake, used for nuclear weapon enrichment, has been discovered and shipped to Canada for its new use as nuclear energy.
It appears that American troops found the 550 metric tons of uranium in 2003 after invading Iraq. They had to sit on this information and the uranium itself, for fear of terrorists attempting to steal it. It was guarded and kept safe by our military in a 23,000-acre site with large sand berms surrounding the site.
This is vindication for the Bush administration, having been attacked mercilessly by the liberal media and the far-left pundits on the blogosphere. Now that it is proven that President Bush did not lie about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, one would think the mainstream media would report the story? Once the AP released the story, the mainstream media should have picked it up and broadcast it worldwide.
This never happened, due in large part I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush’s war motives all along. Thankfully, the AP got it right when it said,
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” – the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment – was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.
Closing the book on Saddam’s nuclear legacy? Did Saddam have a nuclear legacy after all? I thought Bush lied? As it turns out, the people who lied were Joe Wilson and his wife.
Valerie Plame engaged in a clear case of nepotism and convinced the CIA to send her husband on a fact finding mission in February 2002, seeking to determine if Saddam Hussein attempted to buy yellowcake from Niger. The CIA and British intelligence believed Saddam contacted Niger for that purpose but needed proof.
During his trip to Niger, Wilson actually interviewed the former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki. Mayaki told Wilson that in June of 1999, an Iraqi delegation expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations" for the purposes of purchasing yellowcake.
Wilson chose to overlook Mayaki’s remarks and reported to the CIA that there was no evidence of Hussein wanting to purchase yellowcake from Niger.
However, with British intelligence insisting the claim was true, President Bush used that same claim in his State of the Union address in January of 2003.
Outraged by Bush’s insistence that the claim was true, Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the summer of 2003 slamming Bush.
Wilson did this in spite of the fact that Mayaki said Saddam did try to buy the yellowcake from Niger. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disagreed with Wilson and supported Mayaki’s claim. This meant nothing to Wilson who was opposed to the Iraq war and thus had ulterior motives in covering up the prime minister’s statements.
It was a simple tactic really. If the far-left and their friends in the media could prove Bush lied about Hussein wanting to purchase yellowcake from Niger, it would undermine President Bush’s credibility and give them more cause for asking what other “lies” he may have told.
Yet, the real lie came from Wilson, who interpreted his own meaning from the prime minister’s statements and concluded all by himself that the claim of Saddam attempting to purchase yellowcake was "unequivocally wrong." Curiously, the CIA sat on this information and did not inform the CIA Director, who sided with Bush on the yellowcake claim. This was made public in a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in July 2004.
Valerie Plame also engaged in her own lie campaign by spreading the notion that the Bush administration “outed” her as a CIA agent. Never mind that it was Richard Armitage -- no friend of the Bush administration -- who leaked Plame’s identity to the press. Never mind that Plame had not been in the field as a CIA agent in some six years.
The truth is, due to their opposition to the war, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the mainstream media and their left-wing friends on the blogosphere engaged in a propaganda campaign to undermine the Bush administration. Now that Saddam’s uranium has been made public and is no longer a threat to the world, do you think these aforementioned parties will apologize and admit they were wrong? Don’t count on it. The rest of the American people should hear the truth about Saddam’s uranium. It is up to you and me to inform them every chance we get.
As far as the anti-war crowd is concerned, the next time they say that,
“Bush lied,” we should tell them to, “Have the yellowcake and eat it too.”