I'm going to run this up the flagpole one more time. Check out this link. It's not the only place this is covered - it's been in every major newspaper, but 1-2 yrs ago. It's been forgotten.
It's time to resurrect it, I say. During Bush's SOTU speech in 2003 he deliberately mislead the public & the legislators (Rep and Dems both) into thinking that IRAQ's WMD threat was imminent. To pull this off he deliberately used results from a several years old IAEA report, rather than the one just handed to him which showed no WMD's in IRAQ.
http://www.theothernews.com/article.asp?article=368&dept=2Also, this is discussed at length in special report of the NYT Oct 3, 2004.
You need a subscription, so I'll quote the abstract here:
THE NUCLEAR CARD: The Aluminum Tube Story -- A special report.; How White House Embraced Suspect Iraq Arms Intelligence
THIS ARTICLE WAS REPORTED BY DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD AND JEFF GERTH, AND WAS WRITTEN BY MR. BARSTOW. (NYT) Special Report 11160 words
Late Edition - Final , Section 1 , Page 1 , Column 1
ABSTRACT - Bush administration brushed aside doubts of its foremost nuclear experts in leadup to war with Iraq when it embraced theory that high-strength aluminum tubes being acquired by Iraq were part of Saddam Hussein's program to develop nuclear weapons; Vice Pres Dick Cheney would go on to argue 'with absolute certainty' that tubes were intended for uranium centrifuge despite considerable evidence supporting alternative theory that they were in fact rocket parts; centrifuge idea was first championed by junior CIA analyst in April 2001, and momentum gathered behind it built on pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and persistent failure in Bush administration and in Congress to ask hard questions; tube episode is case study of intersection between politics of pre-emption and inherent ambiguity of intelligence; photos; drawings (L)