Uranium from Africa and the Niger forgeries: More on the Alleged French

[ProSense]

Monday :: Apr 10, 2006

Uranium from Africa and the Niger forgeries: More on the Alleged French Connection, Part 1

by eriposte

Late last year, Michael Smith of the London Times - also known for his Downing Street Memos expose – published an article chronicling what was alleged to be evidence offered by the French to the U.K. supporting the uranium from Niger claim. At the time, I published a fairly detailed response showing why some of the claims cited in that article were deeply flawed. This past weekend, Smith published another article (h/t Raw Story), which discusses both the Niger forgeries, as well as an update on the alleged role of the French in being the source of the mysterious evidence cited (and hidden) by the British Government to justify their uranium claim. Smith also has two blog posts on the recent findings. Much of the information in his article and blog posts is old news, and some of it appears to be spin from the Italians. He does offer one piece of potentially useful information, but his inference as to the significance of that information is unfortunately wrong. Smith covers a lot of ground - and single post will not do justice to it. So I'm going to split the response into two parts. The first part (this post) will focus on Smith's observations regarding the "new" (apostrophe mine) French evidence for the uranium claim. The next part will discuss his reporting and comments on the Niger forgeries.

1. Summary
2. The "new" French evidence from 2002 on Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in 1999
3. The "credibility" of the "new" French evidence
3.1 IAEA knowledge
3.2 Authenticity of the "letter"
3.3 U.S./CIA knowledge
4. The alleged letter and the issue of "sought" v. "bought" uranium
5. Miscellaneous observations

more...

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007324.php

[ProSense]

1. Links to text

1. Summary
2. The "new" French evidence from 2002 on Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in 1999
3. The "credibility" of the "new" French evidence
..3.1 IAEA knowledge
..3.2 Authenticity of the "letter"
..3.3 U.S./CIA knowledge
4. The alleged letter and the issue of "sought" v. "bought" uranium
5. Miscellaneous observations