{"id":3474,"date":"2007-04-26T08:08:56","date_gmt":"2007-04-26T15:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/26\/investigate-the-war-party\/"},"modified":"2007-04-26T08:08:56","modified_gmt":"2007-04-26T15:08:56","slug":"investigate-the-war-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/26\/investigate-the-war-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigate the War Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At last, the Democrats are moving on the let&#8217;s-investigate-how-they-lied-us-into-war front, with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) homing in on what Waxman describes as a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/04\/25\/AR2007042501863.html\">fabricated claim that Iraq sought uranium in Niger<\/a>.&#8221; Waxman&#8217;s Government Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to Condi Rice: apparently the California congressman isn&#8217;t just grandstanding &#8212; he means business.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yellowcake_forgery\">Niger uranium mystery<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0has always seemed to me to be the Achilles heel of the War Party: here we have the President of the United States uttering those fateful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/US\/07\/20\/sprj.irq.wmd.investigation\/\">16 words<\/a> based on a cache of <a href=\"http:\/\/cryptome.org\/niger-docs.htm\">documents<\/a> that turned out to be forgeries. And not even good forgeries, but pathetically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/6073449\/site\/newsweek\/\">crude <\/a>renditions of purported &#8220;correspondence&#8221; between Saddam Hussein and the President of Niger. A simple Google search, plus a modicum of common sense, would have convinced the most eager-to-believe to dump this &#8220;intelligence&#8221; in the trash. Yet, somehow, it passed muster &#8212; in spite of George Tenet&#8217;s militant misgivings &#8212; and went into Bush&#8217;s 2003 state of the union speech to buttress the claim that Iraq was actively pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Some questions:<\/p>\n<p>Who was pushing this phony &#8220;intelligence&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>How did they manage to get around the vetting process?<\/p>\n<p>And, most intriguingly: who forged the documents?<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/?articleid=8209\">asking<\/a> these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/?articleid=9278\">questions<\/a> at Antiwar.com for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/?articleid=7931\">some<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/?articleid=7876\">time<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/j071403.html\">now<\/a>, and come up with some tentative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/?articleid=7681\">answers<\/a>, while calling for a congressional investigation. It will be interesting to see if the Waxman committee digs as deep as it needs to in order to get at the truth.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2007\/04\/26\/europe\/EU-GEN-Rice-Congress-Subpoenas.php\">This<\/a> just in:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a U.S. congressional committee and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is a mistake, but then again this administration never learns. The last time she tried to pull this, she wound up relenting. Now she is &#8220;hinting&#8221; once again that she&#8217;s going to go into her diva act. Stay tuned &#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At last, the Democrats are moving on the let&#8217;s-investigate-how-they-lied-us-into-war front, with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) homing in on what Waxman describes as a &#8220;fabricated claim that Iraq sought uranium in Niger.&#8221; Waxman&#8217;s Government Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena to Condi Rice: apparently the California congressman isn&#8217;t just grandstanding &#8212; he means business. The Niger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}