I may be a little late on this one, I apologize, but I wanted to respond to your post, Klaus
Klaus said:
swizzlestick:
Some CIA members told the press that the US government knew exactly that some of the "facts" which made Iraq to a imminent danger which were presented were wrong. Espeially The Uranium Fiction
Actually I think what he said was "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In reading that, I can't even believe this is an issue. This statement is factual. If you read it, the President said "The British government" gathered these facts. It also says Hussein "sought" significant quanitities from Africa. I think people are not hearing/reading this whole quote and are jumping to the conclusion Bush lied.
Maybe there was no reliable evidence to support the particular intelligence report saying that Saddam had acquired yellowcake. But the British claim was only that Saddam had sought yellowcake...not that he succeeded in getting a five-pound box Fedexed to his palace. Is it possible that the British government was mistaken? Sure. Is it possible that the British gov. came by that belief based on an American intelligence report about a transaction between Iraq and Niger? Possibly. But Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet say that's not what happened. They have said "extra material, separate and independent from that of the US" is where they got their info.
Hopefully, everyone does know by now that Saddam Hussein did have a nuclear-weapons-development program. (Which was sey back once by Isreal in 1980, and once by the US in Desert Storm) And, let us not forget the Congress did vote and approve the President to use whatever force necessary to battle terrorism shortly after 9/11.
A little background on Joseph Wilson:
He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq. He's an "adjunct scholar" at the Middle East Institute which advocates for Saudi interests. He's a strong opponent of the Bush administration which he once said "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party." He said that "the new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme." He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he was afraid that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. He also said that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."
As far as his "investigation" goes, he was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake because Dick Cheney requested it and because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.
Wilson says he spent eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people". That doesn't sound very James Bond 007esq to me or even an in-depth investigation. But for debate purposes, lets say he was correct when he reported he believed it was "highly doubtful that any such transaction ever took place. " Because it was "doubtful" that Saddam actually acquired yellowcake from Niger, it does not follow that he never sought it there or elsewhere in Africa, which is all the President suggested based on what the British said and still say.
To me, Wilson already had his mind made up before he ever stepped foot in Niger.
Diogenes 
