Challenge for Sam Harris

[Guest]

Seriously? The Weekly Standard? Why not World Net Daily?

[_JohnStuartMill]

The whole "British Intelligence has learned" language was pretty much a lie. At the time, British Intelligence wasn't sure about dick -- saying that they "learned" that Saddam was seeking yellowcake from Niger imputed a certainty to that intelligence that didn't exist.

[_richardMdBorn]

The whole "British Intelligence has learned" language was pretty much a lie. At the time, British Intelligence wasn't sure about dick -- saying that they "learned" that Saddam was seeking yellowcake from Niger imputed a certainty to that intelligence that didn't exist.

I'm repeating myself, but FactCheck, which must be treated skeptically like any other web site but is hardly a right wing site, states:

Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying
July 26, 2004
Updated: August 23, 2004
Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.
Summary
The famous “16 words” in President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address turn out to have a basis in fact after all, according to two recently released investigations in the US and Britain.
Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.
• A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”
• A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
• Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.
• Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.
None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that US intelligence analysts have come to doubt whether Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t have been part of Bush’s speech.
But what he said – that Iraq sought uranium – is just what both British and US intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying.

[quote]http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html