AIN'T NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS (via ef brown)

We were right about uranium, Straw tells CIA (Colin Brown, 13/07/2003, Daily Telegraph)

The CIA secretly dispatched a US envoy, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate the British claim. He reported to the CIA there was no evidence to support the British intelligence, but Mr Straw said that the report - which had not been shared with London by Washington - in fact had confirmed that a delegation from Iraq did go to Niger in 1999.

One Foreign Office official said: "Niger has two main exports - uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens."

The British claim was also challenged by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) which found that documents on which it was based were forged. However, a senior Downing Street official said: "We are sticking by our claim. We received intelligence from another country and we cannot share that with the US."

The main, though unstated, fact of all this remains: we had no idea what Saddam was doing despite a massive intelligence effort. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2003 1:58 PM