YOU JUST KNOW THERE'S A PROTHONOTARY WARBLER IN HERE SOMEWHERE

The plot thickens: New evidence fails to resolve the mystery of Bush's State of the Union misstep on Iraq (Edward T. Pound and Bruce B. Auster, 7/28/03, US News)

U.S. News has learned that a document prepared by Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, at almost exactly the same time as the State of the Union address omitted any reference to Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger. The chronology of events is puzzling--even to insiders: On Saturday, January 25, just three days before the address, officials gathered in the White House Situation Room to vet intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and its links to terrorism. Libby made the presentation. After several hours, Libby summarized the conclusions of the meeting and turned them into a written case for war against Saddam.

Libby's document was sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell; it was intended as the "script" for his presentation to the United Nations on February 5. The puzzler: The charge that Iraq sought uranium from Niger was not in Libby's paper. Why not? "The agency had so discredited it," says one participant, "they didn't want to bring it up."

Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate intelligence panel, says "the process was broken" and complains of "sloppy coordination" among national security agencies.

That's not broken; that's how the process works in a $2.2 Trillion dollar government. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 22, 2003 11:24 PM