La La Land

For anyone who has followed the story of the Niger uranium hoax closely, things are starting to look pretty silly right now. And it's going all the way to the top, with Bush and Berlusconi both playing dumb:

The White House has disputed accusations that Italian intelligence in a 2002 meeting passed off fake documents, showing Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, that formed part of US President George W Bush's case for war against Saddam Hussein.

US officials who attended a September 9, 2002, meeting with Italy's spy chief do not recall the issue coming up, said a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. The meeting is central to the accusations.

"No one who was present at the meeting remembers yellow cake (uranium) being discussed nor any documents being passed," spokesman Frederick Jones said...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has rejected accusations at home that the intelligence agency, known as Sismi, gave fake documents to Washington about the Niger deal.

On Friday, Berlusconi's office said that there was no mention of the Iraq-Niger affair at Pollari's September 2002 meeting, at which it said Hadley was a just silent guest.

During his visit to the White House on Monday, Berlusconi followed up with Bush, briefly raising the issue, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Josh Marshall has transcript from McClellan's press gaggle today:

QUESTION: Thank you. Any more explanation of the Berlusconi-President discussion about Italian intelligence on Iraq -- is this to say that Mr. Fitzgerald's finding that the Niger claim had its genesis in Italian intelligence was wrong?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Mr. Fitzgerald's -- I'll have to look back at what his finding was. I don't recall the specifics of that.

QUESTION: Fitzgerald found that what we had been calling British intelligence, the document -- the forged document --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I missed that. I don't think so. I don't think so.

QUESTION: -- alleging an Iraq --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Okay, I don't think he did.

QUESTION: I'm wrong on this?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think he --

QUESTION: That's not ringing any bells.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes.

QUESTION: It's not ringing any bells with other people either.

QUESTION: No, it is, it is. And I can't remember if it's Fitzgerald or somebody else, but there's this is the central issue is --

QUESTION: The central issue was --

QUESTION: -- the source of the --

QUESTION: The source of the forged document was Italy, who handed it to --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, the -- we actually briefed on the source of the information back in July of 2003, and the source was the National Intelligence Estimate and British Intelligence. That was the basis for the reference in the President's State of the Union address.

QUESTION: Fitzgerald found an Italian tie, and I presume this is what the discussion between the President and Berlusconi was about.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, they -- like I said they -- Prime Minister Berlusconi brought it up, and as they indicated, that there wasn't any documents that were provided to us on Niger and uranium by --

QUESTION: Wait, no documents or no intelligence?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

QUESTION: The press report out of Italy is a transcription -- it's a transcription of the forged documents, not the actual documents themselves. But Berlusconi said yesterday was, no information passed from Italy to the United States.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I think he was accurately reflecting what he indicated in the meeting.

QUESTION: So that accurately characterizes the President's position, that the United States never received any intelligence --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, Prime Minister Berlusconi was reflecting that within the meeting, and we've previously said in regards to a question that came up about a meeting here at the White House that no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed at that meeting, much less any documents being provided.

Clear as mud? We don't know, we can't remember, and anyway we can't talk about it even if we wanted to. These are your so-called "leaders of the free world", folks.

Senator Reid has now forced the GOP to follow up on "phase two" of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure. Phase two involves administration manipulation of intelligence, which the GOP has been stone-walling since early 2003. Reid forced the US Senate into a closed hearing and threatened to do so every day until the GOP started playing ball. The Republicans have just caved in and agreed to a timeline.

Meanwhile, terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin (director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999) and Steven Simon (a former US State Department official who was also at the NSC) are releasing a new book, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right. They claim the USA is losing the war on terrorism:

It's been fairly disastrous. We have had some very important successes getting individual terrorists. But I think the broader story is really quite awful. We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us...

Everyone says there's a war of ideas out there, and I agree. The sad fact is that we're on the wrong side.