Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying
Two intelligence invesigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.

I'm a big fan of the Annenberg Political Fact Check, but their look at the 16 Words is far too limited. While their conclusion is correct within the smaller context that they've chosen to limit the analysis to, it fails to reflect the damning picture painted by the administration's handling of the matter over the year leading up to the State of the Union speech.

1. He may have said "Iraq is SEEKING uranium", but we were meant to hear "Iraq is ACQUIRING uranium"

Put charitably, the President exaggerated. One could argue that the President was given bad data by British and American intelligence agencies, but even that inaccurate information gave no evidence that Saddam was actually successful in his attempt to acquire uranium. (The only evidence for that were those forged Italian documents.)

Yet the White House took that slim bit of information and spun it for all it was worth in those 16 words. He didn't say “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. We checked it out and found that he was completely unsuccessful in getting his hands on the stuff, but we must be vigilant all the same." And because he didn't, the impression left with the American people was that Saddam had in fact gotten hold of uranium.

When a rogue state tries to acquire nuclear capability and fails, it's a good argument for closer scrutiny and sanctions. When a rogue state tries to acquire nuclear capability and succeeds, it's a good argument for invasion. The distance between those two is where the lie of those 16 words comes from.

2) Ignoring stronger evidence contrary to the conclusion one has already formed counts as lying

That the White House could mistakenly believe in the veracity of a Nigerien uranium threat at any point is highly suspect. Ambassador Wilson has been at pains to point out that his report is in agreement with two previous reports on the feasibility of the Niger-Iraq yellowcake transaction.

These two reports, which predate Wilson's, were submitted by Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the American ambassador to Niger at the time, and four-star Marine Corps General Carleton Fulford to the State and Defense Departments respectively. Ambassador Wilson's own report was to the CIA, whose inquiry into the matter was ordered by the office of the Vice President.

That's three reports prepared by a career, active-duty foreign service officer and 2 envoys especially picked to assess this issue, all dismissing the idea that Niger could have sold uranium to Saddam Hussein, sent to three separate major federal agencies. Two of them are Cabinet level agencies, and the other was working under a directive from Vice President Dick Cheney. The content of at least one of the reports cannot have been unknown to senior members of the administration. The reports should have tempered, if not outright laid to rest, any fear of Nigerien uranium sale to Iraq in the immediate future and removed the need for such a high-profile announcement of a nuclear threat.

SO, WAS IT A LIE? 'Lying' is a hell of a charge to level against someone, especially the man that occupies the most powerful office in the world. The careful choice of verbs--'sought'--suggests that the White House was well aware of what it was doing. Exaggerating. Spinning. Wishful thinking. Negligence. We could excuse it as any one of those things, except the 16 words were spoken for a very specific goal: to raise the specter of a nuclear attack in order to soften up an already skittish Congress and people for the invasion of Iraq. That's what makes it a lie, rather than simple inaccuracy.

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