Were the fake Niger documents part of the 'fixing' of the WDM intelligence? The timing is suspicious.
Update [2005-10-15 1:58:52 by kosblt]: A complete timeline by Larry C Johnson link
Update [2005-7-29 1:58:52 by kosblt]: A nice followup by Josh Marshall link
Update [2005-7-23 1:11:7 by kosblt]:
Raw Story has a detailed Iraq timeline online here.
Also, Pen's detailed somewhat speculative diary outlines much more of the story.
Let's start first with the July 23, 2002
Downing Street Memo where British intelligence reports:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
2 months later some 'facts' did indeed surface.
On October 7'th, 2002, Rocco Martino an Italian businessman 'leaked' copies of the Niger documents he had obtained from the Italian military intelligence service to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist with the italian magazine Panorama. Burba's editor, Carlo Rossella (who has close ties to the Berlusconi government) insisted she take the documents to the US embassy for verification.
These documents were then forwarded to the CIA where Seymour Hersh's anonymous CIA source said
the papers were quickly assessed as fakes. "Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false--until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed." [The Washington Post, 7/20/03]
Even then, the timing was suspicious to Josh Marshalll who lays it all out in a TPM article of Oct 26, 2003.
Now, those documents turn out to have been amazingly well-timed. Why? Let's look at what else was happening while these events were unfolding in Rome.
Through the first weeks of September senior members of the Bush administration began a major press offensive alleging that Saddam Hussein had a robust nuclear weapons program. This was done in close coordination with British PM Tony Blair. On September 24th Blair published his Iraq dossier which said, among other things, that "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
By Jan 2003, the case for war was being made, in spite of the facts. President Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
Were the the Niger documents manufactured to 'fix' the intelligence? Who knew about it and how did it happen? Could this also be part of the unfolding Plame story?