Decision ‘08

All Paths Lead To Niger

Christopher Hitchens has a tale to tell:

In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq’s senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie. After the Kuwait war in 1991, when Rolf Ekeus arrived in Baghdad to begin the inspection and disarmament work of UNSCOM, he was greeted by Zahawie…

At a later 1995 U.N. special session on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Zahawie was the Iraqi delegate and spoke heatedly about the urgent need to counterbalance Israel’s nuclear capacity. At the time, most democratic countries did not have full diplomatic relations with Saddam’s regime, and there were few fully accredited Iraqi ambassadors overseas, Iraq’s interests often being represented by the genocidal Islamist government of Sudan (incidentally, yet another example of collusion between “secular” Baathists and the fundamentalists who were sheltering Osama Bin Laden). There was one exception—an Iraqi “window” into the world of open diplomacy—namely the mutual recognition between the Baathist regime and the Vatican. To this very important and sensitive post in Rome, Zahawie was appointed in 1997, holding the job of Saddam’s ambassador to the Holy See until 2000.

A promising start - but it gets better (oh, does it ever!):

In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein’s long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president’s State of the Union address in January 2003.

Notice that all of the above is not speculation, but fact - we need no conspiracies, we don’t have to look into the heads of Joseph Wilson or George W. Bush.

The Joe Wilson controversy, as Hitchens goes on to point it, is irretrievably tangled in the public mind with a forged document later produced, in all likelihood, by an Italian huckster - but in any event, produced by somebody:

There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit. The CIA is certainly incompetent enough to have fouled up this badly. (I like Edward Luttwak’s formulation in the March 22 Times Literary Supplement, where he writes that “there have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed—usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors—and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.”) Still, it almost passes belief that any American agency would fake a document that purportedly proved far more than the administration had asked and then get every important name and date wrapped round the axle. Forgery for gain is easy to understand, especially when it is borne in mind that nobody wastes time counterfeiting a bankrupt currency. Forgery for disinformation, if that is what it was, appears at least to have worked. Almost everybody in the world now affects to believe that Saddam Hussein was framed on the Niger rap.

Now the president authorized the NIE estimate to be released to rebut the claim that there was no foundation to reports of Iraq seeking uranium from Niger - and, contrary to the claims of just about everyone, there is no proof whatsoever that the release of information was personally aimed at Joe Wilson, much less that Bush authorized the disclosure of his wife’s identity.

If you are one of those who believe Saddam to be innocent of the charge, read through the tale brought to us by dear Christopher again, and divorce the facts given from the forged document, and Joe Wilson and his wife, for a moment, and consider the odds that Saddam did not seek Nigerian uranium.

Only a sucker would have taken that bet…

5 Responses to “All Paths Lead To Niger”

1 Flopping Aces Says:
April 10th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
The Niger Deal

Christopher Hitchens tries his best to knock some common sense into the left with his newest piece:
In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq’s senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect…
2 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » E. J. Dionne (Surprise!) Just Doesn’t Get It Says:
April 11th, 2006 at 7:44 am
[…] Wilson had fired a direct shot at the White House’s rationale for the war in Iraq by saying the administration had distorted intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein’s supposed efforts to obtain nuclear materials. What’s worse here - that snearing ’supposed’ (see Christopher Hitchens for a devestatingly brutal slam at the willful ignorance behind that statement), or the idea that the central issue was what Bush knew before the election (does Dionne not see that the central issue was whether the Butcher of Baghdad was close to going nuclear? Does he think a presidential election trumps that)? […]
3 Sister Toldjah Says:
April 11th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Chris Hitchens on the Iraq/Niger/uranium issue

Hitch breaks all the details down regarding the claims that Iraq sought uranium from Niger:
In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq’s senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a …
4 New England Republican » Keep spreading the truth: Joe Wilson is a damned liar Says:
April 12th, 2006 at 3:55 am
[…] Decision ‘08All Paths Lead To Niger The Joe Wilson controversy, as Hitchens goes on to point it, is irretrievably tangled in the public mind with a forged document later produced, in all likelihood, by an Italian huckster - but in any event, produced by somebody: There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit. The CIA is certainly incompetent enough to have fouled up this badly. […]
5 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » Clueless Joe, Meet the Hitch Says:
April 17th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
[…] The great Christopher Hitchens is in rare form as he follows up on his uncontradicted narrative last week detailing the almost certain attempt by Iraq to obtain uranium from Niger: The person whose response I most wanted is Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has claimed to discover that Saddam was guiltless on the charge of seeking uranium from Niger, and has further claimed to be the object, along with his CIA wife, of a campaign of government persecution. On Keith Olbermann’s show on April 10, Wilson was asked about my article and about Zahawie. He replied that Zahawie “is a man that I know from my time as acting ambassador in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. … He was ambassador to the Vatican, and he made a trip in 1999 to several West and Central African countries for the express purpose of inviting chiefs of state to violate the ban on travel to Iraq. He has said repeatedly to the press, he’s now in retirement, and also to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to their satisfaction, that uranium was not on his agenda.” If you think that’s good enough for our dear Christopher, then you aren’t acquainted with the Hitch: Once again, the details and implications of Zahawie’s own IAEA background are ignored (as they were in the IAEA’s own report to the United Nations about the forged Italian documents that were later circulated about Zahawie’s visit). In the same press interviews to which Wilson alludes (and which I cited last week), Zahawie went a bit further than saying that uranium was “not on his agenda.” He claimed not to know that Niger produced uranium at all! You may if you wish choose to take that at face value—along with his story that all he was trying to do was violate sanctions on flights to Iraq. Joseph Wilson appears to be, as they say, “comfortable” with that explanation. […]