« Those dreaded neocons... | Main | Iraqi handover »

Yellowcake from Africa revisited

The "uranium from Africa" claim was never more than a minor bullet point in a laundry list of Iraq's offenses. Nevertheless, the issue was made into a big deal and a major news story by the president's critics, when it was believed the claim was a hoax. Our friends on the left will forgive us, then, if we point out that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair appear to have been correct after all.


Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.
...
However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.