Another Blockbuster Reveal

This has been quite a weekend already, what with Seymour Hersh's New Yorker story already on the BushCo Gang's blood-lust for war with Iran. But the heat on BushCo has been turned up even more, with a London Times article on one of the key pieces of evidence used to justify going to war with Iraq--the forged Niger yellowcake uranium documents:

Two employees of the Niger embassy in Rome were responsible for the forgery of a notorious set of documents used to help justify the Iraq war, an official investigation has allegedly found.

According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country.

The documents, which emerged in 2002, were used in a US State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s weapons programme to build the case for war. They were denounced as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shortly before the 2003 invasion.

[...]

According to the sources, an official investigation believes Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador’s assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money.

They allegedly concocted their scheme as reports reached western intelligence agencies, including MI6, that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The agencies had no evidence he had succeeded. The pair are alleged to have copied a real contract to look like an agreement with Iraq under which Niger would supply Saddam with 500 tons of yellowcake.

[...]

After the IAEA had dismissed the forged documents, the Americans disowned all the Iraq-Niger uranium claims. But the latest allegations are unlikely to end the row.

This springs from the mission of Joseph Wilson, a former American ambassador, who was sent to Niger to check the uranium claims.

Wilson dismissed the possibility of Iraq obtaining uranium and publicly attacked Bush’s claims. The White House retaliated, with officials briefing journalists that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. Naming an undercover agent is illegal in America.

Last week, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former aide to Cheney, told the inquiry into the leak that the vice-president ordered the briefings and that Bush had authorised them.

Everything is connected.