Bluemerle

Update - h/t to my husband for the Axis of Weasels alert he sent me on the fourth.

Saw a similar story over the weekend. Italy is blaming France for deliberately forging Niger-Uranium documents to undermine the Allies arguments for war, in order to protect their special business relationship with Saddam.

Ace of Spades has a good round-up of details. Protein Wisdom links to other blogs discussing the story.

Liar Joe Wilson pops to mind.

WSJ Opinion Journal Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth about how he supposedly came to realize that it was "highly doubtful" there was anything to the story he'd been sent to Niger to investigate. He told everyone that he'd recognized as obvious forgeries the documents purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. But the forged documents to which he referred didn't reach U.S. intelligence until eight months after his trip. Mr. Wilson has said that he "misspoke"--multiple times, apparently--on this issue.

Clifford D. May at NRO . July 12 2004

He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'"

The problem is Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: "The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."

Perhaps he told the truth by accident. Perhaps he did know the documents were forgeries...because he was in on the plan to attempt to undermine the casus belli. If he was, isn't that treason?