The Bush administration has had yet another setback to their attempts to prove the existence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. In December, the State Department produced documents that indicated that Iraq tried to by uranium from Niger, the West African nation that is the third-largest producer of mined uranium. On March 7, Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents were forgeries. El Baradei has said his inspectors have found no evidence that Saddam has revived his nuclear weapons program.
This is the second embarrassing public refutation of an intelligence source for the Bush administration. In his address to the U.N. in February, Collin Powell used as evidence a British Intelligence dossier that proved to be almost entirely plagiarized from a doctoral thesis on Iraqi intelligence activities from 1990-1991.
For more information on this story:
- Afrol News – Niger-Iraq uranium connection “a fake”
- Reuters – Senator asks FBI to investigate fake Iraq document
- CNN – Fake Iraq documents ‘embarrassing’ for U.S.
- The Guardian – UK nuclear evidence a fake
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