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April 30, 2007
What's Behind Door #1, Monty?
by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
One of the great muckraking teases of the last three years has been Josh Marshall's reporting on the forged Niger uranium documents that lead to the "sixteen words" in Bush's 2003 State of the Union. For months, Marshall tantalized his readers with tidbits that suggested ... well, it's not clear, but it certainly sounded like something that could end up as the plot line behind a late summer action flick. Marshall suggested the story might appear 60 Minutes before the 2004 election, but in the wake of the Dan Rather/Bush National Guard/Electric Typewritter kerfuffle, CBS decided not to air it. Since then, the story behind the Niger documents has largely fallen from the public eye.
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake spots former CIA analyst Ray McGovern suggesting ... well, I can't actually bring myself to say it, because to do so would bring voice to the idea that reality has plunged into some frightening chimera combining The Long Kiss Goodnight and Noam Chomsky's rantings. But it goes further than anything Marshall ever reported. Now, McGovern has been something of an anti-war gadfly since retirement, and he's not willing to reveal his evidence "yet", but perhaps there is something to look into here.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my tinfoil hat.
April 30, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
"Noam Chomsky's rantings"? Dude, Noam Chomsky hasn't "ranted" a day in his boring-as-hell life.
Posted by: Matt_C | Apr 30, 2007 6:40:35 PM
This really doesn't sound that crazy or improbable at all.
Posted by: Christmas | Apr 30, 2007 6:40:44 PM
No, it doesn't, but it's incredibly frightening.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Apr 30, 2007 6:41:27 PM
Yeah, the idea of Chomsky "ranting" seems rather inapt.
Posted by: Jason | Apr 30, 2007 6:46:57 PM
MCGOVERN: I have some evidence but I am not willing to share it right here and now.
Whatever. I don't find that level of evidence very frightening. It's more frightening to see how seriously people take such things when there's no evidence given at all. The Italian journalist who co-wrote the recent book about the Niger forgery doesn't implicate Cheney or Ledeen or whomever. He traces the motives to the Italians wanting to please the US.
Posted by: Sanpete | Apr 30, 2007 7:10:57 PM
It's one of those "frightening, if true" sorts of things. And I have no idea how seriously or not seriously to take it. Right now for the sake of my blood pressure I'm not taking it very seriously.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Apr 30, 2007 7:18:14 PM
Uh, guys, I don't get what is so frightening or tin-foil hatty about this at all. Look, at a crucial point in US history some forged documents were offered to the US that seemed to prove exactly what the vice president and the president wanted to have documented. The vice president has a long history in public sservice, and many connections across national and international lines with people capable of forging such documents (they were badly forged anyway) and with people who were in a position to pass documents back and forth to the security groups in question. Does the name Michael Ledeen ring any bells? How about Ahmed chalabi whose forgery buisness was fully exposed in the New yorker a few years ago?
What would be weirder--if the notoriously fake documents just grew in a trashcan overnight or if they were actually, you know, tailor made by the vice president and his many forging friends.
Here's the thing--real documents can get out of the original owners hands and cause problems. Real documents can be left lying around, or get stolen, but their origin is never in doubt because they are real. A fake document? It doesn't ever just get "left around" or "stolen" it ends up in the hands of those with an interest in promoting the documents and their contents. qui bono?
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Apr 30, 2007 7:42:16 PM
"Frightenting"? Where the hell have you people been for the last six years? Have you been paying attention at all?
Whether or not unca dick cheney forged the Niger documents himself, or merely had an underling do it, the idea isn't frightening or especially unbelievable. In fact, it really fits in quite well with the entire record of this administration. If you have evidence to the contrary, lay it out.
And don't get me wrong, I won't believe it until we see the evidence (and then only if the evidence is convincing and can be verfied). But the idea that this is somehow outrageous...please.
And while I find the idea repugnant that a vice-president could involved in this, so what? Are all of you really so incredulous that this could happen with this vice-president?
If so, you folks are in for a lot of rude shocks in the next few years as we learn more about the depths of depravity this administration regularly swaggered through.
Posted by: ice weasel | Apr 30, 2007 7:54:39 PM
"And don't get me wrong, I won't believe it until we see the evidence"
I don't need no stinking evidence to believe this. Although I think I have adequate circumstantial evidence, including the quick overreaction at the VP office to Joe Wilson. But evidence of a level to convince others, in a range from Ezra to Britt Hume, is not necessary for my belief.
I won't believe GWB is drinking again without more evidence, to show I have some standards. But yeah, I can believe Cheney was involved in the forgeries.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Apr 30, 2007 8:06:36 PM
What would be weirder--if the notoriously fake documents just grew in a trashcan overnight or if they were actually, you know, tailor made by the vice president and his many forging friends.
Silliness. No one thinks those are the alternatives. People take this seriously because they want to believe it, just like Cheney and pals wanted to believe the forged documents. Many people believe whatever suits them.
If so, you folks are in for a lot of rude shocks in the next few years as we learn more about the depths of depravity this administration regularly swaggered through.
What's this based on? Fortune cookies? Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Posted by: Sanpete | Apr 30, 2007 8:18:01 PM
"Many people believe whatever suits them."
Oboy, Let us get into the meaning of "I believe things that I find very difficult to impossible to believe." and how common such courage is. I believe in global warming in part because of the evidence, and yes, in part because it "suits me." does not challenge my interests of identity in important ways. I do not believe in God, overwhelmingly because it does not suit me.
It is very difficult to imagine the amount of evidence that would "convince" Britt Hume that Cheney was involved in the Niger forgeries, but that is not a matter of evidence or conviction. In too many cases it is a matter of compulsion, Britt Hume would require such a degree of proof so as to make it publicly impossible to publicly deny Cheney's culpability. Appears Sanpete requires only a slightly lower level of evidence.
We are not in a court of law, and my believing whatever about this makes no difference to anyone but me, and whoever thinks me crazy, or my beliefs crazy. I actually thought Nixon was a criminally bad guy long before the "smoking gun" speech, based on stuff like the "Checkers speech" friendship with Bebe, bombing of Cambodia, etc and tended to think Nixon was involved in Watergate before the definitive proof was in. I have always been a rinfoil hat type, I guess.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Apr 30, 2007 8:40:11 PM
He traces the motives to the Italians wanting to please the US.
Cut-outs. Plausible deniability. A firewall.
Posted by: Davis. X. Machina | Apr 30, 2007 8:40:54 PM
any predictions of further depravity on the part of this administration isn't based on *fortune cookies* sanpete its based on *opening the damn paper* in the morning or turning on the TV. What, haven't you noticed that "the wildest dreams of kew" are simply everyday in timbuktu? At this point time is on the side of those pointing out that depravity is the raison d'etre of the bush white house and its administration. That is because apparently there is some kind of sell by date on withholding information from the american people and shoes are dropping so fast it looks like a stride rite exploded.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Apr 30, 2007 8:44:55 PM
Appears Sanpete requires only a slightly lower level of evidence.
Um, any evidence at all would be a good start.
Aimai, weasel's comment was about what we'll learn in the future, not what's already in the newspaper.
Posted by: Sanpete | Apr 30, 2007 10:23:56 PM
As long as we're focusing on conspiracy theories, I have an observation regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center.
The theory was that the US government brought down the Twin Towers via controlled demolition. The argument was that the buildings couldn't have been brought down by burning jet fuel since the combustion temperature wouldn't have been high enough to melt the steel girders.
If we accept that theory, how do we explain the collapse of a highway in San Francisco due to a gasoline fire?
Posted by: FS | Apr 30, 2007 10:47:49 PM
The only problem with the "Cheney forged it!" storyline is that it assumes that Cheney was so freaking stupid that he didn't think even one step ahead, i.e., what would happen when our military actually went into Iraq and didn't find uranium, nuclear programs, etc. Conversely, this theory assumes that Cheney et al. would be dishonest enough to forge a memo, but not dishonest enough to have some evidence conveniently planted in Iraq.
Moral: You have to be a bit nutty to think there's anything to this story (a redundant observation, in that it comes from Firedoglake).
Posted by: John Doe | Apr 30, 2007 11:53:51 PM
Outing Valerie Plame over something on the NY Times op-ed page seemed kind of excessive, even for the Bush/Cheney crowd.
But if you assume the above-referenced rumor is true, the outing lines right up with the finesse-free way they handle most of their ass-covering activities.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | May 1, 2007 12:23:54 AM
Did JMMarshall ever bring that story to a close?
Posted by: michael | May 1, 2007 12:39:38 AM
Look, Sy Hersh quoted someone who speculated that the forgeries were knocked together by ex-CIA in order to be sucked up the Cheney stovepipe and then exposed, thus ending the parallel cherry-picking of raw intel.
Did JMMarshall ever bring that story to a close?
Brick walls, y'know. I'd suggest that Congress haul in Ledeen, but what's the point? He'd lie under oath and get away with it. Never mind that a fucker with that past should be stuffed in a sack and dumped in the Potomac.
But it's not conspiratorial any more to accept that Cheney would leak a story to Judith Fucking Miller, then cite that story on Meet The Press as supposed corroboration. He thinks accountability applies to his Halliburton dividends, not his job.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | May 1, 2007 1:22:40 AM
Two points in this post lost credibility for me. The snippy aside at Noam Chomsky seems completely irrelevant, and hardly characterizes anything I've seen of Chomsky. And the comment about "tinfoil hats" makes me wonder where Nicholas has been the past five years. Um, yes, the Bush administration, under the direction of Dick Cheney, was conspiring to make a case justifying the invasion of Iraq. Is this supposed to be news? This isn't grassy knoll/controlled detonation of WTC 7 stuff - we all already know that the Bush administration was lying to start a war that had nothing to do with WMDs.
Posted by: RickD | May 1, 2007 3:45:00 AM
the forged Niger uranium documents did not lead to the infamous "sixteen words". Those sixteen words again:
"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The sixteen words in question were based upon british intelligence from several different sources, none of which was the forged documents.
Posted by: henry hazlitt | May 1, 2007 5:18:31 AM
oh henry hazlitt,
those "sixteen words" weren't "based upon british intelligence from several different sources" but non-existent british intelligence from the same sources over and over again. And I believe one of them, th ough I could be confusing my scandals here, was from the infamous *grad student paper* they snagged off the web.
The whole point about the "sixteen words" is that bush et al sought a vague, plausibly deniable phrase to get the information out there without having to stand behind it. In the ceaseless brag-on that is america's attitude towards itself there is no other explanation for why we'd *go to the brits* for information we otherwise would have had to validate for ourselves and report as our own information.
but hey, there's a sucker born every minute and apparently that adds up to 28 percent of the american pulbic.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | May 1, 2007 8:01:54 AM
Oh sanpy, "What's this based on? Fortune cookies? Guess we'll have to wait and see."
Yeah because the last six years of this administration has taught us nothing. Well, have taught you nothing.
As I said, evidence is still the standard. Nonetheless, shocking? Not at all. And I will repeat, if you are shocked by this or find this somehow beyond the pale, you've been asleep for the last six years.
Posted by: ice weasel | May 1, 2007 9:05:08 AM
those "sixteen words" weren't "based upon british intelligence from several different sources" but non-existent british intelligence from the same sources over and over again.
How the hell would you know this? Name the date when you got a top secret security clearance in Britain, and when they gave you permission to reveal sources on this blog.
Posted by: John Doe | May 1, 2007 9:43:50 AM
John Doe,
do your own reading, I'm not your research bureau. But yeah, if you do some research you will find that the british more or less disavowed responsibility for the story behind the "16 words." google channel 4 and you might even get some video downloads.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | May 1, 2007 10:55:51 AM
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