Unfortunately, the guy I lifted this news from is correct in the spirit of his remarks--we'll be lucky to hear anything more about this:

A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.

And further in:

But among Lord Butler's other areas of investigation was the issue of whether Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence.

President George W. Bush referred to the Niger claim in his state of the union address last year. But officials were forced into a climbdown when it was revealed that the only primary intelligence material the US possessed were documents later shown to be forgeries.

The Bush administration has since distanced itself from all suggestions that Iraq sought to buy uranium. The UK government has remained adamant that negotiations over sales did take place and that the fake documents were not part of the intelligence material it had gathered to underpin its claim.

Here's my bet for which portion of this news may--may--actually receive extensive coverage:

The report will say the claim that Mr Hussein could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes, seized on by UK prime minister Tony Blair to bolster the case for war with Iraq, was inadequately supported by the available intelligence, people familiar with its contents say .

So maybe Bush didn't lie, but Blair lied, and Bush and Blair are both part of the same neocon cabal controlled by Ariel Sharon, and besides, people still died. So even though "Bush Lied, People Died" isn't true in the sense of being, like, factually true or whatever, it's still true in the sense of being, you know, essentially true. Like it's true in the larger sense, right?

And speaking of people who prefer their truth, ah, supersized, an aside that's bothered me for years actually: How many of you would cross a bridge built by a corps of engineers who only dealt with truth "in the larger sense?"

"This bridge will support my Isuzu Rodeo all the way across it, and not dump me, my family, and our camping gear into the raging river beneath, right?"

"Well, that's true in the larger sense . . . ."

I don't know, it's just something I've never understood about Michael Moore fans, and yes, I realize he's got jack-all to do with the beginning of this post, but if you were as amped up on cold medicine as I am right now, you'd see that there actually kind of is a connection.

In the larger sense.

Posted by Ilyka at July 8, 2004 07:46 AM in news