U.S. Had Uranium Papers three months before the State of the Union address(washingtonpost.com): "The State Department received copies of what would turn out to be forged documents suggesting that Iraq tried to purchase uranium oxide from Niger three months before the president's State of the Union address, administration officials said.
The documents, which officials said appeared to be of 'dubious authenticity,' were distributed to the CIA and other agencies within days. But the U.S. government waited four months to turn them over to United Nations weapons inspectors who had been demanding to see evidence of U.S. and British claims that Iraq's attempted purchase of uranium oxide violated U.N. resolutions and was among the reasons to go to war. State Department officials could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents when the inspectors asked for them in December."

That's a valid question. And why shouldn't we have an answer. Why didn't they turn them over? Why didn't they stop the President from repeating the claims when they knew them to be false? Given the misleading excuses for the abuse of these claims from the White House and GOP, these are urgent questions that an independent inquiry should be investigating immediately.
- posted by geoff @ #