The uranium claim and the U.K. Butler Report - a second take

by eriposte

The main reason I delayed publication of the second part of my interview of Amb. Joseph Wilson was that I wanted to go back and do a more thorough analysis of the British claim about Iraq having sought uranium from Africa. I felt that considering my detailed analysis of the Senate (SSCI) Report, a similar analysis of the corresponding British report was overdue and that such an analysis might shed more light on the machinations and lies that eventually led to the Bush SOTU claim and the Valerie Plame expose.

I have now completed that analysis and am more than happy that I did it.

On 7/18/05, I had published a post titled "Treasongate (Part V), Addendum II: The Butler Report and uranium/Africa". Today, I went back to that post and added some very significant information to it based on my analysis, thanks in part to an excellent review of the British claims by British Labor MP (Member of Parliament) Lynne Jones. She deserves enormous kudos for having challenged her own party leadership on their misleading/false claims.

I encourage everyone with more than a passing interest in this matter to review my updated analysis of the Butler Report. One of the conclusions from this re-analysis is that the sole British claim cited by the Butler Report as having justified the "uranium from Africa" claim is also almost certainly based on intel originating from the forged Niger documents. Moreover, the British statements had so many self-contradictions and misleading/false/dubious claims that it is obvious that their "uranium from Africa" claim was essentially baseless.