I bumped into the Nur al-Cubicle article last summer when I was looking for pieces of the Bolton-Miller puzzle. The publishing of the original article in Italian precipitated a panic that threatened the Bush-Blair chorus on Saddams' WMDs. A poorly planned facade was unraveling and clumsy, ham-fisted reactions were the order of the day.
A British Iraqi arms expert, Dr. David Kelly, seemed to have been pushed/pressured into biasing some conclusions in the state of Iraqs nuclear capability. The usual cherry picking of dodgy/false intel to make their case, then get an 'official' source to present it.
He seemed to get cold feet when the evidence he was probably shown to get him to go out on a limb in the first place, was exposed as a fraud.
Judith Miller was in daily contact with him. She had emailed him half an hour before his suicide. Did she tell him of the coming Italian expose? This was the start of her clamming up to protect Bolton who was Asst. Sec. of State, in charge of overseeing world nuclear capabilities.
The whole thing stinks of lies and a bungled cover-up to get the war on.
Here's a link to Dr. Kelly. There are more links at the bottom of the article on the Hutton Inquiry.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/02/286193.html
I'd like to know exactly who has those missing pages in their possession? The Italians? The (*gasp*) Americans? Who?
That is, of course, we take Hersh's source at face value. But then again, it's pretty damn hard to pinpoint a time when Hersh was far off the mark on anything. His "Stovepipe" is still a primer to skewing evidence for the Iraqi War, that which my Senator Roberts continues to delay.
I also read some interesting stuff on this matter from Josh Marshall. You guys have some pretty keen insight on the matter. Don't give up.
Posted by MisterOpus1 at February 20, 2006 10:04 PMA 2003 Time Magazine article, here, describes a document that doesn't match any of the known Niger forgeries.
"But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction."
The document doesn't match any of Elisabetta Burba's descriptions either. It sounds to me like this is the mysterious missing Agreement.
Posted by FMJ at February 21, 2006 01:14 AMFMJ,
Thanks...I've been made aware of that by another blogger who is going to write about that pretty soon - at which point I will publish it here as well.
Posted by eriposte at February 21, 2006 05:05 AMYou know, there should be a forum or a website for all us amateur Niger sleuths. Somewhere we can get together, hash out theories, post leads etc. Is NigerForgery.com taken?
Posted by FMJ at February 22, 2006 01:18 AM