So let me see,
Pre 9-11, there are hearings about "smart sanctions" of Iraq, Powell and Rice declare Saddam "contained."
Sept. '01, Rummy/Bush immediately want to tie 9-11 to Saddam,
Dec '01, there are rumors of bin Laden trying to acquire enriched uranium (Iraq is also mentioned in the rumors,
Feb. '02, Wilson is sent to Niger,
Aug '02, Cheney starts babbling about Iraq's "reconstituted" program,
Oct. '02, CIA supposedly has the forgeries in hand, and Saddam's attempts to get uranium from Africa becomes a big story just before the elections, the NIE includes the uranium story (?), but the point is taken out of the Cincinnatti speech(?) I can understand using the forgeries to secure the election, but continuing to use the yellowcake story long after too many people knew about it was stupidly risky.
Dec '02, gov't white paper includes the story (is this white paper the declassified NIE with all the caveats taken out?)
Jan '03 Bush includes the 16 words in the SOTU
Feb '03 Powell doesn't include the story in the UN speech
Mar '03 Blix declares the documents forgeries that even a child could have figured it out.

Questions: Shouldn't the CIA immediately have recognized forgeries? If they had the docs, they knew they were crap, or are they going with the incompetence defense?

Big question: Why did they bother sending Wilson at all - if he wasn't in the warmongering loop - wouldn't he be an eventual liability, or did they, at one point, really think there was a deal with Niger?

Does Niger have the capabilities to enrich uraniuam? Or do they only mine and export "Yellow cake"?

iamcoyote, you can view my timeline to get the actual documents where the Niger claim was publicly made here. The December 2002 reference is to the CIA/State Department fact sheet which was a response to the Iraq statements about WMD on hand when charged by Britain and the US.

Iamcoyote,

I think the CIA did think there may have been something going on in Niger and therefore sent Wilson there.

I will have more on this once I am done with the 2 or 3 series I am publishing right now. I think I have a fairly good idea of what happened. Not 100% there yet, but probably 80-90% there.

BBTB, I don't know the answer offhand...a Google search will probably tell us the answer.

"Big question: Why did they bother sending Wilson at all - if he wasn't in the warmongering loop - wouldn't he be an eventual liability"

At that point there were definite factions in the CIA. CIA was still fighting with the Bushoviks over who was going to possibly get hung out to dry when the facts didn't add up.

We may get more help from those quarters any day now. As Stephen Gaghan ('Syrianna') said at an LA Writers' Guild screening, it's not a good idea to mess with spooks.

Syriana.

I must be getting it mixed up with 'Hosannah,' which I shout every few minutes...without much result.

BBTB,

Niger is a third world country. It barely has the resources to mine yellowcake, let alone enrich uranium.

coyote,

Why did they bother sending Wilson at all - if he wasn't in the warmongering loop - wouldn't he be an eventual liability?

The CIA sent Wilson to Niger because that's what the CIA does: it collects intelligence; it checks up on things. The CIA very rarely relies on intelligence that is solely from a foreign intelligence service (which was how the CIA first heard of the Niger reporting - from Sismi). The CIA will always try to confirm received intelligence with its own agents. The Wilson trip (with Fulford and Owens-Kirkpatrick) was most likely standard procedure.

coyote,

Oct. '02, CIA supposedly has the forgeries in hand, and Saddam's attempts to get uranium from Africa becomes a big story just before the elections, the NIE includes the uranium story (?), but the point is taken out of the Cincinnatti speech(?) I can understand using the forgeries to secure the election, but continuing to use the yellowcake story long after too many people knew about it was stupidly risky.

Actually, 'uranium from Africa' was never really pushed by the administration to become a big story until Dec. 2002/Jan. 2003. After Tony Blair made the original charge in parliament in late-Sept. 2002, there was a brief flurry of press speculation about which country in Africa he might have been talking about. (Press reports at the time only mention Niger in passing. The prime suspects were South Africa and DR Congo). After that, there's nothing else until the State Dept's fact sheet in Dec. 2002.

The administration's PR push for war was centered around the infasmous aluminium tubes. From Sept. 8 2002 up until the elections it was all tubes, all the time. Illicit uranium from Africa or from anywhere else for that matter, was never mentioned, never reported.

So, what happened? My guess is that the administration had to start talking about Niger because nuclear experts had started weighing in on the tubes: can't use them for nuclear program without significant modification, more likely for conventional rockets, etc. There was no other 'proof' that Iraq had a nuclear program. Uranium-from-Africa was all the administration had left.

For more details on the White House PR campaign, with emphasis on the tubes, check out my essay Red Team. It's a pretty decent summary of how the tubes were fixed around policy, if I do say so myself. :)

FMJ, Thanks for the update.