Thursday, April 05, 2007

"The Italian Letter"

"The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for the War in Iraq" by investigative journalists Peter Eisner and Knut Royce.

The book traces the history of the forged letter that listed the sale of 500 tons of uranium from Niger to Iraq. It also explains how the letter played a critical role in the trial of Scooter Libby.

Among the books findings:

A simple google search by the CIA on the "verbatim text" of the accord it received from the Italian Embassy on Feb. 5, 2002 could have changed history. The text is full of errors including incorrect names and dates. Had the CIA done a simple information search, the hoax would have been discovered and died then and there.

There's another Scooter Libby story, and it's one that says Libby took the fall for Karl Rove. The authors also say Rove floated the idea to conservative supporters of dropping Dick Cheney from the 2004 ticket. Cheney found out and was far from pleased.

Cheney had been told many times by intelligence operatives over a period of years there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or operational ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

1 comment:

airJackie said...

The fake letter that Cheney used to illegally invade Iraq. Notice how little attention that letter is getting. PBS and the Libby trial showed how Cheney/Bush knew it was fake and attacked Wilson because he could prove it was fake. The CIA officials knew it was a fake but Cheney pushed for it to be made true just for the invasion. Sad the families of our dead troops don't want to know that their love ones died with the plan done by Bush/Cheney. They want to believe the lie that it was about WMDs or Iraq Freedom. The media isn't putting this as headlines per order of our Dictator. So many people knew all the information was a lie but did nothing to speak up as the Gerbil gave his 16 word lie. But these people now have to live with the fact that they are just as responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent soldiers/Iraq people based on something they could have stepped up to speak the truth but chose not to. We all have to answer to God for our sins, their action is a hard one to excuse/explain.