Politics: Gotcha

Joshua Micah Marshall notes a New Republic report on the lying about Iraq situation which defines even more sharply the outlines of the deception that led to the Niger-uranium charges being included in the State of the Union Address:

We noted yesterday that Colin Powell told reporters that the Niger uranium charge "was not standing the test of time" and thus dropped it from the presentation he gave the UN on February 5th. We further noted that given the timing of the State of the Union speech and the preparations for the UN presentation, that the time span over which the evidence didn't stand up stretched from January 29th to February 1st. Now The New Republic is reporting that the State Department's intelligence bureau, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, sent Powell a detailed memo in March 2002 stating that the Niger-uranium charges were, in its opinion, false. (They came to this judgment without seeing Joseph Wilson's report which, separately, helped scotch the story at the CIA.) "We knew it was important," an analyst who worked on the I&R report tells TNR. "The [Niger] issue might have traction, and so we wanted him to know what our opinion was."

Nice. Here's a link to the New Republic piece.