More Yellowcake Than You Can Shake A Saddam At: Think Progress v. Stephen Hayes.

Stephen Hayes has an article in The Weekly Standard in which he highlights The Washington Post's recent article on Joe Wilson and calling, again, Wilson's credibility into question:

And why has Wilson's credibility become an issue? A reasonable outside observer might think that Wilson's credibility is an issue because, well, he lied about his findings. That doesn't work for the Post reporters. Wilson's claims are once again at issue because "Republicans [are] preparing a defense of the administration."

The Post report continues: "Wilson's central assertion--disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger--has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent."

It is the 60 Minutes defense all over again: Fake, but accurate. Yet there are two problems with these claims.

First, it is far from clear that Bush's claim has been invalidated by postwar inspections. Weapons inspections in 2003 and 2004 have little bearing on whether Iraq sought uranium in 1999. And the British review of prewar intelligence (known as the Butler report) concluded that the claim was--and remains--solid. Even Wilson's own reporting about a 1999 meeting between Nigerien government officials and an Iraqi delegation seemed to corroborate earlier reports, dating back to October 2001, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

Emphasis mine.

It is this last paragraph, especially the bold text that has drawn fire from Think Progress, a generally well-researched and well-written, partisan site. But this time, it looks at least as if they have their story confused. Judd writes:

Actually, the Butler report didn’t conclude that. It’s review of prewar intelligence included the claim was unfounded. Here’s the relevant bit (pg. 124):

“Based on through analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.“

Of course, what would you expect from the guy who is still pushing the theory that Saddam Hussein had a collaborative relationship with al-Qaeda.

Closer reading of the Butler report shows that the "we" in the final sentence is referring to the IAEA, not the Butler Commission. The excerpt quoted above is from indented text, coming directly from an IAEA report. The attribution at the bottom of the text is "[IAEA GOV/INF/2003/10 Annex of 7 March 2003]."

This is on pg 124 following point 501 on pg 123. Point 501 is in black text at the margin while quotes and attributions are indented and in blue text. Now, Think Progress might have just done a search and missed the formatting of the report, but it's pretty easy to spot, seeing that point 502 is directly under the indented text.

However, if Judd had scrolled down to point 503, he would have seen this in bold:

From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraq attempts to but Uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:

1. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.
2. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence is credible.
3. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.
4. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

[Note: I had to type this in by hand, so where you see numbered points, the report sports letters.]

Whether or not these four points constitute a report of "solid intelligence" will be a point of contention for years, but at least in this case, Hayes gets it much more right than Think Progress does.

This may seem to be nitpicking, but I don't think so. I don't see how the graf from the report can be read any other way. I would imagine that Think Progress would want to know that there is an error in their research.

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[Kill all conservatives]

Hey! There ain't no sex in the champagne room here!

[Richard Chesnoff]

My column from todays Daily News

Here's my column today from NY Daily News: Rich Chesnoff

A FRENCH WAR OF THE WORLDS.

by Richard Z. Chesnoff, NY Daily News 11/7/05

It's a French cauchemar, a national nightmare with global overtones. For more than a week, gangs of mostly Muslim youngsters have been raging through the poverty-ridden housing projects of the Paris suburbs, battling police with Molotov cocktails and torching cars, shops, warehouses, even schools.
Last week, the violence spread to other French cities, and analysts warn it's the kind of fury that could overrun other European countries with disaffected Muslim minorities - and on to American interests as well.

Ostensibly, the riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens, electrocuted when they climbed a power station fence to escape police. Not true, say authorities.

Fact is, this mini-civil war is a long-festering sore that's finally turning gangrenous: the anger of France's increasingly large minority of Muslim immigrants and their children, inflamed and frustrated by what they see as exclusion from the mainstream.

The problem originated in the 1950s and 1960s, when France began importing cheap labor from its former colonies in North Africa. Les Arabes were to do the dirty work and eventually go home. Few did, and today North African immigrants and their families number almost 6 million, more than 10% of the French population.

In a nation that insists immigrants accept the monolithic secular French culture, a great divide has grown. Part of it is the insular nature of Islamic North African culture. But much of it is that "French" France still rejects its North African countrymen.

They don't get good jobs or decent financial opportunities. Their unemployment rate is often as high as 50%. There isn't a single Frenchman or Frenchwoman of North African origin (or black, for that matter) in the cabinet, and only a handful hold any position of rank in the civil and commercial bureaucracy. There are virtually no black or Arab anchors on French TV, or North African cultural presence in the theater or cinema.

This has further angered the Muslim population, driving it deeper into its own ghetto mentality and to communal violence. When I first came to France 50 years ago, North African immigrants spoke Maghreb Arabic, but their French-born children proudly spoke French. Today, the beurs, the young French-born generation of North Africans, talk to each other in Arabic.

The riots aren't helping to reverse the separation. They also, predictably, are frightening and angering large portions of the traditionally xenophobic French mainstream. "I'm no racist," says my neighbor, "but unless we send them back where they came from, we'll have an Arab majority in 30 years."

Needless to say, the venomous corps of Muslim extremists that has infiltrated France's mosques over the years is working the nightmare for all it's worth, egging the young on to jihad - holy war. French security forces are working around the clock to round up potential Islamic terrorist gangs intent on carrying out attacks on French soil. And French and American security services recently traced a network of French-born youths volunteering to join Al Qaeda and battle U.S. troops in Iraq.

There's no rapid solution. But the government must act quickly to improve conditions and attitudes on both sides, to make it clear to the Muslims that violence is no recourse, that France is indeed the land of liberty, equality, fraternity - and opportunity. If it doesn't, France's national nightmare will grow worse, and deadlier.

Originally published on November 7, 2005