The Yellowcake Forgeries

Gordon Prather discusses the forged "yellowcake" documents.

I'm not certain how important these are in terms of getting us into war in Iraq, because as I understand it, Bush's "famous sixteen lines" were not based on this document, but on other intelligence that the British supposedly had but couldn't make public. Of course, this too could be a lie, but it brings into question whether the forgery of the yellowcake documents was that important towards bringing us to war. On the other hand, the forgery is serious because it means that someone was falsifying documents with the intention of getting us into war with Iraq (unless, I suppose, some Nigerian forged them thinking that the US would pay money for such evidence, but most of the current thought seems to trace the document to Italian intelligence, which presumably would not be forging documents for mere lucre without some ideological motive). And this brings to mind who was trying to dupe us.

(As an aside, I thought that during the "Bush National Guard typewriter scandal" at CBS, Dan Rather ought to have said "the memo's not important; we have other documentation that shows that Bush shirked his duty, but darn it, British intelligence won't let us reveal them").

I have also heard claims that Joseph Wilson's denial of Iraq seeking materials from Niger was not consistent with his actual report when he had come back, although Matt Yglesias has some information seeming to deny this.

Part of this is why I have not commented a lot on the Plame case, there is a lot going on and I am not certain that I can make sense of it. If anyone wants to offer their thoughts, I am listening.

The most interesting theory so far, though, is that Patrick Fitzgerald 's investigation of "Plamegate" is actually a ruse to sniff out the yellowcake forgers. I am also interested in the theory that Larry Franklin, the spy for AIPAC, might have something to do with this.

That is all.