Lies Lies Lies

New York, N.Y. Vanity Fair writer Craig Unger interviews nine former intelligence and military officials who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon, all of whom say, on the record, that they believe the Niger documents were part of a campaign to deliberately mislead the American public. Some of the officials refer to the Niger documents as a disinformation campaign, black propaganda, or a classic psy-ops campaign.
The complete article can be found on Vanity Fair's website at http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060606fege02

Unger reports that the U.S. may have gone to war with Iraq not because of intelligence failures but because of an extraordinary intelligence success, specifically an effective campaign of disinformation which led the White House, the Pentagon, Britain’s M.I.6 intelligence service, and thousands of outlets in the American media to promote the falsehood that Saddam Hussein's nuclear-weapons program posed a grave risk to the United States."To me, there is no benign interpretation of this," Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. and State Department analyst, tells Unger. "At the highest level it was known the documents were forgeries. [Then deputy national security adviser] Stephen Hadley knew it. [Then national security adviser] Condi Rice knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew it." (Hadley and Rice declined to comment.)

Unger talks with Milt Bearden, a 30-year C.I.A. veteran, who tells him the intelligence gathering with regard to the Niger claim wasn't an accident. This wasn't 15 monkeys in a room with typewriters.
Unger cites at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union address in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. They were just relentless, Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, tells Unger. You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique ruthless relentlessness.

Of course these nine along with the dozens of others who have said the same thing are weak of character or charlatans or some kind of enemy of the American way. Or just 15 monkeys with typewriters. How many times do people have to point this stuff out before the sheeple feel like they've been sheerd.