Now We Know the Why

We know the "what" — Bush lied about Iraq's efforts to purchase uranium in Africa in his State of the Union speech. We can be fairly confident we know the "how" — the White House pushed back against the CIA and attributed the uranium claim to British intelligence, thinking that would make the statement "techically accurate" and mollify the critics. And now Walter Pincus in the Washinton Post gives us the "why":

In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.

But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.

By Jan. 28, in fact, the intelligence report concerning Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa — although now almost entirely disproved — was the only publicly unchallenged element of the administration's case that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. That may explain why the administration strived to keep the information in the speech and attribute it to the British, even though the CIA had challenged it earlier.

To put all this in perspective: Leading up to war, Bush knew he needed to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States. The only compelling way to do this was to claim that Iraq was close to obtaining nuclear weapons. The yellowcake claim was the only piece of evidence of Iraqi nuclear ambitions that hadn't been publically called into question. Thus, this "one sentence", these "16 words", became absolutely foundational for Bush's claim that Saddam needed to be taken out, and taken out right now.