TPM Muckraker refers to the new Washington Post story regarding the Niger Forgeries.
You remember those. They were the so-called Intelligence quickly rejected by all the American Intelligence Services, but used by Bush to base his statement in the 2003 State of the Union address. By attributing his 16 words to British Intelligence (also based on the Niger forgeries) Bush used them as a large part of the excuse for the preemptive invasion of Iraq.
One question that has remained in the back of my mind for four years now is - who forged the documents? Unfortunately, WaPo doesn't give us the answer to that in this story, either.
It does appear that this was an action by then Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlesconni, in support of both Bush and Blair. It may have been initiated by and enacted by the SISMI (Italian Intelligence Service) but was certainly supported by Berlesconni. With 2700 troops in Iraq, italy provided the third largest contingent in the Coalition. That's after the troops supplied by (surprise) Bush and Blair.
This WaPo story does more to keep it issue in the public than it does to really answer the key questions, but with my complaints about the right-wing drift of the WaPo, this is really a good omen. We still have reporters asking what the full story really was.
This book offers background to the story.
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