Prometheus 6   

C.I.A. Approved Iraqi Uranium Claim, White House Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ENTEBBE, Uganda (AP) -- President Bush said Friday that intelligence services cleared his State of the Union speech, which included a now-discredited allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy nuclear material from Africa.

Bush's national security adviser specifically said the CIA had vetted the speech. If CIA Director George Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence in the president's speech, "he did not make them known" to Bush or his staff, said Condoleezza Rice.

The issue arose a day after other senior U.S. officials said that before and after Bush's Jan. 28 speech, American intelligence officials expressed doubts about a British intelligence report the president cited to back up his allegations.

Those doubts were relayed to British officials before they made them public, and were passed to people at several agencies of the U.S. government before Bush gave his nationally broadcast speech. The White House this week admitted the charge about Iraq seeking uranium should not have appeared in his speech.

Bush, asked during a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni here how erroneous material had ended up in the address, said, "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." He did not answer when pressed again on how it wound up in his speech.

But he reiterated his belief that he made the right decision in invading Iraq and asserted that the world is a more peaceful place for it.

Rice said "the CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."

…CIA officials warned members of the President�s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.

The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: �Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.� As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that�s how it was delivered.