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When Froggy Comes Marching Home
Just the good partJoseph C. Wilson ...was first in Niger with USAID during the Carter administration, then later in the 1990s as a Clinton National Security Council staffer. He arrived back in the Nigerâs capital of Niamey in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored mission to investigate a report that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger in 1999. This trip took place a year before President Bush uttered the so-called "16 words" in his State of the Union address ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"). Note that the president accused Iraq of seeking uranium, not actually obtaining it, which is what Wilson was sent to look into. He spent most of his time at the hotel â a fourth-floor suite at the Gawaeye, one report said. He was very open about his mission and its object, and began to take meetings near the pool. "I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," Wilson wrote in the New York Times last July, "current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the countryâs uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." It is unclear with whom Wilson met. No Nigerien officials have admitted to attending those meetings. El Hadj Habibou Allele, who runs COMINAK, the major uranium-mining concern, stated he was never contacted. For their part, the staff at the Gawaeye thought Wilson was a nice guy, and they nicknamed him "Bill Clinton" after his former employer. I posted this only to ask if anyone knows what exactly âfrog-marchingâ is. Some kind of French Army retreat ? Posted by: eyeyeye 2003-10-01 |
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