Senator Kyl Still Believes Saddam Sought Yellowcake From Niger

Yes. It's true.

Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) told CNN's Late Edition this morning that he still believes that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake from Niger, despite the fact that the documents relied upon to prove that assertion were long ago proven to be forgeries. Absolutely unbelievable. This, coming from a senator who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Kyl made the assertion while strenuously trying to defend the actions of his president who, we learned just days ago, had authorized the leak of the classified NIE to Libby to discredit Joe Wilson's findings that the Niger connection was untrue. Kyl bashed Wilson for only giving "half" of the story and stated that he thought Bush was correct to, in effect, fight back by declassifying the NIE. Kyl did say that he thought it should have been presented to all of the media instead of just to a select few via Libby at that time. However, he had absolutely no qualms about Bush leaking the information for political gain.

Joe Wilson - enemy of the state.

Truth and those who tell it obviously interfere with the Republicans' agenda and must be destroyed at every possible opportunity. It's the only way they can keep their heads from exploding.

UPDATE: CNN has the transcript

BLITZER: At this point, though, what Joe Wilson was writing in the New York Times, based on everything you know and all of the information that has come forward, he was right and the president, in those 16 words in the State of the Union address, when he spoke about British intelligence believing that Saddam Hussein was trying to get enriched uranium from Niger, that the president was wrong.

Is that your bottom line?

KYL: No, it's exactly the opposite of that. The president was absolutely correct in what he said. It was correct then and it's still correct today. British intelligence still maintains that they had the evidence that that is exactly what the Iraqis were trying to obtain from Niger.

BLITZER: But U.S. intelligence came up with an 180-degree different conclusion, even in advance of the State of the Union address.

KYL: No, Wolf, the U.S. intelligence could not confirm or deny.

The British intelligence had the information and the president referred, in the State of the Union speech, not to U.S. intelligence but to British intelligence. So what he said was correct. Now, the fact that we could not independently confirm that doesn't make the British intelligence wrong. And they still stand by the intelligence.

BLITZER: Well, there's a lengthy piece -- you probably didn't see it -- in today's Washington Post, saying that, days before the president's State of the Union address, the National Intelligence Council, a high-level intelligence policy group, did conclude that they couldn't support, they couldn't back up the British intelligence version.

KYL: No, that's exactly right. I served on the Intelligence Committee during this point of time and I know what happened there. And it's exactly as I said. We could not confirm it independently, just exactly as you said.

That doesn't mean that the British intelligence was wrong. As a matter of fact, I tend to believe that it was correct, that Iraqis did go to Niger; they did try to open up a relationship to acquire that yellow cake. Nothing ever came of that.

Rewriting history, one lie at a time.