On January 28th Bush informed the world that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The uranium would be used to create more Weapons of Mass Destruction. An investigation of the documents the US presented as proof of Bush's assertions uncovered glaring problems. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that "they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet." The forgeries became the object of widespread, and bitter, questions in Europe about the credibility of the United States. But it initially provoked only a few news stories in America, and little sustained questioning about how the White House could endorse such an obvious fake. [more
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