60 Minutes/CBS Lies About Bush Again

I didn't read the entire 60 Minutes/CBS story about Drumheller that I mentioned in the last entry. Much of the story was about the uranium claim, the forgeries, and the State of the Union. It was directly implied that the State of the Union "16 words" were based on the forgeries:

When the documents arrived in Washington, State Department analysts quickly concluded they were suspect. One analyst wrote in an e-mail: "you'll note that it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess)."

The Washington Post recently reported that in early January 2003, the National Intelligence Council, which oversees all U.S. intelligence agencies, did a final assessment of the uranium rumor and submitted a report to the White House. Their conclusion: The story was baseless. That might have been the end of the Niger uranium story.

But it wasn't. Just weeks later, the president laid out his reasons for going to war in the State of the Union Address -- and there it was again.

But as astute readers, people who can think, and others who read my journal know, this is false. Ed Bradley shows how clueless he is both there, and here:

"So, let me see if I have it correctly. The United States gets a report that Saddam is trying to buy uranium from Africa. But you and many others in our intelligence community quickly knock it down. And then the uranium story is removed from the speech that the President is to give in Cincinnati. Because the head of the CIA, George Tenet, doesn't believe in it?" Bradley asked.

"Right," Drumheller appeared. [sic]

It then appeared in the State of the Union address as a British report.

Again, false. A lie. What was in the State of the Union was different. Oh, but Drumheller doesn't think they are different:

Drumheller, who oversaw intelligence operations for the CIA in Europe doubts the British had something the U.S. didn't. "No. I don't think they did," he says.

Oh, you don't THINK they did. And you would know better than the Butler Report, which was privy to this intelligence you doesn't think exists, which claims that the British intelligence was both separate from the forgeries, and even predated the forgeries? So now you are saying the British government is lying?

I suppose that is possible, but I need more than "I don't think they did" from someone who wouldn't actually know, in order to believe that.

Incredible. And people think 60 Minutes and CBS are not politically biased? Maybe they are not. Maybe they are just incredibly incompetent, that after more than three years they can still continue to get this story wrong.