You have heard about the infamous 16 words about the yellowcake from Niger included in Bush’s speech. You may have heard that the only other major piece of evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons development program were some aluminum tubes. Together with evidence of biological and chemical weapons, the case for a nuclear threat was a powerful motivation for the US to go to war in Iraq.
Today the New York Times has an extremely detailed article on the tragedy of the tubes and how the US time and time again claimed they were for centrifuges when there was plentiful evidence that they were for regular conventional rockets. In fact it shows time and time again that the only evidence that it might be used for centrifuges rather than rockets is countered in several ways throughout the article by America’s own Energy department and defense department. This is a very important read because it shows how intelligence information and disagreements between intelligence can be ignored by our leaders. Once pride, or national credibility is on the line, sometimes the path of least resistance is onward to war.
UPDATE: The article will eventually require payment for access. Kerim has some passages from it in his summary of the article.