"Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. "
But the same process of politicized, "faith-based intelligence" was happening with the famous aluminum tubes too, just as it did with the "crude forgeries" on Niger uranium:
One example of misinformation, according to physicist and former weapons inspector David Albright, was the Bush administration’s leak to the media in September about Iraq’s attempt to import aluminum tubes which administration officials claimed were headed for Iraq’s nuclear program.
“I think it was very misleading,” says Albright, who directs the Institute for Science and International Security. Albright says the tubes could be possibly used for a nuclear program, but were more suited to conventional weapons production. Government experts thought that too, Albright tells Simon, but administration officials “were selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and, in essence, scare people.”
The bottom line: We're talking more than onesies, twosies, here.
It's good clean fun to play "Gotcha!" with aWol's gang -- it's easy to do, and any number can play, even the SCLM -- but the bottom line is not one lie, two lies, three lies, but the persistent pattern of deceit from this administration.
Not just on Iraq (here, here) but on all the issues they handle.
They lie so much, they don't even know they're lying any more.