Don't Ask Alice about the Nuclear Mujahideen

President Bush did not lie to get us into war. Hardly a conservative newspaper, The Washington Post backs up the president:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do.

The Post goes on to say the administration handled it in a clumsy manner, but was trying to get out the truth to counter illegal leaks:

The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Iraq had sought uranium in Niger (former French colony, rhymes with Pierre). Why else would top Iraqis be there? Even Wikipedia knows the only resource they have is uranium. (Ok, they also export livestock, some of which helpfully wanders over the border into Nigeria. I guess it's the honor system.)

Anyway, for once, as Brit Hume pointed out on FoxNews last night, the Wall St. Journal and the Washington Post agree. The Journal calls it the "Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass world that passes for media coverage" of this case.

Thankfully the Post has some common sense, but the behavior of most of the major media and the Democrat leadership is really appalling and bizarre. You'd think they were on drugs or something.

Here's Hitchens with the definitive report, which also defends the president:

In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie.

For some reason, al-Zahawie went to Niger:

Given the past Iraqi record of surreptitious dealing, cheating of inspectors, concealment of sites and caches, and declared ambition to equip the technicians referred to openly in the Baathist press as "nuclear mujahideen," one could scarcely operate on the presumption of innocence.

And one added bonus---Hitchens shows Time magazine to be absolute IDIOTS. And we again see the duplicity of the UN--al-Zahawie had been Iraq's delegate on nuclear issues in 1995!