Meet the fuckers

As the diplomat who faced down Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War (for which former president George H.W. Bush had called him "an American hero"), Wilson enjoyed particularly wide respect and credibility; and

Baffled by President George W. Bush's citing of the worn-out and discredited Iraq-Africa-uranium fairytale in his State of the Union address in January 2003, Wilson had been making not-so-discreet inquiries as to why the president chose to repeat the fable. Did he perhaps have better evidence? The answer was no.
Wilson concluded, correctly in my opinion, that the administration had shown itself prepared to twist intelligence to "justify" attacking Iraq and that it had little else upon which to base the conjuring up of the "mushroom cloud" that deceived Congress into voting for war. Several months into the war, no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (much less of the "reconstituted" nuclear weapons development program repeatedly advertised by Cheney) had been found. And the "explanation" offered by the Cheney/Rumsfeld "cabal," namely, that patience was needed because Iraq is the size of California, was wearing thin. The Iraq-Niger story was about all they had left. MORE ON

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00155.htm

I believe Cheney smelled a rat, the rat of deliberate defiance - in Cheney's eyes a mutinous attempt to deny him the kind of "intelligence" he knew would be required to deceive Congress...'