WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

A handful of news reports, along with the Robb-Silberman report last year on intelligence failures in Iraq, have previously made reference to the early doubts expressed by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research in 2002 concerning the reliability of the Iraq-Niger uranium link.

But the intelligence assessment itself - including the analysts' full arguments in raising wide-ranging doubts about the credence of the uranium claim - was only recently declassified as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has sought access to government documents on terrorism and intelligence matters. The group, which received a copy of the 2002 memo among several hundred pages of other documents, provided a copy of the memo to The New York Times.

The White House declined to discuss details of the declassified memo, saying the Niger question had already been explored at length since the president's State of the Union address.

I guess they would decline to discuss it... I mean what were they going to say, "Damn! Busted again! Hope nobody reads this!"

I dont expect to see many conservative bloggers rushing to apologize to Joe Wilson or his wife either... I have gotten to the point where I just have to laugh at the ridiculous nature of some of the other side's arguments when it comes to Bush. I mean either they are incredibly stupid, naive, or just don't give a rats ass as long as their boy stays on top. This rancid meat has been stinking for so long that it's not even apetizing to maggots any more... And yet they keep excusing and denying... Makes you wonder... Makes you think, that sometimes all the talk about the traitorous Left, is just a reflection of their own guilt in being unable to acknowledge that they were sold a bill of goods, and in making the buy, they sold out their conservative ideas and the country as a whole...

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