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Frank Rich Clueless on Saddam's Uranium Stash
Ever since the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, New York Times scribe Frank Rich has gone into overdrive with complaints that the Bush administration lied about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability. But on Saturday Rich sounded clueless when confronted with reports that Saddam had stockpiled some 500-tons of uranium - news reported just last year on the front page of his own paper. The usually informed-sounding Timesman fumbled for answers during the following exchange with WABC Radio's Mark Simone: SIMONE: Speaking of uranium, your own paper, on May 22, 2004, reported on 500-tons of uranium we found in Iraq.
Story Continues Below RICH: I don't remember that. I don't know if that was uranium that could be made into nuclear weapons. That's something that I don't know. SIMONE: Well, it hadn't been enriched yet, but as your own paper pointed out, it sure could make good dirty bombs. RICH: Well [sighing], ah . . . SIMONE: I never heard you pause. RICH: [laughs nervously] I have no - I don't - I didn't see this - no - even the administration hasn't made hay of it so I wonder if it was written by Jayson Blair. I don't know. SIMONE: You know what your paper did back then. The reason they were going after it - apparently the Bush administration had decided to take it out of Iraq and environmentalists were screaming that it was too dangerous to move. So that's why the Times and the Washington Post were covering it. RICH: I see. SIMONE: But isn't that fascinating that the administration never brings that out. RICH: Yeah - because maybe they don't trust it. Or maybe they don't read the New York Times. [END EXCERPT] Apparently, neither does Mr. Rich - since the Times also reported in the same story that part of Saddam's uranium stockpile had been partially enriched, and then explained - "the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions." Moments before Rich's "homina-homina" moment, he had been railing how the Libby indictment showed that the Bush administration had lied about Iraq's WMDs. "The administration, particularly Dick Cheney but not exclusive Dick Cheney, made claims for which they didn't have a basis to sell the war," he insisted to Simone, "No one but this administration, particularly, heightened the nuclear part of [the WMD threat] as much as they did."
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Iraq
Inside Cover Stories
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