ENTEBBE, Uganda, 12 July 2003 — US President George W. Bush yesterday refused to take the blame for using flawed data on Iraq’s nuclear program in his State of the Union speech, saying the CIA cleared it before it was delivered. Questions over the drama sparked by claims that Iraq sought uranium in Africa, again pursued Bush on his tour of the continent, as he jetted into Uganda for a four-hour stay devoted to the battle against AIDS.
As aides struggled to contain a growing political storm, Bush said the CIA cleared the speech delivered to Congress in late January as the administration laid down the rationale for war to disarm Saddam Hussein. “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by intelligence services. It was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime,” Bush said.
Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters that the address was sent to CIA Director George Tenet for approval. “Now I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of Central Intelligence, had said, ‘take this out of the speech’, it would have been gone, without question,” she told reporters on Air Force One. Senior administration officials said that before Rice spoke with the press, she phoned Tenet in Washington.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democratic candidate for president, yesterday demanded an inquiry into whether the US administration ignored CIA warning that intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs was faulty.
