Here’s part of Fox News’s take on this whole Niger uranium controversy :

Republicans say this is clearly an issue for the White House to deal with, but some context is in order. A lot of the intelligence around the world provided alarming descriptions of attempts by Saddam Hussein to obtain enriched uranium, a key component of any kind of nuclear weapon.

Republicans also say the world was troubled and reasonably so, not only by Iraq’s previous use of weapons of mass destruction, but also its ongoing pursuit of them. They add that the one piece of bad intelligence does not in any way mean the president was wrong to raise the issue seriously or to try to go to war to protect Americans.

“There were many reasons to take out Saddam Hussein’s regime,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. “He was a terrorist, he poses a threat to the stability of the region, he was acquiring chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. We have seen massive graves of skulls where he has massacred people. And I think that to say that the entire operation was based on one line in a speech is ludicrous. This is presidential politics at its basest.”

Democrats, however, say that every line in a presidential speech matters, particularly when it is in the State of the Union — and the subject is war.

“We definitely have some intelligence issues, and I don’t agree that this is much ado about nothing,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told Fox News. “I do agree that it is not the sole basis for having gone into Iraq, and doesn’t really change that equation but we should be troubled by intelligence failures like this.”

First of all, what the hell do they mean by “A lot of the intelligence around the world provided alarming descriptions of attempts by Saddam Hussein to obtain enriched uranium”? Even George Bush himself has backed off the lie that the Niger story was backed up by other intelligence. Does Fox News have some intelligence about Saddam buying uranium that Bush doesn’t have?

So the moral of this story (according to Fox) is “Yeah, intelligence failures are a big deal, but one little mistake doesn’t change the fact that we needed to go to war with Iraq ‘to protect Americans’”. Apparently they just don’t get it.

The war against Iraq was a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign country under the assumption that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the safety of the American people. In a case like this, the intelligence should be 100% reliable (I was going to say “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but we all know how they feel about due process). This isn’t just a simple mistake, it’s a critical flaw in the whole justification for a preventative war. This one intelligence failure isn’t the only thing troubling here.

Over the past 6-9 months they’ve gone from warning us about “nuclear weapons” to warning us about attempts to revive a “nuclear program“. If someone was holding a loaded gun up to your head, then they definitely pose an imminent threat. But if they’re just browsing around the gun shop, then they don’t. Somebody needs to explain this to Bush and the rest of the world.