Why Oh Why Can't We Have A Better Press Corps?

Richard Stevenson and David Johnston need to pay closer attention:

The other report came from the Senate Intelligence Committee. It generally found extensive problems with the prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq's weapons programs and in particular documented a long chain of problems in the way the intelligence agencies dealt with suspicions about Iraq's interest in acquiring uranium.

But it also contained some information that tended to bolster the view that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger and possibly one or two other African nations. It cited a statement by a French official to the State Department in late 2002 that France, which was resisting Mr. Bush's efforts to make an urgent case for war, "believed the reporting was true that Iraq had made a procurement attempt for uranium from Niger." Neither report, however, found evidence that Iraq had actually purchased any uranium from Niger.

Now if I were writing this story, I would think it might be relevant to point out that the French official's statement was based on the same forged documents from Italy. The French report, the Italian report, the American report, and half of the British report were all based on the same forgery. The UK claims to have a second source of information that's not fruit of the poisoned tree, but they won't tell anyone what it is and US intelligence doesn't seem to believe them.