Italy warned US about bogus uranium docs

First the Downing Street documents, now this:

Italian secret services warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that a dossier about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa was fake, a lawmaker said Thursday after a briefing by the nation's intelligence chief.

"At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy's SISMI secret services) said that the dossier doesn't correspond to the truth," Sen. Massimo Brutti told journalists after the parliamentary commission was briefed.

Brutti said the warning was given in January 2003, but he did not know whether it was made before or after President Bush's speech.

The United States and Britain used the claim that Saddam was seeking to buy uranium in Niger to bolster their case for the invasion, which started in March 2003. The intelligence supporting the claim later was deemed unreliable.

But expect the mainstream press to keep it 'fair and balanced.' After all, it's just the word of White House officials (one indicted for lying, others under investigation) against the word of two other nations.

UPDATE: Oops. Forgot to thank the inimitable (but occasionally cranky) Mil Apodos for the story.