The ghost of Joe Wilson walks these halls

You can try to kill the messenger by destroying his wife, but when the message is the truth, it proves much harder to kill.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Also, Joe Wilson wasn't the only one. Why haven't I heard more about this?

A four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., was also sent to Niger to investigate the claims of a uranium purchase. He, too, came away with doubts about the reliability of the report and believed Niger's yellowcake supply to be secure.

Lastly, how did this State Dept assessment not get read?

The memo, dated March 4, 2002, was distributed at senior levels by the office of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

A Bush administration official, who requested anonymity because the issue involved partly classified documents, would not say whether President Bush had seen the State Department's memo before his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003.

Under what circumstance, does a president contemplating a war not read read an assessment given to him by his Sec. State? Did Bush not read any intel? Did he not listen to anyone but Cheney and Tenet?

(Aside: Does it seem to anyone else that the decision to print the NSA spying story opened the NYTimes floodgates? Maybe that's a misimpression on my part, but it's almost like somebody at the Times changed their mind suddenly.

Did they come into some information that recast their opinion of the Bush admin's commitment to national security? Had they been threatened repeatedly and finally decided to take the consequences? Keep an eye on their pages to see how many one on one interviews there are with "high level administration officials." Let's see if it was an access threat. If so, the decision indicates that the Times thinks they can get more stories from leakers than officials.

Or maybe it's a change in culture after the firing of Judy Miller....

Irresponsible speculation. It's great to be a blogger. )

RELATED: Newsweek is asking questions about Curveball and his connections to Chalabi.