Well, what a surprise. Yet another bit of evidence that yes, Saddam's Iraq was actively trying to make a nuclear bomb just as Bush and Blair said he was. The Financial Times security correspondent Mark Huband reports (no free link) that the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger, widely dismissed as a lie, was actually true:

'Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times. Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

'But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium... According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, thereby circumventing official export controls. "The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources," an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said.'

So while the Nigerian letters were fake, the claim that Iraq was clandestinely buying uranium was true. The fake letters concealed the fact that there was solid intelligence to back up the actual claim. That's no doubt why British intelligence has maintained thoroughout that the Niger uranium story was actually true, even if the published report was not.

This makes a number of people look very silly. First into the stocks is former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who the US sent to Niger to investigate the claim and who dismissed it on the risible grounds that:

'I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place...If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.'

But now it appears that it was Mr Wilson's own report and conclusions that fitted 'certain preconceptions about Iraq' -- namely the prejudice of the anti-war lobby, who ignored what British intelligence was saying because it didn't fit the approved mantra that 'BushandBlairlied'.

But the US administration doesn't look too clever either. After all, after the original claim was exposed as a fake, the US said Bush had been wrong to make the Niger claim at all. But now it appears that it was his intelligence advisers who were wrong -- again -- in failing to accept what British intelligence was telling them and what we now learn was confirmed by no fewer than three European intelligence services. Between the malign credulity of the anti-war lobby and the lack of grip by US intelligence, is it any wonder that the defence against terror is faltering?