George Bush was said to make up out of whole cloth a lie about "Yellowcake uranium" being sought in Niger by rogue states in a State of the Union....even though that is exactly the intelligence provided by the Brits said. Yes. That's right. Bush made it all up even though the Brits confirm that that is the information that they provided Bush.

The Brits still stand by their assessment, by the way, even if international man of mystery Joe Wilson's tea leaf readings disagree.

Now this from The Financial Times:

"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."

The Belgravia Dispatch spends some time on this.

This is big. So big that the NYT may have to move it all the way up to page 9b.