Editing Niger uranium forgeries (section)

== Iraq and WMD ==
In late 2002, the [[Presidency of George W. Bush|Bush administration]]  began soliciting support for war in Iraq using the political slogan "[[coalition of the willing]]" to refer to what later became the [[Multinational Force – Iraq]]. To back up its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that administration referred to intelligence from Italy, Britain, and France detailing interactions between [[Saddam Hussein]] and the governments of Niger, [[Somalia]], and the [[Democratic Republic of Congo]]. Specifically, CIA director [[George Tenet]] and [[United States Secretary of State]] [[Colin Powell]] both cited attempts by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September testimony before the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]]. At that time, using information derived from the same source, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an (unnamed) "African country". In December, the [[United States Department of State]] issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council".<ref>{{cite press release
|publisher=Department of State
|date=19 December 2002
|title=Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council
|url=http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118.htm
|access-date=23 April 2009
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090414034303/http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118.htm
|archive-date=14 April 2009
|url-status=live
|df=dmy-all
}}</ref>