“The truth is that the assertions of Mr. Wilson and his partisans that Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger are a Bush administration fantasy do not stand up to serious scrutiny. Writing in Slate magazine on Monday, Christopher Hitchens describes a February 1999 official visit to Niger — a desperately poor country ‘known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore’– by Wissam al-Zahawie, Saddam’s ambassador to the Vatican and longtime senior public envoy for nuclear matters. Noting that Iraq had acquired uranium from Niger in 1981, Mr. Hitchens comes to a commonsense conclusion about Mr. Wilson’s critique of the Bush administration: ‘In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein’s long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious.’ Given the extensive record of Iraqi cheating and deception prior to the war, the Bush administration would have been derelict in its duty if it had given Iraq the benefit of the doubt as to the purpose of al-Zahawies’s visit to Niger.

The Washington Times has more here.