...what I see here are 2 >inside< sources...each telling us there were programs in place...and if the other report is correct, we have internal official documents that verify the statements of these 2 >inside< sources.

nope..you don't have 2 inside source each telling you that there were programs in place.

You have 3 (actually more) sources telling you that programs were in place.

Furthermore, all but one of them are telling you that programs were destroyed. Furthermore, your fairly good source tell you that they went to ENORMOUS lengths to hide whatever evidence/data they had of their program.

This is all valid evidence.

You have one source telling you that they're working on programs RIGHT NOW. (None of the others did - and I've got one who said they never worked on it afterward and were lying in their reports to Saddam.)

Now, Saddam is probably not a nuclear scientist. So evidence given to him should probably fool him pretty easily.

However, our CIA/NSA/DSA guys SHOULD have nuclear weapons expects...and any evidence that would go to Saddam should go to them as well. Now, if they were fooled, I MIGHT believe you...but I haven't seen any evidence of that (and I have a hard time believing that).

In fact, I've got evidence that they weren't easily fooled -- the Niger Uranium document, for example.

Nevermind other intel such as material movement that can be used to assist in determining whether or not a person is telling you the truth.

So, either the Iraqi Scientists fooled everyone (including our trained experts)....even to the point of ignoring the one Iraqi Scientist whom has been yelling all along that Iraq didn't have a nuclear program.

Or a select group (Richard Perle) ignored evidence to the contrary and listened to an apparent single source to support a position he had already taken.

And I still haven't seen any evidence that anyone has attempted to verify this source was legimate.

That ol' Lt. Gen. Amir al-Saadi was probably not a nuclear scientist and believed what his scientists were telling...(probably because he would've killed them if that didn't say what he wanted them to say.)

Apparently some of our Generals (who are probably not nuclear scientists) believed these same scientists.

I'm glad we've got smarter Generals, right?

[link|http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002223.asp| MS-NBC ]

THE MEMO, obtained by NEWSWEEK, suggests that the INC last year was directly feeding intelligence reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to terrorism to one of Cheney\ufffds top foreign- policy aides. Cheney staffers later pushed INC info\ufffdincluding defectors\ufffd claims about WMD and terror ties\ufffdto bolster the case that Saddam\ufffds government posed a direct threat to America. But the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have strongly questioned the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC.
For months, Cheney\ufffds office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney\ufffds staff, as one of two \ufffdU.S. governmental recipients\ufffd for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, \ufffddefectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed\ufffd; the info was then reported to, among others, \ufffdappropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.\ufffd The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a \ufffdprincipal point of contact\ufffd for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney\ufffds staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.