It's great to see you checking in, Hannah. I understand your job keeps you off-site a lot. Hope to see you back soon. There's so much going on in Italy that a few more hands would be great.

Anyway, back to this article, I was very happy to see a French official speak out on the case. It's a point that I think is very important. Of course one can't expect or pretend that a government or an agency respond to innuendo or smear. It's in the norm to ignore the din, which is precisely what the DGSE and the French government has always been doing- and is still doing.

This was what I intended to put up as my lead graph for this piece (modified for Kos):

Beyond that, the project to invade Iraq has been around since the nineties. Clinton opted for containment, embargo, harassment and caused consequential starvation. Plus a hell of a lot of multinationals reaped profits off the situation. I don't think it's a secret that taking out Iraq was part of the Bush agenda since day one of his tenure. The problem was finding a causus belli, and 9/11 was a golden opportunity to sting Saddam's wretched  regime. The INC pulled out all the plugs throughout the world to get their disinformation across. There was Curveball, the Atta-Prague spin, the tailor-made defectors, fantastic meets of Iraqi officials and Bin Laden in Kandahara, WMDs galore- the sort of entertaining bullshit you'll get in Diehard sequel.

There is no smoking gun that links the INC to the Niger documents. It may actually have been an opportunistic operation that got out of control and was reigned in as some sort of messy pastiche, smothered in State Secrecy sauce. Damage control.

The Italian position is untenable. The government and the Sismi insist Italy has nothing to do with the story. A small time con artist from Formello ends up in the limelight as a French agent. And Italy applies state secrecy! It's a great script if it weren't for the appalling tragedy it brought on.